What in the name of sweet Jesus is going on in Ohio? You may recall the scandal in which the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation gave a sweetheart deal to Ohio GOP mover & shaker, and rare-coin dealer Tom Noe, by investing $50 million through his rare coin fund. Noe’s attorney is reporting $10-$12 million of that money “missing”.
Now, the Toledo Blade is reporting about another Ohio Worker’s Compensation fund investment gone wrong, wrong, wrong. $225 million in Worker’s Compensation funds were invested in something like a hedge fund. The fund lost $215 million of that investment as of last year.
Although the bureau has known about the losses since September, it wasn’t revealed until yesterday, a day after The Blade began making calls upon learning that state investigators had uncovered huge losses at the bureau.
A spokeman for Gov. Bob Taft said last night that Mr. Taft had been told in September that there was an investment loss at the bureau — a loss of $10 million to $20 million.
. . .In mid-April, The Blade reported that Ohio Republicans received more than $455,000 in campaign contributions from employees of the fund managers hired by the bureau for the “emerging managers†program in which Mr. Noe participated.
The big winners included the state Republican Party committees, which received $200,750, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, who received $67,130, and Governor Taft, who got $61,875.
Mr. Lay also confirmed that Mildred Forbes, the daughter of George Forbes, the vice chairman of the bureau’s Oversight Commission, works for his firm [MDL – the firm managing the $215 million loss]. Ms. Forbes is a senior vice president who works on human resources and compliance issues for MDL.
Sounds like, in Ohio, you might as well take your Worker’s Compensation premiums and flush them down a toilet.
Leave a Reply