Intel Inside? DeWine Won’t Say
May 18, 2022
For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
“The DeWine administration has already seen its share of ethics struggles.”
Columbus, OH — Today, the Ohio Democratic Party released the following statement after the Ohio Capital Journal revealed that Mike DeWine has a financial stake in Intel but won’t reveal how much stock in the company he owns or whether his financial interests in Intel played a role in the deal. It’s another example of DeWine playing by a different set of rules than the rest of us and then trying to ‘no comment’ his way out of accountability.
“If Mike DeWine – already a multimillionaire – is profiting off the Intel deal he had intimate knowledge of, voters deserve to know. For too long, DeWine has tried to dodge accountability when faced with questions about the controversies and corruption running rampant in his statehouse. Voters deserve answers and they deserve them now,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.
Read more from the Ohio Capital Journal here and below:
- As Ohio negotiates almost a $2 billion incentive package with electronic chip maker Intel, Gov. Mike DeWine owns stock in the company, according to ethics disclosures that were due on Monday. However, the governor declined to say much about the investment beyond the very general information that is required under Ohio ethics law.
- Intel in January announced that it would invest at least $20 billion in Central Ohio to build two chip plants and create about 3,000 jobs — great news in a state where the economy has lagged the national average.
- But some, including Policy Matters Ohio, have raised concerns that a $1.9 billion incentive package is front-loaded, leaving taxpayers vulnerable if Intel doesn’t live up to its promises.
- Asked in March about those concerns, DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney pointed out that $650 million is conditioned on job creation and won’t be paid if they don’t materialize.
- But he didn’t address what, in the event the project goes bust, the administration would do to claw back a $600 million “reshoring grant,” or $150 million from JobsOhio.
- With so much money at stake, taxpayers might want to know that their representatives at the negotiating table have only their interests in mind. But DeWine’s ethics disclosure makes it impossible to be sure.
- Under Ohio law, government officials such as DeWine every year have to disclose every company in which they owned at least $1,000 worth of stock during the previous year. But just knowing DeWine has more than $1,000 worth of Intel stock doesn’t tell you much; it could be just a nominal investment, or it could be a big play that might give him a motive to help Intel do well that conflicts with the best interest of Ohioans.
- The DeWine administration has already seen its share of ethics struggles.
- Some of his appointees have been implicated in a $61 million bribery scandal that netted a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout for utility companies.
- His son, Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine, refuses to recuse himself from a case in which Gov. DeWine and other Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission have passed legislative maps that a bipartisan majority of the court have five times ruled to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered.
- And Gov. DeWine’s Medicaid director, Maureen Corcoran, has refused to disclose just how much stock she owned in two health care giants last year as she awarded them billion-dollar contracts.
- Now the governor appears to be following suit.
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