High Court Upholds Privacy Of JobsOhio Records

The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed a lawyer's request for records kept by the state's privatized job-creation agency on procedural grounds. The decision came Tuesday in a complaint filed by former ProgressOhio attorney Victoria Ullmann. She filed the complaint in August after being dropped as lead lawyer on a more high-profile constitutional challenge to JobsOhio that continues. Justices said the state law creating JobsOhio "specifically exempted" the office from Ohio's public records law. Ullmann had asked justices to declare JobsOhio a state agency because the privatized economic development entity acts as the "functional equivalent" of one under the law. Such a ruling would have opened JobsOhio to public records requests and other forms of scrutiny that were prevented under its enabling legislation.