Brown Touts YBI as Model for Nation

Thursday, March 01, 2012

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is touting the Youngstown Business Incubator downtown as a model for other programs as he promotes legislation aimed at helping to support similar business-assistance efforts.

Brown, D-Ohio, is introducing legislation, the Business Incubator Promotion Act, which would provide funding to support incubators through the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

With some 50 incubators, Ohio may be the “best in the nation” at forming and using incubators to grow businesses, he said Wednesday during a conference call with reporters. YBI helped get Youngstown recognized as “one of the best cities in America to start a new business” – a distinction conferred by Entrepreneur magazine, he noted - and helped launch Turning Technologies, a startup recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

Brown's legislation would provide EDA grants through a competitive process, which would help regions introduce new businesses and assist existing ones by providing support services. The legislation also would ensure economically distressed communities have access to funds from EDA, which would provide “early seed financial support for business development” to communities suffering from “severe economic hardship” and high unemployment, he said.

YBI is among the best known and most visible incubators because of its downtown location “and because it’s helped Youngstown fight back,” Brown said. Just as Youngstown was a model for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the enforcement of trade laws with the V&M Star project, he observed, the city “could be a model here, too.”

An EDA study shows that for every $10,000 provided by the agency to fund business incubators, between 47 and 69 local jobs are generated, Brown said.

Another study, released last fall, found business incubator programs “positively influence entrepreneurial success” and have “positive impacts” on their communities, said Linda Knopp, director of policy analysis and research for the National Business incubation Association, based in Athens. Joining Brown on the call, she said Brown’s legislation would “go a long way toward helping business incubation programs throughout Ohio and across the nation.”

A tenant at Akron’s Global Business Accelerator touted the benefits of incubators as well. Summit Data Communications, a 6-year-old company that manufactures industrial and medical-grade wireless devices designed for embedding into data collection equipment and patient monitors, last year grew to more than $17 million in sales and has more than 35 employees, reported Ron Seide, president.

“When we started back in 2006, the Akron Global Business Accelerator was instrumental to our success,” he remarked. Today the company boasts that 70% of its business comes from =outside the United Sates, and it ships its products to customers in 75 countries.

In a short question-and-answer period, Brown said he hoped the Republican presidential candidates, in the remaining days heading up to Ohio’s primary Tuesday, will focus on manufacturing, incubators and creating jobs rather than social issues. “That helps us move forward as a country,” he said. “Frankly it’s less divisive and divisiveness seems to be too much of the call of the day and I don’t think that really helps anybody in the end.”

Brown also said he would vote against legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, that would permit employers to opt out of provisions of the American Affordable Care Act that they object to on moral or religious grounds. The amendment is in response to a recent fight between the Obama Administration and the Roman Catholic Church over providing insurance coverage for contraceptives.

An employer could potentially deny coverage of any health service they disagree with on the grounds of any belief the employer has, not just for religious reasons, Brown said. “Employers would no longer be required to cover free preventative services in insurance plans” or potentially exclude screenings for cancer, high blood pressure or cholesterol, he warned.