Ohio entrepreneurs are offered a credit lifeline

Earlier this year, a publisher with a small magazine I occasionally have written for, e-mailed me, explaining why he hadn't paid me for a couple articles I had written, and even while I was frustrated by the delay, I found myself fascinated, too.

He told me that his company's credit line hadn't been renewed. "Talk about putting a business into a tailspin," he grumbled. "The worst part was... I didn't see it coming. Our credit was good. We always paid our bills on time. And then, two weeks before the maturity date, my banker calls to tell me it's not being renewed. And the money I owed on the line, about $80,000, had to be paid off."

I'm thinking about this guy because if his business were based in Ohio, I'd be e-mailing him about a new program that just launched last week, designed to help small and medium-sized businesses get funding. As in loans. As in much-needed moolah. Unfortunately for him and entrepreneurs in the other 49 states, it's only being offered in Ohio, but the Ohio government officials working behind the scenes believe that their model could be adopted by other states.