Following up on our story earlier this week on a surprise Department of Commerce funding freeze for Ohio’s Manufacturing Extension Partnerships, Dayton, Ohio’s FastLane said it is wrapping up existing contracts and will be forced to close within weeks.
“There’s 12 of us here on staff and we’ll be around another month or so,” said FastLane Director Philip Ratermann. “We are in the middle of projects with a lot of manufacturing companies that we already have, and we plan to finish those off as fast as we can.”
“We’ve been on this for 13 years and we’ve never been as good as we are today,” he added. “I started this with just myself and a few people working part time.”
The Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) cited five errors and miscalculations in a memo regarding its 20-month audit of Ohio’s MEP. Two are related to FastLane. The state has six MEP offices.
Ratermann said he was stunned not only by the funding freeze but that FastLane was singled out for reporting errors.
MEPs are nonprofits in 48 U.S. states that assist small and medium-sized manufacturers with process improvement, workforce outreach and training, technology adoption, business growth and innovation. They became a federal grant program during the Reagan administration, but the Ohio MEP is one of five that predate the federal grant as served as a model for the others.
Here's a look at the federal claims and Ratermann’s response:
OIG citation: “Reporting error: 4 million in unallowable non-federal cost share … FastLane has confirmed these amounts are unallowable.”
Ratermann: FastLane submitted the additional OIG-requested cost-share information during the audit and confirmed the dollar amounts through the Ohio Department of Development. “Regarding whether it was allowable or unallowable, we were never asked about that from the Office of the Inspector General.”
OIG: $647,000 in miscategorized administrative fees.
Ratermann: “We complied with what the state wanted us to do with that. Our state director was very clear on how we should track and treat that amount, and apparently it looks like the Inspector General doesn’t like what was done there.”
FastLane has not received any preliminary or final audit reports from the OIG; the projected release date is now May 2026, with no federal or state funds released before that time. A spokesman for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Commerce office that administers MEP grants, told IndustryWeek on Dec. 12 that it could not share any specifics about the audit.
“We’d like to see the audit report,” said Ratermann. “It’s been going on for 20 months. They’ve pushed out the end date four times. We would love to present what we do, and we’re sure it’s compliant.”
“We are doing things appropriately,” he added. “We’ve had lots of audits in our past and they’re all very shining.”
Since its beginnings, FastLane has assisted more than 800 small- and medium-sized Ohio manufacturing companies in the region. From those projects, FastLane clients have self-reported $275 million-plus in new sales, $156 million in new investments, $90 million in cost savings and more than 9,000 new or retained jobs.
Toledo’s MEP office, CIFT, laid off 13 of its 15-person staff on Monday and is planning closure as well, said President and CEO Rebecca Singer. Chances to stay open with a “hail Mary” funding restoration are dwindling.
