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Ohio says it offered $400 million in incentives to attract DHL to Wilmington in 2004 when the company was considering whether to consolidate its U.S. air freight hub at Wilmington or at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

It's a number that state officials have repeated since DHL's May 28 announcement that it intends to hire United Parcel Service to handle its U.S. air cargo sorting and flying at Louisville, Ky., which could wipe out at least 8,200 jobs at DHL's Wilmington air freight hub, the region's largest employer. DHL, owned by Germany's Deutsche Post World Net, said it expects the deal with UPS to help reduce DHL's $1 billion annual losses in U.S. operations.

DHL says, however, that it has received less than $7 million in incentives from Ohio since choosing Wilmington. In a letter to an Ohio legislator, the company also said it has invested $245 million in improvements and equipment at Wilmington that it would leave behind if it hires UPS.

"Those investments include approximately $115 million in real property improvements and $130 million in new personal property," Jon E. Olin, executive vice president and general counsel for DHL's U.S. operations, wrote in a letter to state Rep. David Daniels, R-Greenfield, chairman of the House State Government and Elections Committee. "If the vendor services contract with UPS is consummated, DHL will likely lose most of the benefit of those investments. DHL would not be pursuing this course absent a clear necessity or without great deliberation."

DHL said the incentives it has received include state job training and business development grants and abatements on personal property and real property taxes. DHL said it is obliged to pay all debt charges on $270 million in bonds sold by the Dayton-Montgomery County Port Authority to finance improvements at Wilmington, and that no government entity is liable for that debt.

Ohio is sticking with its statement concerning the offer to DHL.

"The state offered an approximately $400 million incentive package for the DHL project," said Kelly Schlissberg, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Development. "DHL may have elected to utilize only certain incentives from that package."

Daniels invited input from DHL for a joint legislative hearing involving his committee Aug. 19 at the Wilmington site to examine the issues there.

The state offered the incentives on the basis that DHL had committed to consolidate operations in the state, Daniels said. The lawmaker said he is disappointed that DHL is preparing to end, or dramatically reduce, its operations at Wilmington without first giving the state an opportunity to talk with DHL about how Ohio could help to make the company's Wilmington operation profitable.

"I think that we've made every opportunity to sit down and listen to every request that they've had," Daniels said. "We have not been afforded the same courtesies that the state of Ohio has offered them."

Ned Hill, Cleveland State University's vice president of economic development, questioned why a company would publicly point out that it didn't get all the aid that a state may have promised.

"This takes whining to a new art form," Hill said. "Incentives are controversial enough. Welching on a deal, even though legally they may be able to do it, doesn't help."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.