OMAHA- Dozens of North and South Omaha groups are expected to be awarded a chunk of up to $234 million in state funds on Friday for a variety of economic development projects. Gov. Jim Pillen and Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert are among the officials poised to announce the recipients of the grants.

However, even before the winners are publicized, complaints have sprung up over the Department of Economic Development's application scoring process, which was used to determine which organizations would be awarded grants. Bob Pelshaw of the Pelshaw group believes that the Department erred in scoring his application and at one point appeared to mistake his project for someone else's.

After reviewing his proposal, the Department ultimately offered Pelshaw $50,000, far below the nearly $10 million he had asked for to launch The Hub in South Omaha, prompting the organizations to file a complaint with the State Ombudsman's Office. In the filing, Pelshaw asked the ombudsman for help in urging the Department to "correct the glaring and intentional errors and fairly rescore our projects using all of the correct inputs. "

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