 After the restriction was eliminated, hundreds of millions of dollars in state funds were invested by a number of investment firms with close ties to the Republican party.Among those investments was $50 million of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation fund which was given to Thomas Noe, an investor in rare and unusual coins and major donor to the Republican Party including then-governor Bob Taft.In 2005 it was revealed that Noe could only account for $13 million of the original investment.