Betrayed by the State: My Fight Against Ohio's Secret Data Center Agenda

Our Take

Credit to Ohio Daily News for digging through the fine print most of us skip. Whatever you make of the framing, the underlying story is one we track constantly: a legislature quietly weighing whether data centers should keep getting tax abatements, whether they should face real water-use rules, and whether they should be shunted into their own electric rate class instead of spreading the cost of new gas plants and transmission lines across everyone else's bill. That HB 646 reportedly died at the eleventh hour before reaching Gov. DeWine's desk is the part that should bother you most — not because the bill was perfect, but because the public never got to weigh in before it nearly vanished.

This is the pattern across state after state: massive power and water demands get negotiated in committee rooms and utility filings long before residents hear the word 'hyperscale.' A new rate class sounds bureaucratic, but it decides whether a single campus's server load gets billed like the industrial customer it is, or whether the difference gets quietly folded into your rate base. Tax abatements decide whether the county actually collects revenue for schools and roads, or just gets a groundbreaking photo op. Water rules decide whether a drought-prone summer means restrictions on your lawn while a cooling loop runs at full tilt.

We can't verify every claim of a 'secret agenda' from a single video, and we'd urge you to read the bill language yourself rather than take anyone's word for it, ours included. But the instinct behind this investigation — follow the paperwork before the ribbon-cutting — is exactly right. Check our facility map to see what's already been sited near you, and if Ohio or your state is moving on data center legislation, use our take-action page to find out how to get in front of it before it stalls in the dark again.