Issue 6 of 12
Ohio bet billions on data centers. Delaware County still gets to set its own terms.
The tax value is real: billions in investment for pennies of payroll. So are the bills the neighbors carry: a 30,000-megawatt grab at the grid, a billion gallons of water a year, code names on the paperwork, and more than $2 billion in state tax breaks whose math broke so badly the governor hit pause. Washington calls these projects money machines. When this campaign says protect what matters, this page is what it means: your water, your electric bill, and your right to know who is building next door, before the vote.
See the map and the math ↓$2.2 billion+
Ohio's data-center sales-tax exemption commitments since 2025, after 2025's cost ran roughly $1.5 billion over the state's $136 million estimate. New exemptions are paused while the state does the math it skipped.
Signal Ohio, June 202630,000 MW
What data centers asked to connect to AEP Ohio's grid, three times the entire territory's peak demand. The 2025 tariff now makes them pay for capacity they claim.
PUCO, case 24-508-EL-ATA, July 20251.2 billion
Gallons of Columbus city water that area data centers used in twelve months, while nine in ten central Ohioans call waterway protection a priority.
Columbus Dispatch, July 6, 2026The data
Every facility we can verify, on one map.
This campaign has tracked the region's data centers since before it was fashionable: operational, under construction, and proposed, each with status, size, operator, and sources. Click any dot.
Want the full inventory, county by county, with charts and a downloadable CSV? Open the complete tracker →
The grid math, from the regulator's own case
Data centers asked for three times the grid's entire peak. The 2025 tariff makes them pay for at least 85 percent of what they claim, and the speculative queue fell by more than half. That rule is why your bill has a bodyguard.
The tax-break math that broke
Ohio's sales-tax exemption for data centers, per the state's own figures and press accounting. Governor DeWine paused new exemptions on May 27, 2026 while a legislative committee studies the return. Doing the math before signing is the whole argument of this page.
The Delaware County ledger so far
Amazon Web Services, Sunbury
City CRA with school compensation agreements; approved as emergency legislation.
Cologix COL5, Orange Township
~$42.3 million state exemption, among the last approved before the May 2026 pause; 25 MW now, 95 MW more planned.
Three billion dollars of capital, roughly 140 pledged jobs. The value is in the tax base, not the payroll, which is exactly why the tax deals deserve public arithmetic before every signature.
Straight answers
What people ask at the door.
What does a data center actually bring us?
Enormous taxable value and very few jobs, by the industry's own numbers. In Sunbury, Amazon committed $2 billion in capital for about 50 direct jobs averaging $90,000. In Orange Township, Cologix is building a $1 billion campus with 90 jobs pledged by 2028. That is extraordinary property value per acre, which is real money for schools and local budgets when the deals are written well. It is not an employment strategy, and any official selling it as one is not reading the filings. The honest description: a data center is a tax-base transaction with industrial-scale utility demands attached.
Will my electric bill go up?
The risk is real enough that Ohio's regulator rebuilt the rules around it. Data centers asked AEP Ohio for more than 30,000 megawatts of new connections, in a territory whose entire peak demand is about 9,400. If utilities build power plants and lines for demand that never materializes, ordinary customers carry the cost. In 2025 the state approved a data-center tariff making large facilities pay for at least 85 percent of the capacity they claim, whether or not they use it, and the speculative queue promptly dropped by more than half. That protection exists because regulators insisted. Keeping it strong is the fight that decides your bill.
What about our water?
Columbus-area data centers used about 1.2 billion gallons of city water in a single year, by the Columbus Dispatch's accounting, and nine in ten central Ohioans tell the regional planning agency that protecting waterways is a priority. Cooling design matters enormously: some facilities recycle aggressively, others draw continuously. Delaware County's honest position is that nobody should have to guess. Any facility seeking local approval or incentives should publish its projected and actual water use, and the county should know the answer before the concrete pours, not after the wells nearby run low.
Why all the code names and secrecy?
Because the industry prefers it, and too many governments accept it. In Piqua, Ohio, Meta's data center operates under the name J5 LLC, doing business as Shaytura LLC; that is on the city's own project page. Projects arrive as code names, get approved as emergency legislation, and the public learns who its new neighbor is after the vote. To be fair where fairness is due: Amazon used its own name in Sunbury, and New Albany now publishes a data-center toolkit. But transparency should not depend on the developer's mood. If a company wants Delaware County's approval or Delaware County's incentives, it can tell Delaware County who it is.
What happened to Ohio's billions in tax breaks?
The estimate broke. Ohio exempts data centers from sales tax on equipment, and the state projected that would cost about $136 million in 2025. The actual cost ran roughly $1.5 billion over that, and the commitments made since 2025 total more than $2 billion, with Google, Meta, and Amazon each holding deals worth around $600 million over decades. In May 2026, Governor DeWine paused new exemptions while a legislative committee studies whether the state is getting its money's worth. When the pro-business governor of a pro-business state hits pause, the question answers itself: the math was never shown in public.
What about the movement to ban data centers?
It is real, it is growing, and this year it mostly fell short. A citizen amendment to Ohio's constitution banning data centers larger than 25 megawatts was certified for signature-gathering but collected about 25,000 of the 413,446 signatures needed for the 2026 ballot. The local fights landed harder: Sunbury's own city council passed a data-center moratorium in April, Granville voted on a ban, Newark and Heath residents petitioned, and a court ordered Trenton's dispute onto a special-election ballot. President Trump, meanwhile, calls data centers "Money Machines for the State." Both things can be true: the money is real, and so is the anger of people who were never asked. Ryan's read is that communities are not anti-technology. They are anti-being-handled.
Where can I check this myself?
Start with this campaign's own tracker, linked above: every known facility in the region, mapped, with status, size, operator, and sources, and a CSV you can download. The PUCO docket on the AEP tariff is public, Sunbury publishes its Amazon documents in full, and the commissioners meet Monday and Thursday mornings at 9:30 at 91 North Sandusky Street, where any county incentive would be voted. Every figure on this page is linked in the sources below.
Heads up
The window for public input is narrowing from above.
In July, the EPA proposed making the public notice-and-comment step optional, at each state's discretion, for minor-source air permits, the very category that covers data centers' fleets of diesel backup generators. Roughly 200 health and community groups asked the agency to withdraw the proposal. Whatever Washington decides, the lesson for Delaware County is plain: if federal law stops guaranteeing your chance to speak, local process is the only place that guarantee can live. That is precisely where a county commissioner works.
Federal Register, July 7, 2026, and New York Times coverage, linked in the sources.
Levers and limits
What a commissioner can actually do about data centers.
The state writes the big tax breaks and the townships hold most zoning. What the county holds is the infrastructure every project needs, and the terms of its own signature.
The board controls
Sewer and infrastructure. No campus runs without utilities, and the county's sewer district, road decisions, and platting in the townships are the board's. Serving a site is a choice, and the choice can carry conditions.
The county's own incentives. County TIFs, reinvestment areas, and financing deals are voted in the commissioners' room. Every one can require published water and power projections, real corporate names, school compensation, and clawbacks if the promises miss.
The public's information. This campaign already runs the region's only public facility tracker. A county can do that officially: every proposal, every operator, every deal term, published before the vote. Sunlight requires no one's permission.
The county's voice. On the state's abatement review, on PUCO cases that set your electric bill, and at the regional table, an on-the-record county carries weight that silence never will.
The board does not control
The state's tax breaks. The sales-tax exemption, its pause, and whatever reform follows belong to the General Assembly and the governor. The county can testify; it cannot vote.
Township and city zoning. Sunbury's moratorium was Sunbury's call, and Orange Township's approvals were Orange Township's. In 15 of 18 townships, land use belongs to the township, which is exactly why the county's sewer and incentive levers matter so much.
Electric rates. PUCO and the utilities set them. The data-center tariff shows the system can protect households when pushed; the pushing is the county's only lever there.
Federal permitting. If the EPA makes public comment optional upstream, no county vote restores it there. The county can only refuse to run its own process in the dark.
The plan
What Ryan will do.
No names, no deal.
Any project seeking county infrastructure, incentives, or approvals discloses its real corporate parent and beneficial owner in the public packet, before the vote. J5 LLC doing business as Shaytura LLC is how Piqua met its new neighbor. Delaware County will be introduced properly.
Publish the full math before every signature.
Jobs, payroll, tax value, abatement cost, water draw, grid demand, noise profile, and school compensation, in writing, in public, for every county deal, with annual reporting against actuals and clawbacks when promises miss. The state's $136-million estimate became $1.5 billion because nobody demanded this. The county will.
Guard the water, the grid, and the neighbors.
County support goes only to projects that publish water usage, carry their own infrastructure costs on AEP's tariff terms, and meet enforceable noise standards at the property line. And where a community says no, as Sunbury's council did, the county's job is to respect that answer, not to route around it. Growth on our terms is still growth. Growth on any terms is surrender.
If nothing improves
The deals keep arriving as code names and emergency resolutions, the tax-break math keeps breaking in the state's favor of never checking, and the water and grid costs surface only after the concrete cures. Loudoun County shows the end state: a budget addicted to one land use, scrambling to restore the control it gave away. The anger that filled Sunbury's council chamber does not fade. It organizes.
What better looks like
A county where every proposal arrives with its real name, its real math, and its real water and power numbers, published before the vote. Projects that clear that bar add billions to the tax base that schools and services actually collect. Projects that cannot clear it build somewhere that asks fewer questions. Protecting what matters and welcoming investment take the same discipline.
Sources
Last updated: September 3, 2026
You should not have to take a candidate's word for any of this. Every figure above traces to one of these sources, and every facility on the map carries its own citations in the tracker. Found an error? Tell the campaign and we will fix it.
Keep going.
Data centers sit where growth, jobs, taxes, and trust all collide.