About this resource

OEDA is the association of Ohio’s economic development professionals, and its members include the local and regional organizations that field these projects, including some named in these pages. That is why the practitioner’s role is written in rather than hidden, and why every contested question shows both sides. For this edition OEDA also read the complete written record of the Select Committee’s five hearings, 196 documents from state agencies, the grid operator, utilities, operators, local governments, residents, and advocacy groups on every side, and incorporated it throughout; anything drawn from testimony is attributed to the witness. Last reviewed: September 30, 2026.

What a data center actually is

A data center is a building full of computers. They store information and run the software behind cloud services, websites, streaming, business applications, and artificial intelligence. They run 24 hours a day, need constant electricity, and give off heat that has to be removed.

The building matters: the investment is in it, the jobs are in it, and it’s what your residents will see. It’s also the part people understand best. What’s easy to miss, and what drives most of what a data center needs from a community and does to it, is what surrounds the building: the substation and power lines, the cooling equipment and any water it uses, the backup generators, the fiber, and the trucks during construction. Two buildings the same size can have completely different utility needs and completely different effects depending on what’s inside and how it’s cooled.

Why they’re coming to Ohio, and why now

Three things happened at once. Artificial intelligence created a sudden need for far more computing. Northern Virginia, which used to absorb data centers, ran short of power and land. And Ohio had what developers look for: available electricity, land, fiber, water, a proven cluster in Central Ohio, and a state sales tax exemption on data center equipment, which the state stopped accepting new applications for in June 2026 while existing agreements continue.

Is this all AI? No. Basic cloud computing is still the biggest share of what data centers do. Streaming, online banking, your county’s records system, your kids’ school software: all of it runs in these buildings. AI is the accelerant, not the whole fire. Data centers do two kinds of AI work, and the difference helps explain why Ohio. “Training” builds an AI model; it uses enormous blocks of power and can sit anywhere with electricity and land, which is what Ohio offers. “Inference” runs the finished model when someone uses it; it prefers to be near people. Ohio is getting both, but the very large campuses are mostly built for the first. Nationally, data centers used about 4 percent of U.S. electricity in 2023 and are forecast at roughly 7 to 12 percent by 2028. A lot. Not most of the grid.

How electricity works, for this purpose only

Five things explain the most contested question in every data center debate: will this raise my constituents’ bills?

One more thing residents will ask, because several told the Select Committee they had heard the opposite: in a grid emergency, who gets cut first? PJM told the Committee it intends to require data centers that don’t supply their own generation to move to backup before residential load is shed; the rule was filed with federal regulators in August 2026, would apply to loads starting service after June 2027, and awaited approval as of September. Ask your utility where this customer would sit. And note what curtailment means on the ground: a data center that is cut switches to its backup generators (8.9).

Data centers are not yet their own customer class in Ohio; PUCO’s chair told the Select Committee they sit in the industrial or commercial class, and how regional costs are divided among classes is being reexamined as the utilities’ current rate plans expire. Consumer advocates say the protections don’t go far enough. Operators say they intend to pay their own way; Google, AWS, Microsoft, and QTS each said so to the Committee, by different mechanisms. Live dispute.

The catch: a plant of 50 MW or more is sited by the Ohio Power Siting Board, not your zoning. In New Albany, gas plants of 200 MW and 140 MW were approved in 2025 to serve data center campuses inside the city’s business park, close enough to matter for noise, emissions, and appearance. The city had written detailed data center standards, but the setbacks, screening, noise, and location of the plants were the state board’s to decide. New Albany told the Select Committee it worked with the gas companies on its standards before and during the Board’s process and formally intervened so the Board knew its preferences, and that it has been pleased with the result so far.

Norwich Township, in Franklin County, provides fire protection to a large data center campus in the Hilliard area; when a fuel-cell power plant went through permitting for that campus, the township’s fire department was not a notified party, so the people who would respond to an emergency there learned about the plant after the fact. Hilliard residents told the Committee the same plant was approved with no public hearing they knew of. Johnstown’s mayor, on the other side of the ledger, described on-site fuel cells at the Cologix campus there under a 15-year commitment as taking grid pressure off her community. All of these accounts come from testimony to the Select Committee (Guide Part 5.7).

If a proposal includes on-site generation, part of it has left your jurisdiction, and your emergency services may not be in the loop unless you put them there. The practical step, since nobody is required to tell you: someone in your government watches the OPSB docket and Ohio EPA’s permit notices for your jurisdiction.

How cooling and water work

Computers make heat. Getting rid of it is a trade between water and electricity.

Evaporative cooling evaporates water to carry heat away: less electricity, more water. Closed systems recirculate fluid and use fans or chillers: less water, more electricity. Most facilities mix the two, and the mix changes with weather and workload. Some new Central Ohio projects use no more water than an office building. Older designs can use far more. “Closed loop” describes what happens inside the building; a facility can recirculate inside while an evaporative tower outside still consumes water.

The questions the conversation has to answer are these. What does the project need, on an average day and on the hottest day? Water and sewer plants are built with room to grow, and a customer this size uses up room; how much of the system’s spare capacity does this take, and what does giving it up mean for other growth? Is the demand large enough to require plant or main upgrades, and if so, who pays? Ordinary industrial customers pay tap and capacity fees but aren’t asked to fund a plant expansion, so a project that would need one is a project where the terms have to be set before the connection is made.

If the answers are good, this is an ordinary industrial connection. If they aren’t, the time to set a cap, metering, and cost responsibility is now. And read the water agreement for who is bound to what: an agreement that obligates the community to deliver capacity to the site boundary while leaving the developer’s notice of the next phase non-binding puts the planning risk on the public side, and that term can be negotiated before signing.

Who has the pen

Sometimes local officials underestimate how much they control. The catch: it depends on who you are, and it can be moved. The chair of Norwich Township’s trustees put the division to the Select Committee in three sentences: “Cities may exercise zoning authority. Townships may provide fire and emergency services. Counties may oversee emergency management and infrastructure.”

One distinction to keep straight: a rezoning is a legislative act of council, which is why residents can take it to referendum where your charter or state law allows; a conditional use or variance is an administrative decision by the planning commission or board of zoning appeals under the standards already in your code, challenged in court rather than at the ballot. Which kind of decision is in front of you changes who decides, what they may consider, and how it can be undone; your counsel can tell you which routes apply under your charter and R.C. Chapters 731 and 2506.

Two things narrow the referendum route, and residents know both. The 2025 state budget raised the signatures needed for a municipal referendum from 10 to 35 percent of the votes cast for governor, effective September 30, 2025 (R.C. 731.29; a bill to lower it was introduced in August 2026). And an ordinance passed as an emergency takes effect at once and is generally not subject to referendum at all. Emergency clauses are a routine tool for economic development legislation, which is exactly why residents notice them on a data center: a Sidney organizer told the Select Committee the site there was annexed and rezoned “through emergency measures,” and a Genoa Township trustee, testifying individually, asked the General Assembly to bar emergency measures for any data center approval. Whether an emergency clause always keeps a measure off the ballot is now a live question (in August 2026 the Ohio Supreme Court held that Ashville’s emergency resolution did not block a referendum there), and on a contested data center approval the record shows an emergency measure producing a lawsuit or a ballot campaign instead. OEDA takes no position on the clause; counsel should walk you through it.

On incentives you have more than most trustees think: a county can’t create an Enterprise Zone in your township, or sign an EZ agreement there, without your board’s consent, which in practice usually means a resolution of the trustees, and if you’ve adopted limited home rule you can create your own Community Reinvestment Area.

Your vulnerability is annexation into a neighboring city or village, which moves the parcel under the municipality’s zoning and authority entirely. Your answers to that are formal agreements with the municipality. A Cooperative Economic Development Agreement (CEDA) can allow annexation, or the extension of municipal services without it, while the township keeps a defined share of the revenue. A Joint Economic Development District (JEDD) leaves the land in the township, lets a district board levy the municipality’s income tax within the district, and shares that revenue among the parties; forming one takes a petition signed by a majority of the property owners and a majority of the businesses in the district, public hearings in both governments, and months, not weeks (R.C. 715.72). A plain development agreement between the township and the city can also set payments. New Albany and its three townships have operated one of the state’s largest business parks under annexation agreements for years, and they’re common across Ohio. Unzoned township: Playbook I. Annexation: Playbook F.

Commissioners also hold a piece of annexation: a petition to move land from a township into a municipality is filed with the board, which hears and decides a regular petition under statutory standards and has narrow discretion on the expedited ones once a complete petition and the required consents are in (Playbook F). And the county has a stake in the state equipment exemption most people miss: it waives county sales and use tax as well as the state’s, so when equipment is installed in your county without the exemption, part of that tax is yours (Unit 7). One more thing the record says about counties: a Licking County commissioner told the Select Committee that commissioners “often have limited direct siting authority over data centers,” yet “are often among the first public officials residents turn to for information, guidance, and accountability.” Playbook H is written with that in mind.

Where approval is required, the agreement has to be certified to your board at least 45 business days before the vote, and your board answers at least 14 days before it. Joint vocational school districts receive notice but generally don’t vote. A CRA or Enterprise Zone can’t reach the land, so land taxes flow to you regardless; a TIF is different, because it can capture the growth in land value too (Unit 7). What an exemption does to your state funding depends on your district’s position under the funding formula; your treasurer can model it. Playbook J.

Your building department, or the state’s where you have none, and the fire code officials: how the building gets built and inspected. Ohio EPA: air permits for generators, and water discharge permits where a project discharges directly (most send wastewater to the local sewer plant, whose capacity and rules then govern). Federal agencies: wetlands, waterways, endangered species, and historic resources, which matter when raw land is being developed and are usually settled once a site is zoned and prepared.

Your county or regional planning commission: it doesn’t approve the project, but it shapes the comprehensive plan and the code it’s judged against, and it’s who to call when Unit 9 says “decide what you’d want.” Your metropolitan planning organization, where you’re in one, plans the region’s roads and transit, not land use, and may weigh in on traffic and road impacts. JobsOhio and its regional network partners (Team NEO, Lake to River, Regional Growth Partnership, One Columbus, Dayton Development Coalition, REDI Cincinnati, OhioSE): they connect and advise, often receive the first inquiry, and decide nothing on this list.

How a project actually shows up

Not at a council meeting. Usually by phone, months earlier, and not in a fixed order. Every project is different, and what follows describes what usually happens, not what always does. This is also how economic development has long worked, for a factory or a distribution center as much as a data center: companies don’t show their cards while they’re deciding, and the public learns of a project when it needs a public decision. What’s changed is the size of these projects and the attention on them, not the process.

When they do, people who weren’t part of writing the comprehensive plan or the zoning code, which is most people, feel the decision was made without them. That reaction is legitimate and it’s the reason for two things in this Toolkit. Unit 9 is about having the community conversation as planning, before a project, so the plan and the code reflect what residents actually want. Playbook H is about engaging in good faith when a project has landed and residents weren’t part of that earlier conversation, because “you should have come to the planning meetings” is true and useless. Communities that have done both report the smoothest processes.

What the project pays and where it goes

Economic development serves a community’s broader purposes: its well-being, the competitiveness of its businesses, its infrastructure, opportunity for its workforce, and responsible use of its land. When a specific project is on the table, though, elected officials weigh two measures most often: jobs and the tax revenue that pays for public services. Investment is the signal of how big a project is; jobs and taxes are what the community gets. Every economic development project is a trade between what the community provides, in exemptions, infrastructure, and services, and what the project provides back. Residential development often doesn’t cover the fire, EMS, and road costs it creates; a data center’s trade usually runs the other way, with fewer ongoing service demands than housing and a large tax base, though its batteries, fuel, and high-voltage equipment call for fire and emergency planning that small and volunteer departments may not be equipped for. The question is how the revenue is structured.

Fifty permanent jobs at $100,000 is $5 million in payroll, the same as 135 jobs at $37,000; contractors and construction workers are counted separately. For a rural county, 200 permanent jobs at that pay is $20 million a year in payroll, and where the site is in a city or village, or in a JEDD, the municipal income tax that comes with it. A township can’t levy an income tax, and a school district income tax, where a district has one, follows where employees live, not where they work. Data centers are a tax-base and payroll-quality project, not a headcount project. That’s a legitimate thing for a community to want, and a legitimate thing to decide it doesn’t.

It waives the state and county shares alike, at a cost the state put at about $1.6 billion in 2025 (the Department of Taxation’s figure, reported to the Select Committee by the Department of Development) against the $136 million the Department of Taxation had forecast for that year in its November 2024 Tax Expenditure Report. That $1.6 billion is forgone state revenue; whether the county and transit shares are counted with it is not stated. One reason the forecast missed, offered to the Committee by an Allen County engineer who supports data centers: the exempted purchases aren’t a one-time build-out. Servers are replaced every three to five years and AI-class equipment costs an order of magnitude more per rack, so the exemption’s value grows with every refresh, and any local estimate that scores it once will miss the same way.

The Governor paused new exemption requests in June 2026 while the Legislature studies it; three companies, Amazon, Meta, and Google, hold statewide agreements under which new sites don’t need separate approval, so a new project for one of them may carry the exemption anyway, and the first question is which agreement, if any, covers the project in front of you. It’s a state decision. Applications typically carry local support letters, so a request for one may reach your body, and the Department of Development told the Committee it will provide technical assistance to local governments that ask. But a county commissioner is right to notice that the county’s share of the tax on equipment installed locally is part of what’s being waived, and that without the exemption it would be county revenue. Cities, villages, and townships don’t share in it either way.

Two things to hold onto. First, CRAs come in two kinds: those created before 1994, where the exemption is automatic at the terms set when the area was created, often 100 percent, and those created since, where percentage and term are negotiated project by project, and 100 percent for 15 years is the ceiling, not the norm. Enterprise Zones are negotiated the same way. Second, the buildings outlive the exemption. Industrial buildings pay property tax for decades, and after the exemption term ends the full value is taxable, so the deal’s revenue doesn’t stop at year 15. New Albany’s anchor deal is a 15-year, 100 percent exemption on improvements paired with a minimum payment; what happens in year 16 is a question to put to New Albany.

The strongest Ohio version of a PILOT is a minimum service payment that attaches to the land, binds any future owner, and is collected like property tax. New Albany sets its minimum at what the land would have generated as office or manufacturing; that’s how it answers the “not many jobs” objection. A New Community Authority, which can levy a standing charge on a district and is organized through the municipality or, outside one, the county commissioners, is another mechanism New Albany layers in.

Best practice, whichever way you go, is an adopted incentive policy that says in advance what kinds of projects get what kinds of terms, by type, location, jobs, and tax generation, so you’re applying a policy rather than negotiating from zero each time. New Albany told the Select Committee its incentives “are driven by formulas that provide predictable revenue streams by industry,” endorsed by all three of its school districts through compensation agreements; that is the Ohio example of a policy adopted before any deal.

The nine things residents will ask you

Nine questions you’ll hear at the grocery store before you hear them at a meeting. For each: the case supporters make, the case critics make, and what to ask about this project. Both sides draw on testimony to the Ohio General Assembly’s Select Committee on Data Centers, which held five hearings in May and June 2026 (the Reference Guide covers who sat on it and what it heard), and on published research and Ohio practice. The Toolkit doesn’t referee: each column states that side’s case as its own advocates make it, drawn from the record, and OEDA endorses neither.

These nine questions are a framework; several Ohio communities have answered them for their project and posted the answers on a project web page, others have used town halls and handouts, and many of the officials who’ve been through it say they wish they’d started the conversation sooner. The ninth, on generators and air, was added after OEDA read the full hearing record: residents raised it more than anything but water, and neither the earlier questions nor most Ohio zoning codes had a place for it. Guide Part 8 takes up the same nine questions in the same order, with the sources.

Will my electric bill go up?

Bills have already risen, for reasons that include data centers, and that part doesn’t depend on where the data center lands. As Unit 3 explains, the regional capacity price that rose nearly tenfold in 2025 is in every Ohio bill, and it rises with projected demand across 13 states. So the local question isn’t whether bills rise. It’s whether your community gets the tax revenue and jobs from a project whose regional costs you’ll bear either way, and who pays for the local wires.

Will it drain our water?

Some facts. A facility that draws its own groundwater above 100,000 gallons a day must register with ODNR, and ODNR told the Committee it will investigate conflicts between well owners; below that, and for effects on neighbors, state law says little, which is why the Miami Conservancy District, steward of the sole-source aquifer serving more than a million people in southwest Ohio, asked the Committee for early planning on withdrawals and recharge.

What to ask: does the project draw from its own wells or a public system, and from which aquifer? Has anyone modeled drawdown on neighboring wells? Will nearby private wells get baseline testing before construction? Is a well-monitoring or well-remedy commitment in the agreement? And don’t answer a well complaint the way a Lancaster, Ohio resident told the Committee she was answered: “don’t worry, maybe you can tap into city water sometime in the near future.”

And the state doesn’t track how much municipal water goes to data centers, because it’s buried in the system’s total; ODNR’s director told the Select Committee the state has no visibility into it. The water provider’s meter does record it, but the figure usually isn’t public, so residents have no way to check what they’re told. In Marysville, two facilities reportedly take about a tenth of the city’s daily supply.

“Zero water” also describes the cooling design, not what the water system has to build: the utility still has to deliver capacity to the site for fire protection, redundancy, and future phases, and in a sample Ohio water services agreement released through public records requests in 2026, the host community commits to deliver that capacity to the site boundary at its own expense while the developer’s notice of its next phase sits in the non-binding section (Guide Part 4.2).

What about noise?

Are we giving up farmland forever?

This depends on the land. If the parcel is already zoned industrial, the farmland question was answered when it was zoned; the community decided then what that land was for. The question is live when the project needs a rezoning or sits in a township with no zoning.

How many jobs, really?

How much will it pay in taxes, and how much are we giving up?

Residents should ask this and often don’t. Answer it before they have to.

Will it lower my property value?

As of September 2026, OEDA is not aware of any study of this in Ohio. What exists comes mostly from Virginia, measures whole ZIP codes or counties, and says little about the dozen houses that share a fence line with a campus. Keep that in mind on both sides.

Its data covers only operating facilities, so it says nothing about the years between announcement and opening, and that is where the Ohio accounts sit: a realtor asked the Committee “Who is going to want to build or buy a home beside thousands of megawatts worth of industrial infrastructure?”; a Tiffin witness described a buyer reconsidering a move to Monroeville once a data center was proposed; a Hilliard witness said neighbors of the fuel-cell plant there were considering selling; a Waterville Township resident said land options under NDA were splitting lifelong neighbors before any announcement; and Commercial Point homeowners said they learned of the Amazon site next to their new subdivision from a neighbor and Facebook, not the builder, and could not get out of their contracts. And where the documented noise problems are (8.3), the homes affected are the nearest ones, exactly where the studies are thinnest.

How long will it last, and what happens when it’s done?

Residents who watched wind and solar projects arrive with decommissioning bonds will ask this, and Ohio law answers it for wind and solar and not for data centers. Some facts first. The building is a concrete and steel shell built to stand 50 years or more. The servers inside are replaced every three to five years, sometimes stretched to seven or ten; the chillers, generators, and electrical gear every 15 to 25. Operators plan on 30-year lives. So a data center doesn’t wear out the way people picture. It renews itself in pieces, and “end of life” has so far meant a tenant leaving or a building being refit, not a campus being torn down. New Albany’s first data center opened in 2010, and OEDA has found no record of a large Ohio facility closing, so there is no Ohio record to point to.

The buildings proposed now are far larger and more specialized than anything that has been converted to a warehouse. If the demand behind them is overestimated, and less than half of the requests AEP Ohio studied under its tariff became signed agreements (Unit 6), a community could approve a seven-building campus and end up with two buildings and a substation sized for seven. Grid upgrades built for a load that leaves are paid for by everyone else (Unit 3). Servers are electronic waste at a scale no county solid waste plan anticipates. And Ohio requires a decommissioning plan and a performance bond for every large solar and wind project, prepared by an engineer and updated every five years, while requiring nothing of the kind for a data center, so any protection a community gets, it has to write into its code or its agreement itself.

What about the generators and the air?

Residents raised this to the Select Committee more than any question except water, and most Ohio zoning codes have no place for it. Some facts first. Every data center has backup generators, usually diesel, sized to run the whole building if the grid fails; a large campus can have dozens to hundreds. They run during outages and on a testing schedule, usually a short run each month, and they need an Ohio EPA air permit, which for a larger installation carries a public comment period; “emergency” status is not a blanket exemption from air rules. Ohio EPA told the Committee its air division had permitted 4,916 backup generators and six behind-the-meter power stations. Some projects add on-site gas plants or fuel cells that run all the time (Unit 3), which is a different scale of emissions, permitted separately.

What to do before anyone calls

A June 1 witness put the premise of this unit in one sentence: “Anything can be done well or can be done poorly.” Once a proposal arrives, the window can be as short as weeks. Most of what follows is work your economic development professional, your planning commission, your staff, and your counsel may already be doing under the authority you’ve given them. The point of this unit is that you know where your community stands on each item, so you can speak to it with residents and so you can direct the work where it hasn’t been done.

1. Know who your point of contact is. Usually your economic development professional. If a developer, reporter, or resident wouldn’t know who speaks for the community on a project, fix that first.

2. Know what your zoning code says, then improve it. Does it mention data centers? Most Ohio codes don’t. Ask your economic development professional and zoning administrator: by right, conditional, or unaddressed, and at what megawatt threshold the use should become conditional. Unzoned township: Playbook I.

3. Know what you’d need if one came. Not whether you want one. Setbacks, measured to homes and to schools, childcare centers, libraries, and parks. A noise standard, sound modeling before approval, and how you’d measure compliance. Water terms. Screening. Dark-sky lighting. Generator limits. Decommissioning security. Your planning commission and your economic development professional can draft; OEDA is assembling model provisions for the Template Library.

4. Have the community conversation as planning, not reaction. What kinds of development does your comprehensive plan call for, and does it speak to this? A public conversation about that now is planning; the same conversation after a proposal lands is Playbook H.

5. Know your confidentiality policy. Who signs, whose template, how long, how it meets public records law and the state’s new provisions. Your economic development professional and counsel set it; you should understand it. Playbook D.

6. Know your utilities. Who serves each industrial parcel, what type, what spare capacity, what tariff. Your economic development professional usually goes to the utility’s economic development staff for this, and what comes back varies: some utilities are thinly staffed, some treat substation headroom as confidential, and none will discuss another customer’s request. Often the developer has already worked this out with the utility before anyone local hears of the project; don’t assume it, and don’t assume the answer will be shared with you.

7. Know where your school district and career center stand. Your economic development professional should be talking with them before there’s a deal to react to. Playbook J.

8. Know who you’d call for counsel and a fiscal review, and roughly what it costs. Your economic development professional should know. Van Wert brought in specialized counsel early. Ask prospective counsel the standard conflicts question: whether the firm represents data center developers or operators in Ohio, and how it handles that. Many statewide firms do both; what matters is that you know before you hire.

9. Read what others signed, whole. New Albany hosts visiting officials twice a week and shares its documents. Sidney, Marysville, and Piqua agreements are public records; read them as examples of structures, not as models to copy, because each was negotiated for its project and each has critics at home. Two cautions. New Albany’s CRA agreement works because of the minimum payment clause inside it and the New Community Authority beside it; borrow the structure, not just the form. And a tour shows you what the host chooses to show; set your own itinerary, bring a skeptic and a reporter, and talk to a neighbor.

10. Know your fire department’s capacity, and put the chief in early. A data center brings batteries, diesel or gas, and high-voltage equipment at a scale a volunteer department may never have entered. Norwich Township told the Select Committee that “no firefighter should be expected to enter a facility of this scale without a complete understanding of the hazards they may encounter,” and the Ohio Mayors Alliance asked the state for fire-safety and emergency-response guidance. Until it exists, the pre-incident plan, the hazard and shutoff information, the access, and the training before opening come from the agreement (Playbook E), and the chief should be in the room before there is one.

11. Know your own brownfields. Which former industrial or generation sites in your area already have a substation, water, and rail, and who owns them. Coshocton’s two campuses sit on a retired power plant and a paper mill; Aligned’s Perkins Township site is a former bearing plant. Developers told the Committee they look first for sites a community has already prepared (Aligned said it avoids sites that need “complex rezoning”; QTS said it seeks “communities that are eager to work with us”), which cuts both ways: preparation is where a community sets its terms, and it is also where the discretionary review has already been spent.

A developer just contacted us

The sequence from here varies more than any diagram suggests. The utility conversation may have happened before anyone local knew. A confidentiality agreement is likely but not universal. Land may already be under option. The one constant is that nothing has to come before a public body until the developer needs something only a public body can grant: a rezoning, a tax exemption, a water or sewer connection, a road, an annexation. That could be weeks away or a year. Records a public office holds may be public before then, which is one reason the confidentiality policy in Playbook D matters.

What’s yours is preparation and judgment, not logistics. Do you have an adopted plan that says what kind of development the community wants, and does it speak to this? Does your zoning code address data centers, and if not, have you decided whether it should? Have you thought about what you’d need from a project like this if one came? Unit 9 covers those questions, and the plain answer for most Ohio communities is that they haven’t been asked yet. This inquiry is the reason to start.

• What kind of project this appears to be, and the electric demand at opening and full buildout, if the developer has shared it.
• Whether the project has a signed electric service agreement, is in a study queue, or hasn’t reached the utility yet.
• Whether it includes on-site power generation.
• What public action the developer will eventually need from your body, and the earliest it could reach your agenda.
• What confidentiality has been agreed to, by whom, and what can be said publicly and to the school district.
• Whether your EDO thinks the community needs outside counsel or a consultant for this one, and what that costs.
• Who the end user is, and if the developer won’t say, whether it will disclose the beneficial owner and controlling parent before any abatement vote. An Allen County cloud engineer who supports data centers told the Select Committee about a roughly $500 million project in his county negotiated for 15 months under an NDA with a Delaware shell company, with engineering details redacted from a public permit as proprietary; the company behind it was later identified in press reports. His point was that every other safeguard depends on knowing who the customer is.
• What the developer’s other host communities say about it. Coshocton’s mayor gave the Committee a reference-check list without meaning to: the operators there “maintained open communication with local officials, supported community events, contributed to local schools and recreational facilities, assisted with infrastructure-related funding opportunities, and consistently operated with transparency.” Ask the last town.

We’re being asked to rezone or approve a conditional use

• What use the application actually requests, in the words of your code, and whether a data center is a defined use there. If it isn’t, what exactly is being approved.
• Which body decides this application under your code, and whether it reaches you at all.
• The full-buildout site plan and megawatts, and whether later phases would need to come back.
• Whether any on-site generation is proposed and whether it moves part of the review to the Ohio Power Siting Board.
• What conditions comparable Ohio communities attached, and which your code allows.
• Whether acoustic, utility, or land-use expertise is needed before the hearing, and whether someone independent of the applicant will review the applicant’s noise, lighting, and water studies, and who pays for that review. A Wilmington resident told the Committee the city hired no acoustical expert, so she did, and that the port authority’s lighting figure for the project was corrected only after she caught a discrepancy in the applicant’s site plan.
• What else is proposed or operating within a few miles, and the combined water, load, and generator count. A Commercial Point resident counted four hyperscale proposals within 14 miles in June 2026; no agency reviews them together.
• Whether a later addition of on-site generation or major equipment comes back to you, or is approved administratively. A Hilliard resident who accepted the original project objected only when fuel cells and generators were added later.
• Whether the approval lapses if construction doesn’t start by a date, since some land is optioned as a placeholder with no project behind it.
• Your statutory notice periods and hearing dates, and whether the measure is being proposed as an emergency (Unit 5).

We’re being asked for a property tax exemption

The terms depend on the instrument. A CRA created before 1994 exempts at the percentage and term fixed when the area was created, often 100 percent, more or less automatically. A CRA created since 1994, and any Enterprise Zone, is negotiated project by project, up to 100 percent and up to 15 years, and full exemption for the full term is the ceiling, not the norm. Most people say abatement; the words are used interchangeably here.

One rule of the road: a CRA agreement in a post-1994 area has to be signed before construction starts (R.C. 3735.671), and the Department of Development’s Enterprise Zone guidance says the same of an EZ agreement; an agreement signed after the fact can’t reach what’s already built, so the developer’s schedule and your legislative calendar have to be reconciled early.

The structure is the deal. Exempt 75 percent with no payment, and every taxing entity (your government, the county, the schools, the library, the fire and other levies) receives 25 percent of what it would have. Exempt 100 percent and negotiate a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT), and that payment usually goes to the schools while the community decides where anything else goes. Layer in a minimum service payment that runs with the land, a TIF that redirects the new tax to infrastructure, or a New Community Authority charge, and the shape changes again. New Albany’s minimum payment, pegged to what the land would yield as office or manufacturing, is one approach among several. There’s no single right structure, and communities with an adopted incentive policy, one that says in advance what kinds of projects get what kinds of terms by type, location, jobs, and tax generation, negotiate from that rather than from zero.

• The fiscal impact analysis: what the project generates for your jurisdiction, the county, and the school district under the structures being considered, over the life of the agreement and after it, and with no exemption at all. Your EDO should be preparing this or arranging for it, and should tell you which, and what it will cost.
• The proposed structure and why: percentage, term, PILOT or not, minimum payment or not, TIF or not, and what each taxing entity receives under it.
• Whether the community has an incentive policy this fits, and if not, whether it should.
• Whether any payments bind the land or only the current company.
• Whether the investment and job figures in the agreement are commitments with remedies or good-faith estimates that don’t affect the exemption.
• What reporting and remedies attach, including clawback language if commitments aren’t met, and who verifies.
• Whether any public money is at risk if the project builds slower or smaller than announced, for example TIF-backed borrowing or infrastructure the community fronts. If none is, a project that doesn’t happen costs you nothing.
• Where the school district and the career center stand.

Sidney’s is also the deal an organizer described to the Select Committee from the other side: land annexed and rezoned “through emergency measures,” trustees, commissioners, and council members who all said they didn’t know what was planned, and six months of requests for a pause before a unanimous council vote. The deal is public record, the organizer’s account is in the hearing record, and the ballot petitions followed. OEDA is gathering what other Ohio communities have done; this list will grow.

Districts must approve above the statutory thresholds and should be consulted below them; joint vocational districts receive notice. The buildings pay full tax after the exemption ends, for decades. The Tax Incentive Review Council reviews the agreement every year and your body must vote on its recommendation; that lever belongs to trustees and commissioners, not only school boards, and the Ohio Township Association told the Committee that “once construction is complete, the permanent local benefit may be much smaller than what was initially discussed.”

And one question worth putting to any developer: Microsoft told the Select Committee in June 2026 that “Microsoft will not seek property tax abatements from local communities,” naming its Licking County campuses. Whether the pledge travels to a greenfield township is a fair question; so is asking any developer why this project needs one.

We’re being asked to sign a confidentiality agreement

What’s new is that residents object, and the objection isn’t really to the agreement. It’s that people who weren’t part of writing the comprehensive plan or the zoning code feel a decision was made without them. Confidentiality agreements were among the most common grievances in the Select Committee’s public testimony, and as OEDA reads that testimony, this is much of the reason. Whether to sign depends on the project, applicable law, and the community’s disclosure policy. What reduces the grievance is having the community conversation about what’s wanted before a project arrives (Unit 9), a clear policy on who signs and what gets disclosed when, and good-faith engagement when the project becomes public (Playbook H).

Ohio law now also sets the floor: House Bill 479, effective September 23, 2026, narrows what public bodies must keep confidential to individualized compensation and payroll information, after an earlier 2026 provision had swept in nearly everything.

Elected officials generally shouldn’t sign individually; New Albany’s don’t, and its practice (city staff sign the city’s own template, which tells the company that public records law will eventually require disclosure) exists because its economic development function sits inside city government. Your EDO handles the negotiation. Your counsel advises on what the agreement can and can’t do under public records law, which is more complicated than any summary here; OEDA may be able to refer you to practitioners and attorneys who work this daily.

What’s yours is the policy: deciding in advance who in your community signs these, on whose template, and what you expect to be told even when a company’s name can’t be.

• Who is being asked to sign, and whether that’s the right party under your structure.
• What the agreement covers and for how long, and what triggers disclosure.
• What you can be told, and when. Most agreements allow a public body to know that a large project is under discussion without the company’s name.
• How the agreement interacts with public records law and the state’s confidentiality provisions after September 23.
• Whether the district and the county can be brought in under the agreement, and when.
• What the agreement requires when a public records request arrives: how fast you must notify the company, how long it has to object or go to court, who decides what is released, who pays, and who is representing the public’s interest in disclosure.
• Whether the community has its own template, and if not, whether to adopt one.
• Whether the fire chief and the county emergency management director can receive facility hazard information whatever else stays confidential. Norwich Township told the Committee the applicant for the fuel-cell plant near it declined to provide plans the township needed for emergency preparedness: “Public safety cannot become a casualty of confidentiality.”
• Which service providers are bound. An Adams County witness told the Committee the county’s water department had signed an NDA and its soil and water district was afraid to speak, which left nobody able to answer a capacity question in public. Ask what each bound party can still say.
• Whether the developer will disclose the beneficial owner before any public commitment, whatever the agreement keeps confidential in the meantime (Playbook A).

We’re negotiating a development or community benefits agreement

• The community’s list, by category. Money: payments, school share, and infrastructure cost responsibility (this overlaps with Playbook C by design; the tax structure and the agreement are one deal). Operations: water caps and metering, who pays for offsite water capacity and storage, binding expansion notice, noise standards, generator hours, emissions and air-quality monitoring for generators and any on-site plant beyond what the Ohio EPA permit requires, local hire, decommissioning with security. Construction: haul routes, hours and any variances, road condition surveys before and after, weight limits, construction lighting, contractor conduct, a complaint line, and who pays for road repair; Johnstown’s mayor told the Committee “the negotiation has to happen before the shovel goes in the ground,” and a builders’ association conceded that contractor incidents “dominate local Facebook groups and fuel opposition.” Public safety: a pre-incident plan written with your fire department, hazard and shutoff information, site access and training before opening, and cost reimbursement. Community: contributions the developer commits to as part of the agreement, scholarships, a community fund, whatever the community has asked for and the developer has agreed to, sometimes as a condition of the exemption. Enforcement: public reporting, a complaint process, cure periods, remedies, a letter of credit or bond, obligations binding future owners, and completion assurance if the developer walks away mid-build, which is a different guarantee from decommissioning.
• Which of those attach to the land and survive a sale.
• What the remedy is for each missed commitment and who enforces it.
• What comparable agreements in Ohio and elsewhere contain, and where this one is weaker.
• Whether specialized counsel is recommended for this agreement.
• Whether the developer will put in the binding section what two operators said on the record: Meta told the Committee that when it needs new water or road infrastructure “we pay for it to be built,” and Microsoft that it funds required system improvements “so the community does not shoulder the cost.”

Annexation is on the table

• Which Chapter 709 procedure is being used, and what notice, objection, and agreement rights the township has under it.
• Whether a CEDA, a JEDD, or a township-municipality development agreement is available, and what revenue and service terms each could preserve. A fiscal impact analysis of the township’s position under annexation versus each agreement belongs here.
• What the municipality’s code permits on the parcel after annexation, whether it addresses data centers, and what rezoning or conditional use process the project would go through there once it’s in.
• If you’re the city: whether you’re prepared to extend service, who pays, whether your code is ready for the use you’re about to inherit, and what the annexation does to your own fiscal picture, service costs against the revenue, not just the township’s. Also how you will hear the neighbors across the line, who don’t vote for you and can’t refer your rezoning; a Galena resident told the Committee that Sunbury’s annexations had left the city “nearly 50% light industrial” with no say for the people next door.
• If you’re the township: whether the petition is being proposed as an emergency measure, and what that does to your residents’ referendum rights (Unit 5).

We’re considering a moratorium

Both are right about something. The community that passes a moratorium and does the work ends up where New Albany started. The community that passes one and does nothing ends up with the same code, a headline the manufacturer it wanted also read, and possibly a lawsuit.

The record is filling in. As of September 18, 2026, the Ohio Capital Journal counted more than 125 active local data center moratoria in Ohio; OEDA is gathering what each community did during its pause and how it turned out, which is the most useful thing this playbook could hold. A few entries already: Tiffin adopted a 12-month moratorium in April 2026 and passed it as an emergency; Grove City adopted one in June after a proposal was withdrawn; Commercial Point adopted 18 months in May and was sued by the developer in the Ohio Supreme Court; the Ohio Township Association asked the Committee for statutory moratorium authority for townships, especially unzoned ones, and no bill has followed. And one township said no without a moratorium: New Russia Township, in Lorain County, denied a 622-acre rezoning around the county’s proposed megasite in February 2026, and the trustees upheld the denial unanimously in March.

Where residents can put questions on the ballot themselves, they have: as of mid-September 2026, 18 Ohio communities had a data center measure on the November ballot, among them nine local prohibitions on facilities above 25 MW, a full ban and a recall in Piqua, a 7.5 MW charter amendment in Urbana, referendums in Wilmington and Ashville, and a voter-approval requirement for heavy industry in Grove City (the State page). A moratorium adopted by the body and a prohibition adopted by the voters are different things with different legal footing; counsel should walk you through both. The count is the Ohio Capital Journal’s, published September 14, 2026; boards of elections hold the current list.

• Whether you have the authority, for how long, whether it applies to anything already filed, and what the legal exposure is.
• The work plan: what specifically will be adopted during the pause, who drafts it, and on what schedule. Have counsel assess the duration and its legal risk against the work plan rather than borrowing a number from another community.
• What other employers and prospects will hear, and how the community will explain it.
• What happens the day after it expires.

Residents are organizing

• What’s known, what isn’t, and what can’t be said yet and why, so the community can say so.
• The nine resident questions from Unit 8, answered for this project with sources, and the two residents ask first that aren’t on the list: who is the customer, and why here and not the next town over. Say plainly when the customer’s name is confidential and when it will be disclosed; give the honest siting answer, which is usually power, fiber, land, and who said yes.
• The engagement format that fits your community: a project web page (Marysville, New Albany, Van Wert), a “science fair” open house with experts at tables, a town hall with handouts, a site visit (Van Wert took more than 50 people by bus to New Albany; one village brought a decibel meter; set your own itinerary and invite the skeptics and the press), one-on-one meetings, or a neutral convener.
• A plain statement of which decisions are local and where residents should direct concerns about the ones that aren’t, and whether the serving utility will send someone to the meeting or answer written questions on the record. Residents will put the utility’s questions (load forecasts, tariffs, who pays for upgrades, what happens in a grid emergency) to the developer and to you if nobody else is there to answer them. The same goes for Ohio EPA: about 200 Lima residents came to an agency meeting and, a resident told the Committee, heard “we don’t know” to the generator emissions question, so agree the questions in advance or get the agency’s answers in writing. And give residents a real address for rate questions: the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel is the state agency that represents residential utility customers at PUCO.

Van Wert, facing organized opposition, built a website answering 135 council-generated questions, made a video featuring local residents, held one-on-one meetings, and ran a science fair at Vantage Career Center. Practitioners who did substantial community engagement before any project arrived report the smoothest processes; OEDA is collecting those accounts.

Organized residents move fast: several of the towns whose residents testified on June 1 had a data center measure on the November ballot within four months. And not every resident in the room wants a ban; a Medina resident who asked the Committee to hold off on approvals also listed what would satisfy her (efficiency and water standards tied to any tax benefit, public reporting, inspections, large loads paying for grid upgrades), which is most of Playbook E.

When your role really is narrow, explain the procedure and name what you do control; a Fairfield County resident told the Committee that county staff said they had no say over what was built and a village administrator felt the project would proceed regardless, and what residents heard was abdication. Give notice beyond the statutory minimum to the people across the township line and to residents who work days, with a written and an evening way to participate; a Millersport-area resident learned of three public meetings after they had happened.

“We signed an NDA” is not a reason to say nothing. A community informational meeting is not a substitute for the public hearing your code or the statute requires; hold both, and say which is which. Letting the developer’s community meeting be the only one leaves the developer as the only source of information. Announcing a decision before the process has run confirms the suspicion that the process didn’t matter. And transparency about data centers raises the question of transparency about everything else; a community should decide what its standard is.

We’re a township without zoning

• Which incentives the developer will need and which require the township’s consent.
• Whether the county will require a development agreement and whether the township can be a party.
• What annexation into the nearest city would do to the township, and whether a CEDA or development agreement gets ahead of it.
• What the utility and Ohio EPA will require, and how the township can comment. Ohio EPA’s director walked the Committee through it: application, review, a draft permit, public notice (posted online and sometimes in a newspaper), a comment period, a hearing if one is requested, then the final permit. The comment window opens at the draft, notice may be online only, and a township can request the hearing, so assign someone to watch Ohio EPA’s notices and the OPSB docket for your township.
• What it would take to put zoning or limited home rule before your voters, and what it costs. The Ohio Township Association told the Committee a comprehensive plan alone runs $25,000 to $100,000, and the zoning question goes on the ballot.
• Where the money for expertise comes from. Shalersville’s trustees told the Committee they would petition their county commissioners for it; the county is a legitimate place to ask.

We’re the school district

What’s on the table for you is your share of new revenue: a CRA or Enterprise Zone can’t exempt land, so land taxes keep flowing to you regardless (a TIF can redirect the growth in land value, which is why Piqua’s district negotiated its share of it); school boards get notice of most exemptions at least 14 days before the vote (R.C. 5709.83) and hold an approval right when an exemption goes above 75 percent (for a post-1994 CRA, unless the taxes still paid plus any payments to the district reach 25 percent of what would have been owed; for an Enterprise Zone, unless the average over the term stays at or below 60 percent; R.C. 3735.671 and 5709.62 to 5709.63), in which case the agreement is certified to the board at least 45 business days ahead and the board answers at least 14 days before the vote; joint vocational districts receive notice but generally don’t vote; and where a city or village grants the exemption and new payroll at the project, construction included, reaches the statutory threshold (a base of $1 million a year for most exemptions, $2 million for a CRA, both indexed), the municipality must negotiate a compensation agreement with you and, failing one within six months, pay you half the municipal income tax on that payroll less a capped infrastructure allowance (R.C. 5709.82(C) and (D); the dollar thresholds are indexed, so ask counsel for the current figures).

Whether an exemption changes your state funding depends on your district’s position under the funding formula.

• Projected valuation by year, split between land (yours regardless) and improvements (the negotiation).
• Your revenue under each structure on the table, during and after the exemption, and what it does to state aid under the formula for your district specifically.
• Which approval or waiver rights you hold for this program at this exemption percentage and term.
• Whether the payment runs with the land and what happens if the project shrinks or sells.
• Who reports to you annually and how. The county’s Tax Incentive Review Council reviews every agreement each year and can recommend that it continue, be modified, or be canceled; the granting body must vote on that recommendation within 60 days (R.C. 5709.85). That’s your lever after signing, so know who sits on the council.

A Lima contractor told the Select Committee that payments to the local district from a data center under construction there are expected to add nearly $250,000 a year to its general fund, and the Ohio Business Roundtable told it that Johnstown-Monroe received $2.5 million from data center land, about 9 percent of its operating budget, and Licking Heights $2.67 million; those are a business group’s figures, so confirm them with the district.

Each of these districts negotiated a share of revenue from improvements that didn’t exist before. Whether the share was the right one is a question each district answered against its own alternatives, and yours should be too.

What the State Is Doing Right Now

Dated page, refreshed with each edition from OEDA’s weekly data center briefing. As of September 30, 2026.

Still in committee: HB 706 (long-term service agreements, minimum billing demand, exit fees, and no cost-shifting to other ratepayers), HB 695 (a ban on local officials signing economic development NDAs), HB 126 (a nuisance-liability shield for lawful industries, in the Senate), and HB 116 (the Blockchain Basics Act, in the Senate). SB 294, which would redefine the state’s energy policy toward sources with a 50 percent capacity factor and direct OPSB to weigh it, passed the Senate in June and awaits the House.

The 2025 budget (HB 96) raised the signatures for a municipal referendum from 10 to 35 percent of the votes cast for governor and for a township zoning referendum from 15 to 35, effective September 30, 2025; HB 985, introduced in August 2026, would lower the zoning threshold to 20. Nothing has given townships statutory moratorium authority, which the Ohio Township Association asked the Committee for.

Proposals in the record run from state preemption of local zoning, which NetChoice called a playbook Ohio “can run again,” to local opt-in, under which Timberlake’s mayor would require voter approval for any large facility near homes; OEDA reports both and recommends neither. In other states, 2026 bills in Kentucky and Oklahoma to require decommissioning plans and financial assurance for large data centers did not pass.

Since that list was published: the Ohio Supreme Court kept a Wilmington citizens’ initiative off the ballot on September 18 while the referendums there proceed; it held on August 7 that Ashville’s emergency resolution did not block the referendum there; and Grove City’s measure is a charter amendment requiring voter approval of projects over 50 acres, 20 MW, or 500,000 gallons a day. The list is the Ohio Capital Journal’s (September 14, 2026); county boards of elections hold the current one, and this page will be updated after November 3.

Terms used in this Toolkit

The Reference Guide’s Glossary defines every term in both documents. These are the ones this Toolkit uses most, in one line each.

The Reference Guide

The Ohio Data Center Reference Guide is the working manual for the economic development professional who facilitates this process, and it carries a practitioner playbook matching each letter above. Its nine parts are numbered to the nine units: the part number is the unit number.

Part 1. What a Data Center Is (Unit 1). Part 2. Why Ohio, and Why Now (Unit 2). Part 3. Electricity (Unit 3). Part 4. Cooling and Water (Unit 4). Part 5. Who Decides (Unit 5, Playbooks F and I). Part 6. How a Project Unfolds (Unit 6, Playbooks A and B). Part 7. Where the Money Goes (Unit 7, Playbooks C, E, and J). Part 8. The Evidence on the Nine Resident Questions (Unit 8, question by question: 8.1 in the Guide answers 8.1 here). Part 9. What You Can Do (Unit 9, Playbooks D, G, and H).

This toolkit is educational. It does not recommend for or against any project and is not legal, tax, engineering, or utility advice. Every community should consult its own counsel, its economic development professional, and its advisors.