The economic development professional who facilitates the process: take the inquiry, hold the confidential conversation, brief the mayor or the trustees, coordinate the utility and the school district, structure the deal, and sit across from the developer’s counsel. Whether you work for a county, a city, a private nonprofit development corporation, a port authority, or a chamber, this is your manual. Elected officials and residents start with the Ohio Data Center Toolkit, which is written for them; every Toolkit unit and playbook points here for the evidence, the full question lists, the statutes, and the detail of what other Ohio communities did. The two are numbered to match, part for unit, so you and your elected officials are working from the same page.

Nine parts, numbered to the nine Toolkit units. The part number is the unit number.

You, the practitioner. Also the counsel, treasurer, zoning administrator, or school treasurer working with you. Elected officials and residents will read the Toolkit; when they ask you a question the Toolkit raised, the answer is here at the matching number.

JobsOhio compiled the underlying reference guide at the request of the Ohio General Assembly’s Select Committee on Data Centers, drawing on dozens of sources and the Committee’s 2026 hearing record. OEDA created the companion Toolkit, adapted and revised this Reference Guide, and maintains both. The Ohio Municipal League, the statewide association of Ohio’s cities and villages and OEDA’s partner on this resource, reviewed and commented on the drafts. Staff of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio and county-level practitioners reviewed drafts of the companion Toolkit and provided comments; review does not constitute endorsement of the Toolkit or of any position on data center development. Staff of other statewide associations of Ohio’s local officials are reviewing it as well, and each association’s role will be acknowledged here as it confirms it. 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 this guide. 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 read the complete written record of the Select Committee’s five hearings, 196 documents from state agencies, PJM, utilities, operators, local governments, residents, and advocacy groups on every side, and incorporated it throughout; every claim drawn from it carries the witness’s name in brackets and is never stated as bare fact.

OEDA takes no position on whether any community should host a data center. OEDA does take the position that communities decide better when a local economic development professional facilitates the process and when the people who have to decide get the best information available at the time the decision is theirs to make. Where the evidence is contested, you’ll see what supporters say, what critics say, the kind of evidence behind each claim, and what to ask about the specific project in front of you. You won’t see a recommendation.

Four rules, adopted from the original guide. Name the source of every substantive claim. Label the kind of evidence. Keep disputes open when credible sources disagree. Name the actual decision-maker rather than “the state” or “the community.” Ohioans have fair questions about electricity, water, and land. You should be able to see the source, understand its limits, and ask for the project-specific information a statewide average can’t supply. [French, Willis, SciLine]

Legal, tax, engineering, or utility advice. An impact study. A reason to approve or reject a project. Proof that one community’s approach will work in yours.

Many figures here have a shelf life of months: the state exemption’s status, PJM’s capacity price, AEP Ohio’s queue, facility counts, ballot measures. Each dated section carries an “as of” line. OEDA refreshes this guide with each edition and flags changes in its weekly data center intelligence briefing; the cover date is the last review. This is a first edition and will be revised and expanded; corrections and better sources are welcome from Mike Brice, OEDA’s Marketing & Engagement Manager, at mbrice@ohioeda.com. Guide last reviewed: September 30, 2026.

A large facility or campus built for a major cloud or technology company, often as the sole user. What a community sees: multiple buildings, very large electric demand, dedicated utility infrastructure, a construction period measured in years. Sources define the category by power, server count, or square footage, so thresholds vary. The company is a “hyperscaler.”

One operator leases space, power, cooling, and network access to several customers. What a community sees: one large building or campus whose tenants, and therefore whose electric load, may change over time.

A company runs a facility for its own computing. What a community sees: a smaller building, often within a corporate campus. This category is shrinking as companies move work to cloud providers.

A smaller facility placed near users or devices to reduce delay. What a community sees: a modest building near a population center or network hub.

Facilities built for bitcoin mining or other interruptible workloads, several of which now also host AI computing. What a community sees: a lower-cost building or containers, often air- or immersion-cooled, with few permanent jobs and a load that can drop within minutes when the grid is stressed, which operators present as a grid benefit. Ohio examples in the record: MARA in Hannibal, Hopedale, and Findlay, which reported curtailing about 770 MW across three grids during Winter Storm Fern, 120 MW of it in Ohio; Bitdeer’s Shalersville proposal; Standard Power’s campus on a former paper mill site in Coshocton. The Ohio Blockchain Council testified for the sector on June 11. Ask whether the load is firm or flexible and whether curtailment is a written commitment. [Hazel, Kotkowski, Mills, Dunn]

Data centers range from a server room to campuses of hundreds of acres. Virginia’s auditors report that a small data center may need 5 to 20 megawatts and a large one 100 megawatts or more, and estimate that a Virginia town of 10,000 people uses about 10 megawatts. Campuses can combine several buildings and exceed one gigawatt (1,000 megawatts). [JLARC] Square footage doesn’t measure impact: two buildings of similar size can carry different server densities, cooling systems, backup designs, and expansion plans. Ask for build-out potential and projected electric demand by phase. A project that starts at 10 megawatts and can grow to 100 has very different effects.

Servers need continuous, reliable power, and the facility also uses electricity for cooling, pumps, lighting, and security. The Electric Power Research Institute reports hyperscale facilities scaling from 100 to 1,000 megawatts, roughly the load of 80,000 to 800,000 homes. [EPRI] For scale against industry a community may already host: a steel mill’s electric arc furnace can draw around 100 megawatts at peak, and Intel’s New Albany semiconductor plant is arranged for roughly 500 megawatts under its agreement with AEP Ohio. A data center differs from most industrial users in that it runs near full load around the clock rather than in shifts or cycles. The industrial comparisons are drawn from public reporting, not engineering data for any specific plant.

The parcel, buildings, equipment yards, utility facilities, access, setbacks, and room for later phases.

Power needs at opening, at peak, and at full buildout, plus the facilities and contracts required to serve them: grid connection, service voltage, capacity, ramp by phase, meter boundary, on-site generation or storage, import and export rights, islanding, curtailment, and associated generation or transmission. Labels like “front-of-meter,” “behind-the-meter,” “co-located,” and “off-grid” mean different things under different statutes, tariffs, and PJM or FERC proceedings. Let the applicable source or reviewer assign the label.

The equipment and process that removes heat from servers. See 4.1.

Supply, peak capacity, treatment, discharge, and wastewater service the design requires.

Fiber routes, carriers, and redundancy.

Batteries, generators, fuel cells, storage, redundant feeds, or other systems used during an interruption. On-site combustion equipment may require an Ohio EPA air permit and may fall under federal stationary-engine standards. “Emergency” designation is not a blanket exemption.

Roads, truck routes, construction access, emergency access, and related improvements.

Construction trades, contractors, technicians, security, and operators. Count construction and permanent staffing separately.

No single source counts Ohio data centers completely, and the credible counts differ because their definitions do. The Pew Research Center, working from Data Center Map’s listings as of February 2026, counts 166 operating data centers in Ohio and 57 planned, 223 in all, which places Ohio fourth by operating count and sixth by total. The Ohio Chamber of Commerce puts the figure at more than 200, concentrated in Central Ohio, and ranks Ohio fifth. The University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center, using S&P Global facility data that exclude enterprise data centers housed inside other buildings, counts 101 operating facilities and 77 planned or under construction, the largest planned pipeline among the eight Great Lakes states. When anyone cites a statewide total, ask which definition it uses. [Pew; OCC; UVA]

As of summer 2026, Licking County has 65 facilities and Franklin County 45, together exceeding every county in the region except Cook County, Illinois. Cuyahoga County has 17. The Columbus metro is the fastest-growing hub in the Great Lakes, with 51 operating facilities and 71 planned. New Albany alone hosts about 40 completed facilities across 15 operators with 28 more announced or under construction. [UVA, Chrysler]

Ohio holds more than 70 percent of the region’s operating hyperscale data centers (Illinois has 17 percent) and is projected to receive 47 percent of the region’s future hyperscale development. Ohio is receiving a concentration of the largest, most power-intensive class, which is why local questions about electric demand, substation capacity, and cooling design carry more weight here than national averages suggest. [UVA]

Square footage in Ohio’s pipeline equals 90 percent of what’s operating. Roughly half of Ohio’s eventual footprint hasn’t been built. [UVA]

About 9 percent of Ohio’s operating data centers are owned by Ohio-headquartered companies, compared with 64 percent in Michigan. Regionally, no hyperscale facility has in-state ownership. Construction spending and operating purchases stay local to a degree; corporate profit doesn’t. Part 7 covers agreement terms that address local capture. [UVA]

Data centers are forecast to use about 18 terawatt-hours in Ohio by 2030, nearly 11 percent of statewide consumption. That figure is a forecast. Part 3.2 covers load growth, cost allocation, and the ratepayer dispute.

In a PUCO filing, AEP Ohio reported 12,219 megawatts under electric service agreements signed before its data center tariff; 13,022.7 megawatts submitted for formal study under the tariff; and 5,642 megawatts from that study queue under signed agreements for service by 2030. AEP described an earlier 30,000 megawatt queue as speculative and said the tariff removed uncommitted requests. The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association disputed that reading, arguing the tariff has been used to justify load forecast increases of about 40 percent per data center, that AEP’s forecasts do not net out the more than 5 GW of behind-the-meter generation being sited under HB 15, and that utilities “are financially incentivized to forecast high power needs”; its reading of PJM’s Independent Market Monitor is that forecasts of unbuilt data centers raised regional capacity costs by more than $21 billion over three years while built data centers account for “a couple of billion.” Ohio University’s researchers reported both AEP’s claim and OMA’s rebuttal, and noted that historically more than a third of pending interconnection requests at major utilities never materialize. Vistra, a generator, put the point neutrally: “We must ensure that the new energy demand materializes as expected so that the cost of this new transmission is not borne by other customers.” The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel offered a fuller test of whether a project is real than a signed service agreement alone: executed service agreements, site acquisition, construction milestones, equipment procurement, and verified energization schedules. [Seryak, Voinovich, Padilla, Willis] The 5,642 figure is contracted future load, not current operating demand. [Nourse, Seryak, EPRI]

House Bill 15 (136th General Assembly), signed May 15, 2025 and effective August 14, 2025, created the “mercantile customer self-power system,” under which a large customer, a group of them, or a third party may own generation or storage located on property the customer owns or controls, or on adjacent property, delivered without utility wires and outside the certified-territory statute; it did not authorize remote generation delivered over the grid. PUCO’s chair told the Committee the law added flexibility where the generating source “does not share a physical location or is not directly adjacent to the end user,” that OPSB had authorized or received applications for more than 2,000 MW of behind-the-meter dispatchable generation in 2025, and that pre-application notices covered another 2,755 MW; the Ashville (up to 800 MW), Millersport (up to 1,300 MW plus about 1,000 MW of storage), and third New Albany (about 430 MW) plants were before OPSB as of September 2026 (5.4). Vantage called the framework constructive; a resident said it lets projects bypass local zoning review. Read the statute with counsel before assuming where a plant may sit. [French, Chandler, Schwab, Reiss; Bricker Graydon and Dickinson Wright summaries of the enrolled bill; OPSB case pages 26-196, 26-0160, 26-361]

Asim Haque, PJM’s Executive Vice President of Governmental and Member Services, told the Select Committee:

Electricity moves through generation, transmission, and distribution. A large data center can require upgrades in all three, on different schedules: a data center in about two years, major transmission in far longer. [NLC/AAAS, UVA]

Every utility or supplier serving customers in PJM must buy “capacity,” a standby commitment from power plants to be available at peak, to cover its share of projected regional demand three years out. PJM sets the price in an annual auction. When projected demand grows faster than new plants are built, the price rises. The auction for June 2025 through May 2026 cleared at $269.92 per megawatt-day, up from $28.92 the year before; the next two auctions cleared at a federally approved cap near $330. Utilities pass the cost through in the generation portion of bills. Ohio residential customers saw an estimated 10 to 15 percent increase beginning June 2025 from the capacity price alone. PJM attributed the jump to generator retirements, higher projected demand, and its own market design changes; data centers are the largest driver of the projected demand. The capacity price is regional, so a data center in one county affects bills in all of them, and a county without one is not insulated. [Haque, CRS, PJM]

AEP Ohio reported data center load-study requests for 36 sites totaling 13,022.7 megawatts; after its tariff process, 5,642 megawatts had signed agreements for service by 2030, alongside 12,219 megawatts signed before the tariff. [Nourse] AEP Ohio’s tariff requires large customers to pay for a minimum share of requested capacity for years, whether used or not. In May 2026 PUCO directed FirstEnergy’s Ohio utilities to file a separate data center tariff as well; its terms had not been reviewed for this guide. [RTO Insider, May 16, 2026] AES Ohio filed an unopposed settlement in its rate case on July 21, 2026 that includes a data center tariff; a PUCO order was expected by year end. [AES Ohio, July 21, 2026; EEI tracker, September 11, 2026] The effect on rates is disputed; studies of residential bill impact differ. [JLARC]

A true estimate of the infrastructure needed and who carries the cost if it isn’t used. Whether on-site generation is proposed, and who owns and regulates it (see 5.7 and 9.7 on the tax consequences of ownership).

Water demand varies with cooling design, climate, operations, and electricity source. Virginia’s auditors estimated data centers used 2.1 billion gallons in 2023, under 0.5 percent of statewide withdrawals. A typical building used about 6.7 million gallons for the year; the highest-use building used 243 million. More than a third of industry supply was reclaimed water. [JLARC]

Annual averages hide the peak demand that drives infrastructure expansion. A municipal connection can make a facility’s use invisible because it’s reported inside the public system’s total. ODNR can observe increased public-system withdrawals in cities with data centers but cannot isolate each facility’s share. [Mertz] In Marysville, two operating facilities reportedly account for about 10 percent of the city’s daily water supply.

Neither the Toolkit nor this guide addressed groundwater before this edition, and it was the water question rural residents raised most. A facility that withdraws more than 100,000 gallons a day from its own source must register with ODNR and may need a consumptive-use permit; ODNR told the Committee it has received no high-capacity permit applications from data centers or their power plants, because OPSB-regulated generation is exempt from the permit (R.C. 1521.23(D)) and public water systems predating 1988 are too, and that when groundwater conflicts arise between well owners it is available to investigate and analyze field data.

A “zero water” or “closed loop” design statement describes operating consumption. The water provider still has to deliver capacity to the site for fire protection, redundancy, and future phases, and that capacity is what drives storage, mains, and treatment upgrades. A sample water services memorandum of understanding released through 2026 public records requests puts the city’s commitment to deliver water and sewer service to the site boundary in its binding section, with the company not responsible for line extensions or other off-site public infrastructure improvements, while the developer’s 36-month rolling notice of the next phase sits in the non-binding section. Meta’s letter to a Wood County township, released the same way, shows the opposite allocation: Meta says it paid for the elevated storage tank, the Middleton Pike distribution upgrades, and the sewer conveyance upgrades, and pays the full cost of its water and sewer usage; the letter compares operating use to two restaurants and gives no wastewater discharge figure. The same packet of documents therefore shows both answers to who pays for off-site infrastructure, which is the question to ask. Read every utility agreement for which party each provision binds. [Ohio Register documents; public-records documents, primary copies checked September 15, 2026]

The party that files a zoning, permit, incentive, service, or other application.

Assembles land, manages approvals, designs, finances, or prepares the site.

Runs the facility.

The company whose equipment or workload uses the facility. In early stages this party is often undisclosed or not yet known.

Holds the parcel through title, option, purchase agreement, or another interest.

Build, commission, maintain, and repair the facility and its infrastructure.

Counsel, engineers, analysts, and specialists retained to evaluate a proposal or agreement, on either side.

A city or village with powers under Title 7 of the Revised Code, including land use, services, contracts, taxation, inspection, and enforcement. Cities and villages hold home rule under Article XVIII, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution.

A local government whose land-use role under Title 5 depends on whether voters have adopted zoning, where the parcel sits, and whether the township has adopted limited home rule under Chapter 504.

A local government under Title 3 with roles that may include planning, roads, buildings, economic development, and public safety, with land-use authority generally limited to unincorporated areas where voters approved county zoning. The board of county commissioners also receives and decides annexation petitions under Chapter 709, may create Enterprise Zones in unincorporated territory with the trustees’ consent and inside a municipality with its legislative authority’s consent (R.C. 5709.63), and is the organizational board for a New Community Authority whose district lies in one county unless the district is within a municipality or mostly within the county’s most populous one (R.C. 349.01).

The council, board of commissioners, or board of trustees that adopts plans, zoning text, rezonings, TIF and CRA legislation, and agreements needing legislative approval.

Locally created bodies that recommend or decide plans, site plans, conditional uses, variances, and appeals under the adopted code. The local code sets the split of roles.

Reviews construction documents and issues plan approvals and certificates of occupancy. The Ohio Department of Commerce acts where no certified local department has jurisdiction.

The State Fire Marshal and authorized local officials under Chapter 3737 and the Ohio Fire Code.

The county engineer, township, or municipal engineer for local roads; ODOT for state highway right-of-way.

Affected by property tax treatment and, under Ohio law, holds notice, consent, waiver, or compensation rights depending on the program, percentage, and term (R.C. 5709.82, 5709.83, 3735.671). The district negotiates its own agreement. It is not the universal approver of every incentive.

Performs certification, valuation, and administration for TIF, CRA, and other property tax arrangements, and enters negotiated payments on the tax list.

The county-level body that annually reviews performance under enterprise zone and CRA agreements and every TIF exemption granted under R.C. 5709.40, 5709.41, 5709.45, 5709.73, or 5709.78, and recommends by September 1 that each agreement be continued, modified, or canceled; the granting body must vote on the recommendation within 60 days (R.C. 5709.85).

Administers a community reinvestment area and determines exemption eligibility (R.C. 3735.65 to 3735.70).

A public body created for a defined service, financing, or development purpose, including port authorities, community improvement corporations, and New Community Authorities.

The official or organization that receives site inquiries, coordinates public partners and utilities, manages confidentiality, and organizes the community’s response. In Ohio this may be a county or city economic development department, a private nonprofit development corporation, a port authority, a community improvement corporation, or a chamber. A private nonprofit LEDO can sign a nondisclosure agreement and hold early conversations with fewer of the public records and open meetings constraints a public office works under; a public LEDO can sign one too, subject to R.C. 149.43 and 121.22 (Practitioner Playbook D). Whether a community improvement corporation or a port authority is a public office for public records purposes depends on how it is constituted and is a question for counsel. Coordination is participation, not approval power, unless a specific program assigns it; in practice the LEDO is the party facilitating the process described in Part 6. As OEDA reads the Select Committee record, communities that reported satisfactory outcomes generally had a professional in this role.

Review plans, inspect, manage roads, prepare emergency response, and enforce assigned requirements.

The entity authorized and obligated to furnish electric service to the parcel under Ohio’s certified-territory statutes (R.C. 4933.81 and 4933.82) or a municipal or cooperative arrangement. Ohio’s four investor-owned utilities (AEP Ohio, FirstEnergy’s Ohio companies, AES Ohio, Duke Energy Ohio) are regulated by PUCO; municipal systems answer to their councils (80 of them, by the Ohio Municipal Electric Association’s count); cooperatives to their member-elected boards (25, serving parts of 77 counties, by Ohio’s Electric Cooperatives’ count). Identify the provider from the official territory map, not a brand name or nearby address. Official lookup: PUCO electric service-area map (arcgis.com, item ffeff25fd975492386ce583cce7d3ee2).

A PUCO-certified supplier of the generation portion of service under Chapter 4928. A customer may choose a supplier without changing the delivery company. Keep delivery provider and supplier separate.

Determines service capacity, timing, connection terms, and upgrade requirements.

Supplies fiber or other network service.

Regulates investor-owned utilities and noncompetitive distribution service, certifies competitive suppliers, and reviews tariffs and service terms (Chapters 4905 and 4928). PUCO’s jurisdiction differs across investor-owned, municipal, and cooperative systems. PUCO does not decide local zoning. puco.ohio.gov

Decides certificate applications for major utility facilities under Chapter 4906, including electric generating plants of 50 megawatts or more and transmission lines of 100 kilovolts or more, subject to statutory exclusions. A data center building is not an OPSB facility because it uses a lot of power; an on-site power plant serving it may be. opsb.ohio.gov

Administer air, surface water, wastewater, and water quality programs: permits-to-install, NPDES coverage, wastewater permits, Section 401 certification, isolated wetland permits. Programs are separate; no universal package applies. Its director walked the Committee through the permit process: application, completeness review, technical review, draft permit, public notice (“posted online and sometimes in local newspapers”), comment period, hearing if requested, response to comments, final permit; public participation is commonly required for major and synthetic minor air permits, NPDES permits, 401 certifications, and isolated wetland permits. The comment window opens at the draft, notice may be online only, and a township can request the hearing, so someone should watch the agency’s notices for each parcel. Its air division reported 4,916 permitted backup generators and six behind-the-meter power stations. [Logue] epa.ohio.gov

Administer state incentives. The TCA approves data center sales and use tax exemption agreements under R.C. 122.175. On May 27, 2026, Governor DeWine directed the TCA chair to pause consideration of new exemption requests while the Select Committee studies the issue; the TCA stopped accepting new proposals after its June 1 meeting. The statute remains and prior agreements continue under their terms. development.ohio.gov

The state agency charged with representing residential utility consumers before PUCO and elsewhere. It urged the Committee toward a “bring your own new generation” or credible supply planning framework, anti-speculation load forecasting, and cost causation, and opened by saying Ohio should welcome data centers. It is where residents’ rate questions belong when the local body cannot answer them (Practitioner Playbook H). [Willis] occ.ohio.gov

Approves access or work within state highway right-of-way (Chapter 5515; State Highway Access Management Manual). transportation.ohio.gov

Provides state building plan review where no certified local department holds jurisdiction. com.ohio.gov

Administers water withdrawal registration (above 100,000 gallons a day) and the consumptive-use permit, from which OPSB-regulated generation and pre-1988 public water systems are exempt (R.C. 1521.23); investigates conflicts between well owners on request; publishes the withdrawal facility locator, aquifer maps, well logs, and observation-well data. Testified it can observe increased public-system withdrawals in cities with data centers but cannot isolate each facility’s share (4.2). [Mertz]

The regional transmission organization for Ohio and all or part of 12 other states plus DC. Operates the transmission system and wholesale markets under FERC-approved rules, conducts regional planning, and incorporates qualifying load forecasts supplied through utilities and load-serving entities. pjm.com

Regulates interstate transmission and wholesale sales and approves changes to PJM’s tariffs. Retail service, distribution, and ordinary siting stay with state and local systems. Large-load and co-location rules are in active proceedings. ferc.gov

Sets federal environmental requirements, including stationary-engine standards; states carry out most permitting. epa.gov

Evaluates federal authorizations for work in waters of the United States, including Section 404. Ohio is split among three Corps districts by watershed. lrd.usace.army.mil

An interstate compact agency that recommends and coordinates policy on Great Lakes water; it issues no project approvals. glc.org

Senator Reineke told witnesses that most local communities don’t understand they hold most of the control. [Reineke] Local officials described discovering the limits of that control when they couldn’t spare the resources to use it or after decisions had moved beyond reach.

Most local codes, including many industrial districts, were written before data centers existed at today’s scale, so proposals fall between classifications. A Shalersville Township trustee facing a 750 megawatt proposal on land zoned light industrial reported requesting a definition of light versus heavy industrial from county attorneys without receiving a definitive answer. Licking Township’s zoning resolution, amended in 2023, addresses agriculture, residential, commercial, manufacturing, and solar farms, but not data centers. [Kotkowski, Licking, NLC]

They hold siting authority legally but often lack the planning frameworks, technical capacity, and funding to use it. A Shalersville trustee told the Committee that “we three trustees are completely overwhelmed,” that the township would petition its county commissioners for money to hire expertise, and that state funding would be essential. [Kotkowski]

NDAs are standard in site selection, and JobsOhio network partners and industry describe confidentiality as vital to competitiveness. Practice is not uniform and is changing: Microsoft told the Committee it will no longer use NDAs with local governments [Brown]; New Albany’s own template, signed by the city manager, requires the city to notify the company of any public records request and leaves it to the company to respond or go to court [New Albany NDA template, public record]; Washington County’s commissioners signed one in order to negotiate. [Schilling] Separately, Ohio’s confidentiality provisions for economic development information were rewritten twice in 2026: a spring provision broadly required public bodies to treat nearly all information tied to economic development assistance as confidential, with potential criminal liability for disclosure; House Bill 479, effective September 23, 2026, narrows that requirement to individualized compensation and payroll information. OEDA’s August 18, 2026 webinar with Bricker Graydon Wyatt, OML, CCAO, and MORPC covers the current provisions; the materials are available from OEDA.

A rezoning is a legislative act and can be referred to the voters where the charter or statute allows (Toolkit Unit 5), but two things changed in 2025. The state budget (HB 96) raised the signatures required for a municipal referendum under R.C. 731.29, and for a limited-home-rule township under R.C. 504.14, from 10 to 35 percent of the votes cast for governor, and for a township zoning referendum under R.C. 519.12 from 15 to 35 percent, all effective September 30, 2025; municipal initiative petitions under R.C. 731.28 stayed at 10 percent, and HB 985, introduced August 6, 2026, would lower the zoning threshold to 20 percent. [LSC comparison document, HB 96 as enacted; R.C. 731.29]

Two pathways matter most. Annexation, including annexation for utility service under Chapter 709, can move a project beyond a township’s land-use authority and under the municipality’s; Chapter 709 contains several procedures with different tests and township rights, so treat any annexation as unresolved until counsel walks it procedure by procedure. The petition is filed by the landowners with the board of county commissioners, which hears and decides a regular petition under statutory standards and has narrow discretion on the expedited procedures once a complete petition and the required consents are in. The Legislative Service Commission’s members’ brief on annexation (March 2023) walks through the procedures. [ORC, Brooks, LSC]

Land control (sell, lease, option, acquire); site screening (does the parcel meet requirements); project definition (scope, phases, associated facilities). Owners and developers make these within their own rights. They supply the facts that trigger public decisions but create no public obligation to approve or serve.

Whether, when, and on what terms a provider can serve the project; which upgrades are needed, who owns them, who pays, and who bears the risk if demand changes. Providers, regulators, and PJM decide these on their own track. They do not settle land use.

Land-use policy (which uses fit where, under what standards and approval path) and specific land-use approvals (site plan, conditional use, rezoning, development agreement). The local code sets the path and the decision-holder. Keep legislative and administrative decisions distinct, because the distinction sets who decides, what they may weigh, and how the decision can be undone. A rezoning or a zoning text amendment is legislative: the council or the trustees act after a hearing, may weigh policy broadly, and the result can be referred to the voters where a charter or statute provides for it (R.C. 731.28 to 731.41 for municipalities absent a charter provision; R.C. 519.12 for township zoning amendments). A conditional use, variance, or site plan approval is administrative or quasi-judicial: the planning commission or board of zoning appeals applies the standards already in the code to the evidence in the record, cannot be referred to the voters, and is reviewed on appeal under R.C. Chapter 2506. Several of the 2026 Ohio ballot measures are referendums on legislative acts; none can reach an administrative approval. A charter can alter these routes; check yours with counsel.

Permits, certificates, and consultations attach to specific equipment, discharges, facilities, and rights-of-way, not to the campus in general. Which apply depends on project facts.

Exemptions, abatements, PILOTs, and the agreements that record them. These set tax treatment and enforceable commitments; they don’t authorize land use or construction. Each program assigns different roles to state bodies, local legislative bodies, auditors, and school districts.

Construction compliance, commissioning and occupancy, operating compliance, expansion or change (does a later phase fit the existing approval or need a new one), and end of life (incomplete work, sale, reuse, equipment removal, decommissioning, financial assurance). Each permit, tariff, agreement, and certificate keeps its own compliance path, and a change can reopen earlier decisions.

R.C. Chapter 713 (municipal), Chapter 303 (county), Chapter 519 (township), plus any municipal charter and the adopted local code.

R.C. Chapter 709; several procedures, with roles differing by procedure.

Title, deed, lease, option, easement, license, and property law. No single statute.

R.C. 4933.81 and 4933.82 (certified territories and maps); the provider’s tariff, service rules, and contract; PUCO service-area map.

R.C. 4928.03, 4928.08, 4928.15; Chapter 4905; provider-specific schedules such as AEP Ohio’s data center tariff, which applies only in AEP territory.

R.C. Chapter 4906; 4906.01 (facility definitions); 4906.10 (certificate decisions); 4906.13 (preemption and its limits).

OAC Chapter 3745-31 (air); OAC Chapter 3745-42 (wastewater); R.C. Chapter 6111 (water pollution control); OAC 3745-32-02 (Section 401); Ohio EPA stormwater/NPDES program; U.S. EPA stationary-engine rules; U.S. Army Corps regulatory program.

R.C. 122.175 (data center exemption); Chapter 5709 (TIF at 5709.40 to 5709.43 municipal, 5709.73 township, 5709.77 to 5709.78 county; Enterprise Zone at 5709.61 to 5709.69; minimum service payment at 5709.91); Chapter 3735 (CRA at 3735.65 to 3735.70); 5709.82 and 5709.83 (school compensation and notice); 5709.85 (TIRC).

Each party’s enabling authority and the executed agreement. No single statute.

R.C. Chapter 3781 (building standards); Chapter 3737 (fire marshal and fire code); OAC 4101:7-3-01 (certified building departments); OAC Chapter 1301:7-7 (Ohio Fire Code).

Defined by each permit, tariff, certificate, code, tax statute, or agreement.

Chapter 709 (annexation notice); Chapter 4906 (OPSB participation); 5709.82 and 5709.83 (school district rights); local hearing and notice rules.

R.C. 149.43 (public records); 121.22, including (G)(8) (executive session to consider an applicant’s confidential information or negotiations for economic development assistance, on a unanimous roll-call vote, for the listed programs); 9.66 as amended by H.B. 479 (economic development confidentiality, effective September 23, 2026).

R.C. 4906.13 applies only to a certified major utility facility, not to the campus. Other preemption rules are decision-specific.

Form of government. Whether the site is in a city or village, unincorporated territory, or across a boundary. Whether annexation, a boundary change, or a request for municipal service could change the jurisdiction, provider, or approval path.

Which body decides each land-use action and under what test. Who handles building, fire, and code administration. Which state, local, and school bodies decide each incentive. Who can approve and sign each kind of agreement.

The comprehensive plan. The zoning jurisdiction. The parcel’s current classification. Whether the code defines data centers, substations, generation, storage, and utility equipment at all. Whether the use would be by right, conditional, rezoning, or unaddressed. Surrounding uses: agriculture, industry, housing, schools, parks, brownfields, former generation property.

Electric delivery provider and type, from the official territory record. Any competitive supplier. The applicable tariff, large-load process, and the status of any load inquiry, study, or agreement (provider-specific; don’t assume AEP’s terms apply elsewhere). PJM transmission zone. Distribution hosting-capacity map, with date viewed (a planning input, not a commitment). Water provider. Wastewater provider. Fiber providers and routes. Road and emergency-service providers. Known capacity, constraints, and planned upgrades across all of them.

Adopted goals and known gaps for land use, services, schools, workforce, infrastructure, fiscal outcomes, environment, and participation. Staff, counsel, expertise, records, time, and budget available to review and administer. Existing revenues, service obligations, and capital plans as the baseline for fiscal analysis. Notice practices, meeting structure, information channels, and records process.

Community input is typically limited early, peaks at project approval, and declines afterward. Many of the most consequential decisions happen before a developer begins site selection, through zoning, comprehensive plans, and land-use policy already in place. Those frameworks, shaped by earlier community input, often set project terms before formal approval or public engagement begins.

Is the proposal hyperscale, enterprise, colocation, or edge, and who will operate or lease it? Electric demand at opening and full buildout? Cooling system, and what PUE and WUE will the operator report? All grid power, or generation behind the meter? Which infrastructure improvements are required, who owns them, who pays? How many construction and permanent jobs, and how will the community verify? Which figures describe current operations, signed commitments, projects under study, or forecasts?

Plans, zoning, and staff readiness shape every later choice.

Developers, and sometimes the localities or utilities courting them, identify candidate parcels: greenfield, industrial property, brownfields, former generation sites.

Does the code define a data center and its accessory uses, and is it by right, conditional, or legislative? How would the community compare continued agriculture, a data center, another industrial use, or no development against its plans and capacity? Does it have current site, utility, road, and emergency-service information, plus access to land-use counsel and technical review?

Planning goes beyond the building. Roads, transmission, pipelines, and water may cross jurisdictions or follow separate approvals. New Albany’s own lessons-learned list includes a policy for fiber and utility corridors and proactive public communication through a city website. [New Albany presentation to RGP, February 24, 2026]

The developer decides whether to advance, keep studying, or drop the site. Public bodies and the LEDO decide what information to provide, which early requirements apply, and whether to enter a nondisclosure agreement.

Does the community have a screening checklist, baseline requirements, and one route for inquiries? Who reviews confidentiality terms against public records law before anyone signs? When do utilities, emergency services, and other affected bodies enter the review?

Developers told the Committee what they screen for, which tells a practitioner where the community’s terms get set. Aligned picks sites “communities have already earmarked for data center development” and “actively avoid[s] sites that require massive infrastructure overhauls or complex rezoning”; QTS seeks “communities that are eager to work with us” and calls community alignment “a key factor”; Vantage lists energy availability, workforce, permitting timelines, infrastructure, and business climate; MARA wants “faster, clearer, more predictable timelines.” [Robinson, Smith, Chandler, Hazel] On the community’s side of the screen: the state’s regional water demand studies as a required siting input [Volzer]; ODNR’s aquifer and withdrawal tools (4.2); whether the parcel lies within a multi-jurisdiction protection agreement such as the Darby Accord [Bolzenius]; The Nature Conservancy’s siting principles from a group that “does not oppose data centers as a sector” (brownfields first, avoid prime farmland and high-quality habitat, decommissioning plans, an avoid-minimize-restore framework) [Turocy]; and the community’s own inventory of former industrial and generation sites with interconnection, water, and rail, which is where Coshocton’s two campuses and Aligned’s Perkins Township campus (a former bearing plant bought in August 2023, first building due by end of 2026) landed. [Mills; News 5 Cleveland, March 10, 2026]

Early access helps when officials can keep a usable record, involve the right reviewers, and distinguish an estimate from a commitment. The same discipline applies with or without an NDA.

The community can press for a complete project definition and act within its authority.

Several decisions converge: the developer’s go/no-go, deal terms, incentive votes, and, where an abatement affects school revenue, the district’s consent. The program moves from plan into binding commitments.

What analysis does the community need before committing land, infrastructure, services, or incentives, and who provides it? Which requested actions are ours, and which sit with state bodies?

A “first phase” label can conceal the scale of a decision when roads, utilities, or agreements serve a larger campus. Keep project facts, applicant commitments, and public decisions separate, then test all three against the same phasing assumptions.

Utilities and regulators hold many of these decisions, each under its own process.

Providers decide whether and how they can serve the project. The applicant and reviewing authorities use those service conditions to develop or evaluate the campus and supporting infrastructure.

Does the community keep one record of provider assumptions, each labeled known, under study, under contract, or dependent on later work? Which local decisions (site design, road use, local water or sewer terms) depend on provider answers, and can they wait?

Land-use, utility, and incentive reviews need the same project definition. Average demand can’t substitute for the peak and full-buildout values that drive system design and, in turn, deal commitments.

Local approvals resolve here: rezoning and use permissions through hearings, then site-plan approval and development agreement terms, alongside any state and federal determinations the project’s scope triggers.

Which elements are by right, conditional, subject to rezoning, or governed by agreement? Do local standards address sound, lighting, screening, stormwater, traffic, emergency access, and the full campus? Does the community need land-use counsel, acoustic review, utility engineering, or another specialist before a deadline, and how will it keep the reviewer independent?

A data center and its generation, transmission, pipeline, or water facilities may share one plan while following different legal paths. Local staff need specialized help. New Albany told the Committee it has offered tours and strategic advice to dozens of Ohio communities and shares a basic “tool kit” with them. [Chrysler]

Inspection, coordination, and enforcement become the main local functions.

Inspectors determine whether construction follows approved plans, codes, permits, and agreements. Owner, contractors, and utilities test whether the facility can begin operation under safety and service requirements.

Is the approved set of plans, permits, and conditions current and in one place? Is there one complaint route, and are road-use and emergency-access arrangements set before work begins?

Inspectors test compliance with existing plans and conditions and determine whether a change must return to the approving body.

The operator must meet continuing requirements; reviewing bodies decide whether a later building, higher load, or equipment change requires another approval. Owners and public entities address unfinished phases, sale, and eventual closure.

Does the community keep a compliance calendar covering every reporting and monitoring term? Do monitoring, financial assurance, and successor terms continue after a sale or change in operator?

Oversight needs named measures, responsibilities, and remedies. Closure planning needs an assigned party, a work standard, and a funding source.

Virginia’s audit found a typical 250,000-square-foot facility had about 50 full-time workers including contractors, at average pay near $100,000. Construction was roughly 80 percent of annual data center employment in the state. [JLARC] EdgeConneX’s 2025 Ohio Tax Credit Authority filing for New Albany projects 32 full-time jobs and $4 million in annual payroll, an average of $125,000. [TCA] Johnstown’s mayor described a Cologix project with 90 full-time positions averaging over $111,000. [Hollis] QTS projects 200 permanent jobs for its Van Wert campus. [Van Wert case study sources] A City of Marysville council presentation (November 2025) for a $1 billion, 592-acre hyperscale project (“Project Flannel”), released through public records requests, shows 50 permanent jobs and $4.75 million in payroll, with additional contract employees on site. [Ohio Register documents; public-records documents, primary copy checked September 15, 2026]

Data centers employ far fewer people per square foot than the distribution centers Ohio communities often compete for; an Amazon fulfillment center of a million square feet employs about 1,000 people starting near $18 an hour. Data center jobs are usually fewer, though headcount depends on the building and how automated it is; they pay two to three times more, so payroll can hold up against a warehouse’s; and they arrive with capital investment an order of magnitude larger. For the factory comparison the Toolkit draws, Ohio’s manufacturing average annual wage was about $76,500 in 2024 across roughly 682,000 jobs. [ODJFS QCEW 2024] Whether that trade is attractive depends on what a community wants: headcount, payroll, or tax base. New Albany’s minimum-payment formula, which pegs data center payments to what an office or manufacturing use would have generated, is one community’s answer to the headcount question. [Chrysler; Amazon announcements]

Permanent headcount depends on type, size, automation, and whether contractors are counted. Local value depends on where workers live, how long they stay, and how much material is bought in Ohio. Project-level data are needed to separate construction jobs, permanent employees, contractors, supplier jobs, and spending-supported jobs. Self-reported Ohio accounts show workforce pipelines forming: QTS is partnering with Van Wert’s Vantage Career Center (no relation to Vantage Data Centers) [Van Wert case study sources]; a contractor described 3.5 million labor hours and more than 3,000 consecutive days of work at a New Albany campus. [Stewart]

Ohio’s Data Center Tax Exemption (R.C. 122.175) exempts eligible equipment from state, county, and transit sales and use taxes. Because use tax applies where equipment is installed, the county’s share of the tax on equipment installed locally is part of what the exemption waives; without it, that share would be county revenue. It is not a grant or income tax credit. The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approves each agreement.

Gross investment, foregone state tax, and local net revenue answer different questions. A useful analysis identifies every tax the project pays, every exemption or abatement, the cost of public services and infrastructure, and how revenue is distributed among city, township, county, and school district, then tests what happens if the project builds slower or refreshes equipment on a different schedule. County and township witnesses described carrying road, emergency service, and infrastructure costs for projects whose incentives another level of government granted. [Schilling, Brooks]

Authority, project stage, applicant requests, and available instruments determine which terms are open. A term binds a party only when that party’s authorized body accepts it in a valid instrument. Existing permit standards, statutory duties, and tariffs apply on their own terms. The negotiable terms, in four groups:

Tax treatment and payment structure (exemption, abatement, PILOT, minimum service payment, income tax sharing). School compensation (payments, revenue sharing, consent, waiver, reporting). Infrastructure cost responsibility (who builds, owns, operates, maintains, replaces, removes each improvement).

Water and wastewater service terms (capacity, phase notices, maximum demand, metering, reporting, curtailment, pretreatment, upgrades, remedies). Workforce commitments (job counts, wages, local hire, apprenticeships, training, reporting). Local contracting and supplier commitments. Expansion, closure, and decommissioning (later phases, reduced buildout, unfinished work, reuse, removal, restoration).

Community investment (schools, workforce, public safety, parks, housing, facilities). Environmental and operating commitments (cooling, water reuse, sound, lighting, emissions, buffers, emergency planning) that supplement permits.

Transparency and reporting (what, when, to whom, public access, audit rights, confidential records). Governance and review (who receives reports and reviews performance). Monitoring and verification (measures, methods, frequency, reviewer independence). Remedies and financial assurance (clawbacks, penalties, liens, bonds, letters of credit, completion and decommissioning security). Confidentiality and public records handling (scope, signers, duration, records response, end conditions). Assignment and successor obligations (whether commitments continue after sale, lease, tenant change, or transfer).

School funding is central to most Ohio data center deals because abatements reduce the valuation school revenue depends on, while land value (which can’t be abated) flows to schools from day one. Three Ohio approaches to sharing project revenue with districts:

Cleveland used CBAs for a decade before formalizing the practice; its Community Benefits Ordinance took effect September 2023. It hasn’t yet been applied to a data center but offers an Ohio model of a structured process. Tiered agreements: $250,000 or more in assistance on a project under $20 million requires a Standard CBA with baseline local hiring and contracting targets; over $20 million requires an Expanded CBA with four additional negotiated benefits (workforce development, project labor agreements, green energy, others). Measurable commitments: objectives stated in quantifiable terms with SMART milestones, with the application subject to rescission if not. Sequencing: council will not approve incentives, and the city cannot close on agreements, until all benefits are agreed; construction is gated on full CBA approval. Scorecard: the Commercial and Industrial Scorecard applies to any development of 40,000 square feet or more and awards up to 117 points across capital investment, infrastructure, total and quality jobs, target industry, environmental standards, site selection, and remediation. [Cleveland]

Abates property tax on new buildings, by local legislation, in exchange for negotiated terms. What happens: the community creates the area where abatement applies; council passes the legislation; the housing officer reviews the application; council approves the final agreement. State confirmation of CRA creation was eliminated by S.B. 33 (134th General Assembly), effective April 3, 2023, which also let limited home rule townships create areas and raised the school board approval line described below. In a post-1994 area the agreement must be entered into before construction begins; one signed after the fact can’t reach what’s already built (R.C. 3735.671(A)). The state sales and use tax exemption is a separate matter under state control. Why it matters: the abatement is what a community brings to the table; every other commitment attaches to it. New Albany’s 15-year, 100 percent abatement came with stormwater mitigation, scholarships, and cultural programming. Examples: New Albany, Hilliard, Piqua CRA agreements.

What happens: a negotiated payment attaches to the land rather than the company that signed. The county auditor enters it on the tax list; unpaid amounts become a lien collected like property taxes; a later sale doesn’t reset it. Why it matters: this is the difference between a commitment and an obligation that survives a change in ownership.

What happens: the district receives notice of the exemption at least 14 days before the granting body acts (R.C. 5709.83; waivable by standing resolution). Approval is a separate matter and arises above 75 percent. For a post-1994 CRA, the legislative authority can’t approve the agreement without the board’s approval unless the taxes still charged on the property, plus any payments to the district, reach 25 percent of what would have been owed each year, or the board has waived approval by standing resolution (R.C. 3735.671(A)); for an Enterprise Zone, a percentage above 75 requires the board’s approval unless the average over the term is 60 percent or less (R.C. 5709.62).

What happens: optional. A community can organize an NCA to levy a standing community development charge. New Albany’s sequence: council authorizes the city manager to sign the petition as the sole proximate city; the developer files the petition with the clerk and county commissioners; council finds it compliant and sets a hearing; hearing held with published notice; council, as organizational board, creates the Authority, defines the district, sets the board method; initial board appointed and bylaws adopted. Outside a municipality, or where the district is not mostly inside the county’s most populous municipality, the board of county commissioners is the organizational board (R.C. 349.01(F), 349.03). Why it matters: it funds community priorities, not just project compensation; proceeds can go to schools, fire departments, and parks. New Albany’s floor is met partly through a 9.75-mill NCA charge. [New Albany, OEDA]

What happens: automatic. The TIRC reviews every CRA and enterprise zone agreement annually, and every TIF exemption, determines whether the owner has complied, and by September 1 sends the legislative authority a written recommendation that each agreement be continued, modified, or canceled; the legislative authority must meet and vote to accept, reject, or modify the recommendation within 60 days of receiving it. The agreement obligates the company to submit an annual report. Why it matters: it attaches public annual reporting to every abatement and TIF without negotiation, and it is the standing lever on a signed agreement; the school district’s treasurer and the county auditor usually sit on the council.

A partial or full property tax abatement paired with PILOTs or school agreements that partially backfill it.

Exempts taxes on added value and converts them into service payments funding the infrastructure the project needs.

Agreements often reference the state sales and use tax exemption and condition local incentives on maintaining eligibility. With new state exemptions paused, communities should ask whether a project’s economics depend on an exemption it may not receive.

Minimum annual payments regardless of assessed value guard against erosion from depreciation and valuation appeals.

Upfront contributions, annual benefit payments, or funding for specific purposes (fire equipment, parks, broadband).

Who pays for utility upgrades, roads, water, and sewer. Developer-funded with reimbursement caps is common. Electricity costs sit outside the agreement in utility tariffs.

Performance criteria as conditions of abatement: efficiency targets, PUE limits, water controls, noise compliance. They condition approvals, communicate value to the community, and trigger remedies. [UVA] Chandler requires a third-party baseline sound study before the first neighborhood meeting, which becomes the standard the facility may not exceed. Lancaster, Pennsylvania achieves the same by contract: operations cannot exceed existing ambient noise at nearby homes and parks, testing occurs before and after operations begin, and water is capped at 20,000 gallons a day per campus. [Chandler, Lancaster]

Define standards in the ordinance, then use agreements for project-specific detail, for example stipulating that generators run only in outages or scheduled tests with permissible hours specified. [UM]

Ohio already attaches TIRC annual reporting to CRA agreements. Peer practice adds content and format: a Great Lakes analysis envisions annual reporting on employment, investment, electricity, water withdrawal, and local tax contributions; Brookings highlights public dashboards on government sites. Lancaster requires annual council reporting on clean energy and compliance and a public website with a complaint process. Chandler attaches deadlines (results within 30 days of the occupancy anniversary) and requires a public site announcing generator operating times at least 24 hours ahead. [Brookings, UVA, Lancaster, Chandler]

A sample Ohio data center CRA agreement released through 2026 public records requests defines the project’s investment and job figures in Sections 1 and 2 as “good faith estimates provided pursuant to Ohio Revised Code Section 3735.671(B)” that “shall not be construed in a manner that would limit the amount or term of any Exemption,” and states that project costs “do not equate to real property taxable value.” Under that form, the exemption does not depend on the numbers the legislative body voted on, and a smaller build cannot be compelled or clawed back through the estimates. The protection in the same agreement is Section 5: the exemptions are conditioned on a minimum annual revenue stream, treated as a minimum service payment obligation under R.C. 5709.91 with a recorded lien, creditable against TIF, New Community Authority, and municipal income tax receipts and trued up in cash, and Section 11 bars the city from terminating or modifying the exemption for any building whose Section 5 payment has been made. The New Community Authority is a separate instrument the recitals reference. A community that copies Sections 1 and 2 without Section 5 has copied the exposure without the protection. Either convert estimates to commitments with remedies, or attach a minimum payment; the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s performance-based standard (7.3) is the same point from the business side. [Ohio Register documents; public-records documents, primary copy checked September 15, 2026]

A revenue floor: if the tax table changes in either direction, the developer pays the higher of the floor or the actual. [UM]

A different guarantee for a different failure. Washington County’s commission president told the Committee that current law “offers no protection when a private developer walks away from a project it received public subsidies to build” and proposed conditioning public benefits on a financial completion assurance, a performance bond or letter of credit, “not a blanket construction bond mandate” but one “tailored toward projects that Ohio taxpayers subsidize”; “developers with strong balance sheets and credible business plans will have no difficulty posting this instrument.” [Schilling] Draft it separately from decommissioning security.

A Wilmington resident put the structural problem to the Committee: “The tax dependence such a project could create on a single employer also raises concerns for the feasibility of enforcement,” and she reported that the city hired no independent acoustical expert 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. The design answer is third-party monitoring, automatic remedies, and security the community can draw without a vote (Lancaster’s letter of credit is the peer example). [Sharp]

Agreements increasingly include decommissioning backed by a financial guarantee that facilities and unused infrastructure will be removed. Lancaster attaches security to payments: on a missed payment, the city may sue or draw directly on the letter of credit, with interest from the due date. [Lancaster, UM]

Lancaster’s remedies for non-financial commitments attach to the property: after notice and a 30-to-60-day cure period, the city may seek injunctions, orders, or discontinuance of operations. A buyer must assume all obligations. Another peer agreement sets a $50,000 daily fine for noncompliance. [Lancaster, SciLine]

Recorded title and deed (ownership). Option, purchase agreement, or lease (a property interest short of or including ownership). Easement, license, or right-of-way (rights for electric, water, wastewater, fiber, drainage, or access facilities, with scope, duration, relocation, and assignment set by the instrument).

Ordinance or resolution (plan adoptions, zoning text and map amendments, rezonings, TIF and CRA legislation, authorizations to sign). Adopted plan, map, or code text.

Permit (building, fire, road access, air PTI/PTIO/Title V, construction stormwater, NPDES, wastewater, isolated wetland, Section 404), each with its own conditions and compliance path. Certificate (an OPSB certificate for a major utility facility; a certificate of occupancy, which is not a general operating license). Approved plan and written findings (site plan, conditional use, variance decisions and conditions). Recorded plat.

Tariff or rate schedule (provider- and territory-specific). Study and plan of service (feasibility and cost; not a service commitment or land-use approval). Service, interconnection, or construction agreement (the executed document setting capacity, facilities, ownership, funding, minimum payments, security, and cancellation exposure).

Development, infrastructure, or reimbursement agreement. Incentive agreement (a TCA data center agreement, TIF service payment or compensation agreement, enterprise zone agreement, CRA agreement). School compensation agreement. Community benefits agreement (enforceable only against parties that validly signed under their enabling authority). Confidentiality or nondisclosure agreement.

Bond, letter of credit, or escrow posted for completion, restoration, decommissioning, or other defined obligations, released or drawn under the instrument that requires it. Its value depends on the amount, the draw conditions, and the obligations it’s tied to.

Inspection, test, and monitoring reports; correction and enforcement notices; annual certifications; TIRC review records; audit and payment records; notices of default or modification.

A template is a form no body has adopted and no party has signed: useful for drafting, binding on no one. An adopted instrument is an ordinance, resolution, plan, or code text a public body has enacted: binding as law or policy within its scope. An executed instrument is an agreement signed by parties with authority to bind themselves: binding on its signers according to its terms.

Part 3.2, with Ohio’s queue and PJM’s testimony in 3.1.

Two things residents run together. The first is the regional capacity price, which is already in every Ohio bill and moves with projected demand across PJM’s 13 states whether or not a data center lands in this county; that is not a local decision. The second is the local cost of the substation and lines to serve this project, which is governed by the serving utility’s tariff and the service agreement, and is the question to press: signed agreement or study queue, who pays for the wires, whether a large-load tariff applies to this utility (AEP Ohio’s applies only in AEP territory), and whether on-site generation is proposed and who would own it. Two questions this edition adds from the record: who pays for transmission upgrades, since the tariff reaches distribution and OMA argues transmission is still socialized (3.2), and where the customer sits in a grid emergency, since PJM’s pending curtailment rule would put new large loads without their own generation ahead of residential customers and several residents testified they had been told the reverse (3.1). The supporters’ and critics’ cases are stated in Toolkit 8.1; the sources behind both are in 3.2. [Haque, CRS, PJM, Nourse, French, Willis, Seryak]

Part 4.2, with the cooling trade-off in 4.1.

Average use and peak use are different numbers, and the peak on the hottest day is what a water system is built for. Whether the design is evaporative or closed, what “closed loop” actually covers, whether use will be metered and reported, and who pays for any plant or main upgrade. The state has no mechanism that isolates a facility’s use inside a municipal system’s total, though the provider’s meter records it, which is why metering and public reporting terms carry more weight here than in states that track it. Private wells and groundwater, the version of this question rural residents raised most, and wastewater, the version sewer districts raised, are in 4.2 with the ODNR, Miami Conservancy District, NEORSD, and Ohio EPA testimony. [JLARC, Mertz, Chrysler, Shields]

Virginia’s audit documented complaints about persistent low-frequency noise that standard A-weighted decibel limits may not capture, because those limits were written for intermittent sound rather than a constant tone. [JLARC] New Albany has reported four noise complaints in 15 years across about 40 facilities; visiting officials from Van Wert came back comparing it to a home air conditioner; a Perry Village delegation brought a decibel meter. [News 5; Van Wert case study sources; self-reported] Ask what counts as a complaint, because a count depends on its definition.

A noise condition is enforceable only against a baseline. Chandler, Arizona requires a third-party baseline sound study at the nearest residential property line before construction, prohibits operations from exceeding it, sets generator testing hours, and requires post-construction and annual studies with an on-site noise liaison (9.3). Lancaster, Pennsylvania reaches the same result by contract: operations may not exceed pre-existing ambient levels at nearby homes and parks, with testing before and after operations begin (7.7). Whether to require a baseline is a local call; without one there is nothing to measure against. The distance to the nearest home matters more than any figure from another state. And a site visit measures what the host chooses to show; a community that visits should set its own itinerary, ask to hear the side nearest homes and the side without the berm, bring its own meter, and talk to a neighbor. The applicant’s own operating site is the better visit where one exists: Shalersville’s trustees went to Massillon, where the same operator runs a facility that the Digital Power Network cited to the Committee as a good-neighbor model, so both readings of one site are in the record. [Kotkowski, Anderson]

Statewide totals obscure local concentration. Virginia’s operating data centers occupied land equal to about 1.4 percent of the farmland the state lost from 2017 through 2022, but in the two localities with the most activity, data centers were 20 to 30 percent of all development from 2013 through 2021. [JLARC] Across the Great Lakes region, 96 percent of operating data centers sit in large or medium metro counties and about 1 percent in rural counties, because sites follow fiber, utility capacity, and water (Part 6, Stage 1). [UVA]

Land conversion affects farm continuity, drainage, road access, and future development patterns, not just acreage. Data centers generally provide fewer jobs per acre than many industrial uses, and a community with limited developable land should weigh that against its other objectives for the site. The Ohio Farm Bureau urged intentional, transparent land-use planning at every level of government; New Albany described 30 years of planning its business park with residents. Both underscore making land-use decisions deliberately, in the comprehensive plan, before a proposal forces them. [Callicoat, Chrysler]

Part 7.1: the Virginia audit’s typical building, the EdgeConneX and Cologix figures for Ohio, QTS’s Van Wert projection, and the modeled statewide totals, which are estimates rather than counts. The comparison with distribution centers and factories, and why a data center is a payroll-and-tax-base project rather than a headcount project, is there as well. [JLARC, TCA, Hollis, Van Wert case study sources, UVA] One phrase to handle with care: revenue “equivalent to a $178 million payroll” (7.6) is an equivalence in municipal income tax receipts, not in households, spending, or students. Say which when you use it, because critics will if you don’t.

Construction creates the largest workforce and the most visible short-term effects. Virginia’s audit found one building typically took 12 to 18 months and about 1,500 workers at peak; a multi-building campus could remain under construction five years or more. An industry-commissioned Ohio report estimates 18 to 36 months for a campus. [JLARC, SRC] The Ohio Business Roundtable told the Committee that New Albany has averaged roughly 3,500 construction jobs a year over a decade. [Denney]

Direct jobs and “supported” jobs are different numbers, and on-site staff and remote staff are too: a June 1 witness described a friend doing server maintenance for a data center “mostly remote” from an hour away, and construction crews are specialized and travel (7.1). Peak headcount doesn’t equal full-time work through the build. The workforce follows a curve a community can chart by phase, worker duration, and local employment. A construction management plan can set routes, hours, road protections, complaint procedures, and coordination with schools and emergency services.

Part 7.2 for what the state exemption cost and which taxes a project pays locally; 7.3 for what communities have negotiated; 7.5 and 7.6 for the Ohio instruments and payment structures; 7.7 for making commitments stick.

Three numbers that get run together. The state sales and use tax exemption on equipment is a state decision, with the county’s share of that tax inside what it waives. Land tax on the value the parcel had before the project flows to every jurisdiction whatever the deal; a CRA or Enterprise Zone can’t reach the land, and a TIF captures only the growth in its value. The negotiable number is the community’s and the district’s share of the tax on the improvements, and the structure determines it: a partial exemption with no payment, a full exemption with a PILOT, a minimum service payment that runs with the land. The answer for a specific project is a fiscal impact analysis by jurisdiction and by year, during the exemption, after it, and with no exemption at all, which is the LEDO’s to prepare or to commission (Practitioner Playbook C). The local officials’ positions on the state exemption, the two readings of the Chamber’s return study, Development’s county-by-county list, and the statewide agreements the pause does not reach are all in 7.2. One question this edition adds: whether the county has any say, since Washington County’s commission president asked the Committee for a county resolution approving each exemption in full, in part, conditioned on a benefits agreement, or not at all. [Mihalik, ORC, Chrysler, Sidney, Marysville, Piqua, Schilling]

As of September 2026, OEDA has located no Ohio study. The measured record is Virginia’s, and it has not found the decline residents fear. Virginia’s 2024 legislative audit found no measured reduction in nearby home sale prices at the time of review, a finding the auditors called inconclusive and specific to that housing market. [JLARC; measured or peer state] George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis (Clower and Waters, 2025) modeled 2023 home sales across Northern Virginia, weighting for property characteristics, nearby industrial infrastructure, and proximity to Dulles Airport, and found no statistical evidence that proximity to a data center lowers values; homes closer to data centers sold for more, which the authors attribute to the roads, utilities, and job access that attracted the data centers rather than to the data centers themselves. [GMU; measured or peer state] A University of Rochester working paper (Priest, 2026) used Virginia air permit issuances as the marker for new facilities and ZIP-code home price indices in a difference-in-differences design; the estimated effects are economically small and slightly positive, with confidence intervals that rule out substantial declines, including for recent AI-related facilities. [Priest; measured or peer state] The National Association of Realtors’ Data Center Impact Report (September 2026), built on roughly 1,500 operating facilities and a survey of more than 2,300 members, found counties with ten or more data centers had a median home value of $431,750 against $174,500 in counties with none, and ten-year appreciation of 95 percent against 64 percent. It also found its members split on residential effects, reported that half of commercial members see higher nearby values, and concluded there is no single data center effect; the stronger housing markets preceded the data centers. [NAR; industry association, correlational]

Every quantitative study measures an average over a ZIP code, a county, or a 1.5-mile ring. None isolates the homes immediately adjacent, which is where the documented noise complaints come from (8.3) and where the resident asking this question usually lives. The Virginia evidence comes from a supply-constrained housing market; carrying it to a rural Ohio township is an assumption, not a finding. The studies cover operating facilities, not the period between announcement and opening. And the county auditor’s sales file is the one Ohio dataset that could answer the question locally over time; as far as OEDA can find, nobody has assembled it.

Data centers are long-lived buildings with short-lived contents. Industry and facilities sources put the building shell at 50 years or more; chillers and other mechanical systems at 15 to 25 years; servers at three to five years of vendor support, often run to seven or ten. Operators plan on 30-year lives, and an industry analysis puts the typical operating life of a hyperscale facility before major retrofit or tenant migration at 15 to 20 years. A facility renews itself in pieces, and “end of life” has so far meant a tenant leaving or a building being refit, not a campus being demolished. [Perry Village; DCD; industry] New Albany’s first data center opened in 2010; as of September 2026, OEDA has located no record of a large Ohio facility closing. New Albany told the Committee it believes its buildings “can easily be converted into manufacturing and warehouse facilities.” [Chrysler; self-reported] The Southeastern Ohio Port Authority, which favors data center development, testified the opposite: hyperscale facilities “are not easily repurposed.” [Roush]

For large solar and wind facilities, Senate Bill 52 (134th General Assembly, effective October 2021) requires a decommissioning plan prepared by a registered professional engineer at least 60 days before construction; a schedule that completes within 12 months of ceasing operation; a cost estimate for full removal and restoration, excluding salvage value, recalculated every five years; and a performance bond equal to the estimate, posted before construction with OPSB as obligee (R.C. 4906.21 to 4906.222). No Ohio statute requires any of that for a data center. Any decommissioning obligation attaches through local zoning conditions or the development agreement (7.7, 7.8, 9.3). At least one Ohio township has drafted it: Waterville Township’s proposed data center regulations (Lucas County, June 2026) include decommissioning and financial assurance provisions, and the county planning commission declined to recommend for or against after the assistant prosecuting attorney questioned the enforceability of several provisions. That is the reason counsel drafts these terms. [ORC; Toledo Free Press]

Lake County, Indiana’s 2026 ordinance triggers decommissioning after 15 consecutive months of inactivity and requires notice to the plan commission, physical removal of structures and equipment, lawful disposal and recycling, site stabilization, a cost estimate from a licensed professional engineer, and demonstrated funds to cover it. Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania requires decommissioning within twelve months after the end of useful life, including removal of cabling and electrical components, with bonding. The University of Michigan guidebook recommends removal and site restoration backed by a financial guarantee (9.3). Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s agreement attaches security to payments and passes every obligation to a buyer (7.7). On the utility side, AEP Ohio’s data center tariff, approved by PUCO on July 9, 2025, requires customers above 25 MW to pay for at least 85 percent of their subscribed capacity for up to 12 years whether used or not, with exit fees for early termination and financial assurance requirements, which keeps a departing or shrinking customer paying for the wires (3.1, 3.2). [Lake County; Sabin Center; UM; Lancaster; Nourse; PUCO order as reported by Power Magazine]

Every required improvement, who owns it, and who pays during construction, operation, expansion, and closure. Ohio examples: road and rail work tied to data center development in Marysville and water and wastewater investment in Millersport [Aquillo]; in New Albany, data center revenue financed $65 million in infrastructure that opened thousands of acres and helped land Amgen and Pharmavite. [Chrysler] County, township, and port authority witnesses asked the Committee to require financial assurance for completion or decommissioning. [Schilling, Hykes, Kotkowski, Roush]

Every data center carries backup generation sized to run the building through a grid failure, usually diesel engines, sometimes gas engines, batteries, or fuel cells; a large campus can have dozens to hundreds of units. They run during outages and on a testing schedule, and they need an Ohio EPA air permit; on-site combustion equipment may fall under federal stationary-engine standards, and “emergency” designation is not a blanket exemption (1.4). Ohio EPA’s air division reported 4,916 permitted backup generators and six behind-the-meter power stations, and explained that major and synthetic minor air permits commonly carry public participation. [Logue] Some projects add on-site gas plants or fuel cells that run continuously, sited by OPSB above 50 MW and permitted separately (3.1, 5.7). Testimony put numbers on specific Ohio sites: Norwich Township counted 272 fuel cells at the Hilliard plant, which residents described as beside neighborhoods and elementary schools; a Wilmington resident reported 252 generators planned 200 feet from her home; a Springfield resident described about 50 generators with homes within 1,000 feet; a Commercial Point resident described 182 diesel generators planned for half of a 15-building campus and 76 gas engines at the Ashville plant; the Ohio EPA air permit for the Google project near Lima covers 115 gas backup generators. [Hykes, Sharp, Rexroth, Fahringer; Signal Ohio, July 16, 2026] A Bowling Green consultant asked Ohio EPA for continuous public fence-line monitoring and argued a draft permit understated a plant’s emissions; those are contested technical claims. [Jansto; advocacy]

AWS: generators run “mostly for brief mid-day tests” and “that testing must meet local noise and permit requirements.” Microsoft and QTS described closed-loop or dry-cooled designs, which cut water and not generators. Johnstown’s mayor described the Cologix fuel cells as taking grid pressure off her community “at no cost to other ratepayers.” MARA said it can “power down within minutes when the grid is stressed,” which is the flexible-load answer to peak demand. [Sundstrom, Brown, Smith, Hollis, Hazel]

The permit is per unit; nobody adds up a campus, and nobody local is measuring. Generators “must be tested and ‘exercised’ on a regular schedule, meaning at least a period of operation every month,” so “hardly ever operate” misleads. [Falkin] Generators may also participate in demand-response programs and would run under PJM’s proposed emergency curtailment, so the hours are not only outages and tests. [Sharp] Norwich Township “repeatedly requested third-party air quality monitoring both inside and outside these facilities” and “to date, those requests have not been incorporated into permit requirements”; it asked for real-time public data and historical records. [Hykes] A Dublin resident asked for Tier 4 emission controls on all backup generators; a Hilliard resident asked for an emissions study by a researcher the locality chooses and notice to everyone inside an impact radius. [Swank, Cannelongo] A Hilliard resident who “did not think much of a Data Center moving into my neighborhood” four years earlier testified she objected only when fuel cells and generators were added later. [Singh] Residents’ health claims (cancer clusters, asthma projections, out-of-state comparisons) are in the record and are advocacy; the Committee’s own mission statement listed air quality and health among its study areas.

The permit sets a floor; the agreement and the zoning conditions are where a community adds the count, the tier, the hours, the setback, and the monitoring. The distance that matters is from the generator yard, not the property line, to the nearest home, school, childcare center, and park. Later additions of on-site generation or major equipment can be routed back to the body through the conditions or the agreement. Ohio EPA’s draft-permit comment period is the one state process a township can use without being a party (5.4).

A comprehensive plan made before a proposal lets a community decide its posture in advance. Some communities require a project-specific plan as a condition of rezoning: Loudoun County, Virginia requires a Data Center Development Plan with every rezoning; Sugar Grove, Illinois requires a master utility plan. [APA] Data centers follow power, fiber, and water and land where those exist; readiness is less about marketing a site than knowing in advance what code and infrastructure allow. [NADO]

Local zoning codes commonly don’t address data centers. Where they do, they often classify them as industrial despite the differences: heavier utility equipment, smaller staff, round-the-clock operation, taller structures. [ULI] See Part 6, Stage 1, and 5.7.

Moratoria dominated Ohio headlines in 2026 and are the most visible response. A temporary pause can buy time to study impacts and formalize rules rather than serve as a verdict. Its value is the work it enables: zoning, standards, and engagement developed during the pause. [FAS] Shalersville adopted one, extended it, and used the time for public and executive meetings and a visit to an operating site; its trustee told the Committee the township still had no definitive answer on whether light industrial covers the proposal and asked the state for help extending the moratorium. [Kotkowski] New Albany advises visiting communities against moratoria, on the grounds that a pause signals to every kind of employer that the community is closed, and recommends adopting zoning standards before any site plan arrives. [Tribune Chronicle] Both views are in the Ohio record, and the record has grown: as of September 18, 2026, the Ohio Capital Journal counted more than 125 active local data center moratoria in Ohio.

How the code classifies and conditions a data center is the single most consequential local policy instrument. The spectrum:

As the state uses its tax authority for the sales and use exemption, local governments use theirs for property tax arrangements. The tools:

Detroit, Chicago, and Atlanta require large facilities to report energy and water use annually, a low-cost mechanism that creates a public record. [NLC/AAAS]

Working groups, public forums, listening sessions, and monitoring committees that continue after approval. [DAI] Chandler wrote engagement into its code: mailed notice to nearby residents and HOAs, two neighborhood meetings on sound, a staffed on-site liaison. [Chandler]

New Albany’s twice-weekly tours have drawn criticism from a September 2026 opposition outlet working from records-requested emails and itineraries. The visit is still the fastest way to learn what a campus sounds and looks like. Take it on your own terms: set the itinerary, ask for the frontage nearest homes and the un-bermed frontage, invite the skeptics and the press, bring a meter, and talk to a neighbor. [Ohio Register documents; advocacy outlet, public-records documents]

Johnstown’s mayor: “when people don’t have information, they fill the vacuum with fear,” and honest answers matter “even when the honest answer is ‘we don’t know yet.'” [Hollis] Four lessons from the resident testimony that the practitioner can act on.

Johnstown Mayor Tiffany Hollis testified that early engagement, with the right information, legal support, and an open line to constituents, let her community negotiate infrastructure commitments, construction phasing, and community benefits. She contrasted that with the Intel project’s early days, when silence around land acquisition drove local businesses into survival mode as rumors outran facts. [Hollis]

Coshocton Mayor Mark Mills described two operations on former industrial sites: Standard Power’s computing and blockchain campus on a former paper mill site, which reused its electrical infrastructure and historical water allocation, and Aligned’s campus at the retired Conesville coal plant. He urged developers generally to consider brownfields. [Mills]

Van Wert navigated a $10 billion proposal by hiring specialized counsel early and adapting New Albany’s templates. [Van Wert case study sources]

Jennifer Chrysler of New Albany described the Minimum Annual Payment: what the property would have generated as corporate office or advanced manufacturing, met through income tax, TIF payments, and New Community Authority charges, with a cash PILOT only to cover any shortfall. [Chrysler]

Chrysler explained that on-site power owned by a third party is taxed as public utility property; a seven-acre third-party plant is expected to generate $12 million in revenue shared among the schools, the township, and the county, over a period the testimony didn’t state. If the data center owns the plant itself, that tax isn’t collected. [Chrysler, written testimony, June 8, 2026] OEDA’s understanding is that a self-owned plant is the company’s own equipment rather than public utility property; that explanation is OEDA’s, not the testimony’s.

New Albany’s own template, signed by the city manager, requires the city to notify the company of any public records request and gives the company a short window to respond or go to court. [New Albany NDA template, public record]

A rural township protecting school revenue, a county deciding how to treat land its code never anticipated, and a village with a proposal it can see coming will reach for different measures in a different order. That is the intended use of this guide.

New Albany has hosted data centers since 2010, about 40 facilities across 15 companies, under a payment formula its school districts endorsed. [Chrysler] Johnstown’s mayor described negotiating a $7 billion Cologix project into “part of the fabric of our community,” with 90 full-time positions averaging over $111,000 and on-site fuel-cell power. [Hollis] Van Wert ran a two-year public process for a $10 billion QTS campus: 36 city council meetings, specialized counsel, and a bus tour of New Albany. [Van Wert case study sources]

Coshocton’s mayor described two campuses on former industrial sites that reused existing power and water and called both operators strong partners. [Mills] A Lima contractor reported a data center under construction expected to contribute nearly $250,000 a year to the local school district. [Stechschulte]

Shalersville Township adopted a moratorium and extended it, is still awaiting a definitive answer on whether light-industrial zoning covers a 750 megawatt campus, and asked the state for help extending the moratorium and paying for expertise. [Kotkowski] Norwich Township, whose fire department serves one of Ohio’s largest campuses, was not directly notified when an associated fuel-cell plant went through permitting. [Hykes] Residents from Hilliard, Adams County, Wilmington, Trenton, Sidney, and elsewhere described projects that advanced without adequate notice, under NDAs, or ahead of local review; the Wilmington dispute is in federal court. [Residents, June 1]

Timberlake’s mayor testified three times, moving from a pause on approvals and a flat five-mile setback on June 1 to opt-in hosting by June 8: “Instead of requiring communities to vote data centers out, Ohio should require communities to vote them in,” with a five-mile residential setback that 75 percent of local voters could override, dedicated on-site generation before approval, and a review of every abatement granted. [Marra] A Genoa Township trustee, testifying individually, asked that all data center abatements and exemptions be eliminated, that operators fund all infrastructure and safety costs up front, that emergency legislation be barred for data center approvals, and that decommissioning bonds require dismantling within a year of closure. [McMurry] Ohio’s mayors, through the Ohio Mayors Alliance, asked for state fire-safety and emergency-response guidance, first-responder training, and backup power and fuel storage protocols, noting that battery and fuel containment systems “reduce risk” but “do not eliminate the need for coordinated planning.” [McCarthy]

Most June 8 witnesses were building trades councils and locals, and their testimony is the supporters’ case on construction: an electricians’ local with 1,000 workers on one Columbus-area campus for eight years, a contractor with 3,000 consecutive days at New Albany, apprenticeship counts up 68 percent in under a decade by ODJFS figures, and “careers” built from jobs others call temporary; the same testimony records crews traveling in from three regions and one local’s own table showing total employment down in three host counties. [Szollosi, Hann, Stewart, Douglas, Hook, Labaki] Appalachian Ohio is split: the Tri-State trades council called the Piketon project the region’s opportunity, and six Adams County residents and a Jackson County resident testified against proposals in the same counties. [Holbrook, Shelton, Jones]

The Miami Conservancy District and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District testified as public utilities, not advocates: one on a sole-source aquifer and cumulative watershed review, the other on treatment capacity, pretreatment, and permits that reach the sewer utility without notice (4.2). [Hippensteel Hall, Halperin]

Activity has spread from Central Ohio into small cities, rural townships, and Appalachian counties. The Department of Development reported 21 state exemption agreements representing about $39.2 billion in committed investment; fewer than half of Ohio’s reported locations hold the exemption, so many communities encounter projects with no state involvement. [Mihalik]

Perceptions of local control differ, sometimes within one community’s experience. New Albany worked with generation companies through the OPSB process and says it has been pleased, while noting the Board, not the city, decides. Norwich Township was not directly notified of a fuel-cell plant during permitting. The state exemption is decided entirely at the state level with no formal county role. The Township Association warned that annexation for water or sewer could move a project outside township zoning, and asked for a data center PILOT designed around the host township and for statutory moratorium authority. Emergency legislation was the act residents named most often: Sidney’s site annexed and rezoned “through emergency measures” (5.7). [Chrysler, Hykes, Schilling, Brooks, Allen, McMurry] See Part 5.

Shalersville couldn’t get a definitive answer on light versus heavy industrial. The Township Association asked for statutory moratorium authority, especially for townships without zoning. Two former legislators traced the gap to a failed 1997 to 1998 bill that would have expanded county planning and zoning tools and made farmland a factor in state decisions. A township administrator put the question directly: not whether data centers should exist, but who should decide where and how they are built. [Kotkowski, Brooks, Krebs and Logan, Rose] See Parts 6 and 9.

NDAs were a common grievance, but the record shows a spectrum: Microsoft pledged in writing to stop using NDAs with local governments; Washington County’s commissioners signed one to get a seat at the negotiating table, and a county resident objected to it; New Albany’s own template is signed by its city manager and carries a records-request clause; communities decide case by case what to keep confidential, for how long, and who signs. The most specific accounts of how an NDA and a rezoning interact are Wilmington’s, where residents say a port authority representative under NDA to the developer argued for a text amendment without disclosing the project, and American Township’s, where a $500 million project was negotiated for 15 months with a Delaware shell company; the witness who described the second, a supporter of data centers, asked that any incentive be conditioned on disclosure of the beneficial owner. Perry residents said the village signed an NDA; Adams County residents said their water department had. [Residents, June 1; Brown; Schilling; Banziger; Sharp; Parent; Camuendo; Gerber; New Albany NDA template] See Part 7.

Johnstown’s mayor: “when people don’t have information, they fill the vacuum with fear,” and “the negotiation has to happen before the shovel goes in the ground.” [Hollis] Van Wert, facing organized opposition, added a website answering 135 council-generated questions, one-on-one meetings, and a “science fair” where residents questioned experts directly. [Van Wert case study sources] See Part 9.

The Committee heard competing evidence on electricity costs, water, and taxes because statewide averages don’t answer project-specific questions. ODNR reported increased withdrawals in cities with data centers but no mechanism to show how much goes to data centers. Cumulative effects came up without a home: a Commercial Point resident counted four hyperscale proposals within 14 miles likely to be built at once, The Nature Conservancy asked for watershed-scale review, and no agency reviews projects together. Generators and air were the most-raised subject after water and had no place in the eight questions this resource began with; they now have one (8.9). [Denney, French, Mihalik, Willis, Mertz, Fahringer, Turocy] See Parts 3, 4, and 8.

The record disputes the same example. PUCO pointed to AEP Ohio’s requests for more than 30,000 megawatts before its tariff, against 5,642 megawatts signed under it (in addition to 12,219 signed earlier), as evidence the tariff removed speculative load. The Ohio Manufacturers’ Association argued the tariff has instead been used to raise AEP’s forecast, and Ohio University’s researchers reported both readings. On recourse, a port authority executive whose authority took ownership of two closed coal plants testified that surety bonds and letters of credit are standard in mining, landfills, and utility-scale energy; county and township witnesses asked for similar assurance for data centers. [French, Seryak, Voinovich, Roush, Schilling, Hykes, Kotkowski] See Part 7.

A Tiffin witness: no public subdivision could compete with the money and armies of attorneys developers bring. [Watson] Communities reporting satisfactory outcomes closed the gap: Van Wert hired specialized counsel [Van Wert case study sources], Washington County used an NDA to get a voice at the table [Schilling], and New Albany says it has shared a basic tool kit with dozens of communities. [Chrysler] See Part 7.

1,500-acre rural mega site, shovel-ready since 2006. $10 billion, 500 megawatt colocation campus. Approved; groundbreaking late 2026. 1,500 to 4,500 construction jobs; 200 full-time. Fully operational 2032.

9,000-acre master-planned business park. 15 operators across about 40 facilities, 28 more planned or under construction. Ongoing since 2010. About 3,500 construction jobs a year over a decade, per the Ohio Business Roundtable; modest permanent headcount per facility.

Brownfield: retired coal plant. Aligned Data Centers, multi-billion-dollar campus. (A second Coshocton operation, Standard Power, runs a computing and blockchain campus on a former paper mill site.) Under construction since October 2025. Thousands of construction jobs; hundreds long-term. First building mid-2026.

Investment $10 billion. Jobs: 1,500 to 4,500 construction; 200 full-time QTS. First building 2029; full campus 2032. Tax revenue projected at $200 million over 20 years. Status: approved and announced; groundbreaking slated late 2026.

2006 to 2026: mega site promoted and made shovel-ready. 2024 to 2026: public end-user search through 36 city council meetings and eight regional development meetings. April 20, 2026: bus tour of New Albany with more than 50 officials, residents, and stakeholders. Late spring 2026: council approves roughly three weeks before announcement. May 29, 2026: QTS and the City announce the campus. June 11, 2026: science fair at Vantage Career Center. Q4 2026: expected groundbreaking on a 902-acre, seven-building campus. 2026 to 2032: phased construction.

Water: QTS committed to closed-loop cooling described as a one-time fill every six to seven years, addressing the community’s top concern. Noise: established as a priority early, informed by the New Albany tour where residents heard operating noise compared to a home air conditioner. Infrastructure: QTS committed to fund 100 percent of required energy infrastructure with no impact on existing customers; earlier public investment in power and connectivity at the mega site minimized disruption. Community Betterment Fund: shaped by local input for education, workforce, public safety, amenities, nonprofits, and first responders. Workforce: initial $100,000 to Vantage Career Center for a customized curriculum; QTS’s paid Data Center Academy trains people with no prior experience as Critical Operations Technicians.

Water conservation and noise mitigation were signaled as non-negotiable from the start. Outside counsel was hired early. Closed-loop cooling and the Vantage partnership were secured as binding features up front.

Public end-user selection over roughly 18 months. Physical tours. A website answering 135 council-generated questions, a video featuring residents, one-on-one meetings. The science fair model instead of a town hall.

Multi-operator ecosystem, no single investment figure; individual campuses reach billions (Vantage Ohio 1: $2 billion, over 1,700 construction and about 100 permanent jobs, under construction). Economic impact: diversified the tax base away from 90 percent single-employer dependence; data center revenue financed $65 million in infrastructure that opened thousands of acres and helped land Amgen and Pharmavite, and revenue above debt service funds a veterans memorial, police and service complex expansions, and a police training center. Jobs: about 3,500 construction a year averaged over a decade, per the Ohio Business Roundtable; modest permanent headcount per facility, though the city says hyperscale campuses have created more jobs than it anticipated. Tax revenue: guaranteed by the minimum-payment formula; in 2025 one hyperscale campus generated revenue equivalent to a $178 million payroll at 2 percent income tax; the Ohio Business Roundtable reported New Albany-Plain schools received $1.93 million from data center land alone.

2005: structural vulnerability recognized. 2010: first enterprise data center; property valued at about three times a corporate office, and revenue enough to keep the school district off the ballot for several years. 2015: Columbus approves a water service plan for the business park; AWS arrives. 2017: Meta arrives. 2025: one campus equivalent to $178 million payroll.

Guaranteed revenue floor through the formula. School funding from day one because a CRA can’t abate land value; formulas endorsed by all three local districts through compensation agreements. Community amenities from data center revenue. Compounding infrastructure: data center revenue financed $65 million in infrastructure. Water: average use about half of what the 2015 Columbus plan approved, with peaks fewer than a dozen times a year coordinated with Columbus.

The minimum payment is met through income tax, TIF payments, and New Community Authority charges, with a cash PILOT only if those fall short. City-set water and sewer limits in a majority of data center agreements. The city’s own NDA template, signed by the city manager, with a public records request clause.

A city-sponsored “repository of truth” website. Public records terms built into the NDA. Shared benefit with schools through compensation agreements with all three districts, and with its three townships through annexation agreements covering fire and EMS. The city hosts visiting officials from other communities, by its account about twice a week.

Who owns behind-the-meter power matters: a third-party-owned on-site gas plant is taxed as public utility tangible personal property (one seven-acre plant is expected to generate $12 million locally, over a period the testimony didn’t state); a plant the data center owns escapes that tax, which the city said means the community doesn’t see the benefit. Power generation moves siting authority: on-site generation is sited by OPSB; the city worked with the companies before and during the process, intervened to state its preferences, and says it has been pleased with the result so far. Proactive public communication through the city’s website. End of life: the city believes the buildings “can easily be converted into manufacturing and warehouse facilities.”

Multi-billion-dollar Aligned campus. FGC has invested $80 million with $35 million more planned, alongside a $58.7 million public infrastructure grant. Across the broader 2,000-acre park, projections estimate 500-plus full-time jobs and thousands indirect. Aligned campus: thousands of construction jobs, hundreds long-term. First building mid-2026; full campus phased; up to four buildings. Tax revenue: expected to be substantial; specific figures and abatement structure are the subject of active local debate and no guaranteed annual return has been published.

December 2015: WestRock closes. May 2020: AEP shuts the last Conesville unit. June 2020: FGC acquires the site. May 2025: FGC sells 197 acres to Aligned. July 21, 2025: Coshocton Port Authority secures a $58.7 million All Ohio Future Fund grant for utility, water, wastewater, and roads. July 24, 2025: Aligned announces. October 2025: groundbreaking. March 2026: county launches a $59,750 update to its roughly 20-year-old comprehensive land-use plan. April 2026: a resident letter seeks clarity on public investments, abatements, and utility costs. Mid-2026: initial capacity for the first building’s foundational customer. November 2026: the proposed statewide constitutional amendment to ban data centers above 25 megawatts, which local debate had treated as a threat to phased expansion, did not qualify for the ballot; its sponsors are aiming at 2027 (9.3). May 2027: updated land-use plan expected in place.

Brownfield and infrastructure reuse preserves municipal capacity for other uses. Public infrastructure: $58.7 million grant sitewide. Private site investment: $80 million to date, $35 million planned. Workforce and education: Aligned committed to workforce development, STEM, and sustainability; Holder Construction announced skills training and recruitment from local high schools.

Site readiness first: FGC’s multi-year work de-risked the site before Aligned committed. Community commitments introduced as part of engagement.

A county-led land-use plan update, with OSU Extension leading farmland preservation and engagement, workgroups on housing, infrastructure, utilities, and economic development, and GIS mapping from Reveille Planning ($10,000). Debate over incentives: Mayor Mills has publicly questioned whether special tax incentives should be necessary and floated alternatives such as server-based taxes or data transmission fees; an April 2026 resident letter sought the specific abatements, a guaranteed annual return, and protection from rate increases.

Information in both directions, on a timeline you can defend. The developer wants site, utility, and regulatory facts fast. Your community needs enough information to make a decision it won’t regret, and enough time to get it. You sit between those.

Land-control party, developer, operator, and intended end user, and which are undisclosed; if the end user is undisclosed, whether the developer will disclose the beneficial owner and controlling parent before any public commitment, and what the facility’s end use and federal authorization posture are (Part 6, Stage 2). Whether the project is real by the Consumers’ Counsel’s test: executed service agreements, site acquisition, construction milestones, equipment procurement, verified energization schedules (3.1). What the developer’s other host communities say; Coshocton’s mayor’s description of a good operator (open communication, community support, help with infrastructure funding, transparency) is a reference-check list. Electric demand at opening and full buildout in megawatts. Utility status: no request, study requested, study complete, agreement signed. On-site generation, yes or no, and who would own it. Water: cooling design, annual and peak gallons. The public actions the project will eventually need. Their decision timeline. Whether they’re looking at other sites and on what criteria. OEDA is drafting a standard information request template.

Start a file the day of the first contact. It will become the public record. Keep estimates, commitments, and decisions distinguishable.

You control the pace at this stage. Nothing obliges you to answer on the developer’s clock, and the developer knows that a community that can’t answer basic site and utility questions in a reasonable time is a community that will struggle later. Answer what you can, be clear about what needs process, and don’t waive process to look responsive.

A clean process on a defensible timeline, an informed body, and conditions that will hold up. You are not the applicant’s advocate and not the opposition’s; you’re the person who makes sure the decision is made with the right information under the right procedure.

Full-buildout site plan, phasing, and megawatts. Named use. On-site generation and ownership. Cooling design and water demand. Noise sources and proposed mitigation. Truck routes and construction schedule. Decommissioning plan (Part 8.8 has the peer provisions). The public actions they anticipate beyond this one.

A deal the body can explain and defend, a school district that’s a participant rather than a notified party, and a fiscal analysis that’s honest about what’s known.

Investment by phase and category (land, construction, equipment). Buildout schedule. Payroll and headcount, permanent and construction, with definitions. Ownership structure for the real property and any on-site generation. Whether they’ve applied for the state exemption. What they’ve agreed to elsewhere in Ohio.

Quotable pledges a community can ask any developer to match in its binding section.

Identify the procedure with counsel on day one; the township’s rights differ by procedure, and so does what the county commissioners may consider when the petition reaches them (a regular petition gets a hearing and a decision under the statutory standards; the expedited procedures leave the board narrow discretion once the petition is complete and the consents are in). Put a CEDA or JEDD on the table early as the alternative that delivers service and preserves township revenue, and be plain about the calendar: a JEDD takes a contract between the governments, a petition signed by a majority of the property owners and a majority of the business owners in the district, public hearings in each government, and a district board that levies the income tax (R.C. 715.72; the chapter has several JEDD variants, and counsel will identify which applies), so it is months, not weeks; a CEDA is the faster instrument, and a plain development agreement can carry payments while either is formed.

Confirm authority and duration with counsel, and whether the pause reaches filed applications. Draft the work plan before the vote and get it adopted the same night: use definition, megawatt threshold for conditional review, standards (noise with measurement method, setbacks, screening, lighting, water, decommissioning), confidentiality policy, school district meeting. Prepare the body for what other prospects will hear and how the community will explain it; New Albany’s warning is that the headline reaches every employer. Set the end date and the day-after plan. If the township has no zoning, tell the body a moratorium isn’t available and route to Practitioner Playbook I. Tell the body two more things from the record: every standard adopted during the pause needs a documented local basis (Shalersville’s trustee wanted independent water-table data so the rules could not be called arbitrary), and a moratorium does not reach a parcel that is annexed (Practitioner Playbook F). Part 9.3 has the current count of Ohio moratoria and the examples with detail, including the township that said no without one. [Kotkowski, Brooks]

Stand up the project page now, with what’s known, what isn’t, and what can’t be said and why. Answer the nine resident questions for this project with sources, plus the two residents ask first, who is the customer and why here; Part 8 carries the evidence for each in the Toolkit’s order. Choose the format: science fair open house over podium meeting; site visit to an operating facility; video with local residents; one-on-one meetings. Get New Albany’s noise data and, if possible, recordings. If you organize a site visit, set the itinerary yourself and invite the skeptics and the press (9.6). Name the point of contact publicly. Coordinate with the school district so it’s visible at the table.

Bring the trustees to the commissioners’ table from the start; an Enterprise Zone in the township, and every EZ agreement in it, needs the trustees’ consent, and the consent vote is the township’s moment to put its asks (fire and EMS costs, roads, a revenue share) into the county’s development agreement. Sequence the agreement conversation ahead of the consent resolution so consent isn’t the township’s only card and isn’t read as a hold-up. A moratorium isn’t available here: it suspends applications under a zoning resolution, and an unzoned township has none to suspend.

Timing: socialize the concept with the superintendent and treasurer as early as confidentiality allows, and before the structure is fixed; a district reacting to a finished deal is the outcome to avoid, and so is a district told the deal is all or nothing (Wilmington residents told the Committee records showed their school board was told to accept the PILOT or lose the project; if that is true, say so, and if another structure is on the table, say that). Publish the with-and-without-exemption comparison for each taxing entity; a public school educator asked the Committee for exactly that side-by-side, and it is the most common school question residents raise. [Sharp, Bickel] Model the district’s revenue by year, land separated from improvements, under each scenario, and model the effect on state aid for that district under the funding formula (it varies by district; the treasurer models it).

Training builds an AI model and uses enormous blocks of power that can sit anywhere. Inference runs the finished model when someone uses it and may benefit from being near users. They can have different power and cooling profiles.

Diesel engines, gas engines, batteries, or fuel cells that run during an outage or for scheduled testing. They need Ohio EPA air permits and are a common noise concern; testing hours are negotiable.

Equipment that cools water or fluid for a closed cooling system. Uses electricity instead of evaporating water.

A cooling design that recirculates fluid inside the building. It doesn’t guarantee zero water use; heat may still be evaporated through a tower outside. Ask for gallons.

A data center built for bitcoin mining or other interruptible computing, often air- or immersion-cooled, with few permanent jobs and a load that can drop within minutes; several Ohio sites now also host AI computing. Ask whether the load is firm or flexible (1.2).

One operator leases space, power, and cooling to several customers. Tenants and electric load can change over time.

Equipment that removes heat by evaporating water. Uses water instead of electricity.

A building housing servers, storage, and networking equipment with the power, cooling, and security systems to run them continuously.

A small facility placed near users or devices to reduce delay.

A facility a company runs for its own computing. Increasingly rare.

Cooling by evaporating water. Less electricity, more water.

The high-capacity network lines that connect a data center to the internet and other facilities. Data centers follow fiber routes.

The complete campus as designed, not the first phase. The number that matters for every approval.

A very large facility or campus, often for a single major technology company. The company is a hyperscaler. Ohio hosts more than 70 percent of the Great Lakes region’s operating hyperscale facilities.

One million watts and one billion watts. The unit data center demand is stated in. A town of 10,000 uses about 10 MW.

One stage of a multi-building campus. Approvals for phase one can lock in the design for phase four; ask for the whole thing.

Power usage effectiveness: total facility electricity divided by computing electricity. Measures cooling and building overhead, not total use.

The computer inside the data center. Thousands per building. Refreshed every few years, which matters for equipment-based taxes.

The electrical facility that steps transmission voltage down to serve the site. Every large data center needs one, on or near the parcel.

Water usage effectiveness: water consumed per unit of computing electricity. A source WUE adds the water used to generate the electricity.

Power generated on site for the facility’s own use rather than drawn from the grid. Ownership determines tax treatment; size (50 MW or more) determines whether OPSB, not local zoning, sites it.

A power plant’s standby commitment to be available at peak demand, bought by every utility for its share of projected regional load and priced in PJM’s annual auction. The price is in the generation portion of every Ohio bill.

PJM’s annual auction setting the capacity price three years ahead. The auction for June 2025 to May 2026 cleared nearly tenfold higher than the year before.

The service area a utility is legally obligated to serve under R.C. 4933.81 and 4933.82. Identify the provider from the official PUCO map, not a brand name.

A member-owned utility governed by an elected board, serving much of rural Ohio. Not regulated by PUCO the way investor-owned utilities are.

Competitive retail electric supplier: a PUCO-certified company that sells the generation portion of service. The delivery utility stays the same.

A program under which a customer reduces or shifts load, or switches to its own generation, when the grid is stressed, usually for a payment. For a data center it can mean more generator hours near homes (8.9).

The local wires, poles, and substations that deliver electricity to customers. Your utility owns these.

The signed contract under which a utility commits to serve a load. A study request or queue position is not one.

House Bill 15 (2025), effective August 14, 2025: created the “mercantile customer self-power system,” under which a large customer or a third party may own generation or storage on land the customer owns or controls or adjacent to it, delivered without utility wires. The basis for most on-site power at Ohio data centers; OPSB still sites plants of 50 MW or more (3.1, 5.7).

Making electricity: power plants, solar, wind. Separate in Ohio law from delivering it.

Connecting a generator or a large load to the grid. Governed by PJM and the utility, on their timelines.

A shareholder-owned utility regulated by PUCO. Ohio’s four: AEP Ohio, FirstEnergy’s Ohio companies, AES Ohio, Duke Energy Ohio.

The electric demand a customer places on the system. Peak load and full-buildout load drive infrastructure design.

A utility’s engineering study of whether and how it can serve a requested load. Determines feasibility and cost; not a commitment.

An electric system owned by a city or village, governed by its council. About 80 in Ohio.

The regional grid operator and wholesale market for Ohio and all or part of 12 other states plus DC.

The list of requests waiting for a utility or PJM to study and connect them. A large queue signals interest, not projects; under AEP’s tariff, less than half of studied requests became signed agreements.

Infrastructure built for a customer who never arrives or leaves early, paid for by everyone else. The central ratepayer risk.

A utility’s filed terms of service, including any special schedule for large loads. AEP Ohio’s data center tariff requires large customers to pay for a minimum share of requested capacity whether used or not. Provider-specific.

The high-voltage lines that move electricity long distances. Planned regionally through PJM; can take 4 to 7 years to build.

Moving land from a township into a city or village under R.C. Chapter 709. Several procedures with different township rights. Moves the parcel out of township zoning.

A use the code allows with administrative review only: no hearing, no discretionary vote, little community input.

Cooperative economic development agreement and joint economic development district: tools for townships and cities to share revenue and services instead of annexing. A JEDD takes a contract, a petition from a majority of the district’s property owners and business owners, hearings, and a district board that levies the income tax (R.C. 715.72); a CEDA is faster.

A city’s or village’s local constitution under home rule, which may change how zoning and contracting work there.

The community’s adopted statement of where and how it intends to grow. Township and county zoning must accord with one.

A use the code allows only after a public hearing, with conditions attached. The community keeps discretion.

Zoning of unincorporated land by a county under R.C. Chapter 303, only where voters approved it. Most counties haven’t.

Legislation passed with an emergency clause; it takes effect immediately and is generally not subject to referendum. Routine for economic development agreements, and the act residents cited most often in the hearing record; whether it always blocks a referendum is litigated (5.7).

A contract between a local government and a developer covering infrastructure, costs, commitments, and remedies that zoning can’t capture.

The authority of Ohio cities and villages over their own local affairs, including land use, under Article XVIII, Section 3 of the Ohio Constitution. Townships don’t have it; limited home rule under R.C. Chapter 504 is a statutory grant, not the constitutional one.

Local economic development organization: the county or city economic development office, private nonprofit development corporation, port authority, community improvement corporation, or chamber that receives inquiries and facilitates the community’s process.

A rezoning or zoning amendment is legislative, made by the council or trustees after a hearing and referable to the voters where charter or statute allows. A conditional use, variance, or site plan approval is administrative, decided by the planning commission or board of zoning appeals under the standards in the code and reviewed in court, not at the ballot.

A form of township government under R.C. Chapter 504 that expands township powers, including the ability to create a CRA.

A temporary pause on accepting or approving applications for a use while standards are written. Not a decision about the use; a decision to decide later.

Extra standards layered onto existing zoning for a particular use or area.

The local body that reviews plans, site plans, and rezonings and recommends or decides them under the code.

A public body under R.C. Chapter 4582 that can own land, finance infrastructure, and sign confidentiality agreements. Often the LEDO in Ohio counties.

When state or federal law removes a decision from local hands. An OPSB certificate preempts local approval for the certified power plant, not for the data center campus.

The signatures required to refer legislation to the voters: since September 30, 2025, 35 percent of the votes cast for governor for a municipal referendum (R.C. 731.29) and a township zoning referendum (R.C. 519.12), up from 10 and 15 percent; municipal initiatives remain at 10 percent (R.C. 731.28).

Changing a parcel’s zoning classification by legislative vote after a public hearing. The community’s most consequential and discretionary land-use decision.

The required distance between a structure or equipment and a property line or a neighboring use.

The detailed drawing of buildings, equipment, access, and utilities on the parcel, reviewed after zoning allows the use.

Zoning of unincorporated land by a township under R.C. Chapter 519, only where voters approved it. Many townships have partial or no zoning.

Permission to deviate from a specific code standard on a specific parcel, decided by the board of zoning appeals.

A reduction or exemption of property tax on new construction for a set period, granted by a local government by agreement. A CRA or Enterprise Zone can’t abate land value; a TIF can capture the growth in it.

The taxable value of property, set by the county auditor. In Ohio, 35 percent of appraised market value.

A provision that recovers incentives or increases payments if the recipient misses a commitment.

Community Reinvestment Area: an area in which a municipality, county, or limited home rule township may abate real property tax by agreement under R.C. 3735.65 to 3735.70, commonly up to 15 years.

Ohio’s Data Center Tax Exemption under R.C. 122.175: a state sales and use tax exemption on data center equipment approved by the Tax Credit Authority. New requests paused since June 1, 2026. Not a local decision.

A designated area in which a municipality or county may abate property tax by agreement under R.C. 5709.61 to 5709.69. A county zone requires township trustee consent in unincorporated territory and the municipality’s consent inside a city or village.

The net effect on a government’s revenue and costs: every tax paid, every tax abated, every service and infrastructure cost, by year and by jurisdiction.

The tax cities and villages levy on wages earned within their boundaries, typically 1 to 2.5 percent. Data center payroll produces it; townships can’t levy it (except through a JEDD). A school district income tax, where a district has one, is paid by the district’s residents wherever they work, so a project’s payroll reaches it only through employees who live in the district.

Financial security a developer posts so that if a payment or commitment fails, the community can draw on it.

The property tax rate, in mills (dollars per $1,000 of assessed value). Schools receive most of it.

A negotiated payment floor under R.C. 5709.91 that attaches to the land, binds any future owner, and is collected like property tax. The strongest Ohio version of a PILOT.

New Community Authority under R.C. Chapter 349: a body that can levy a community development charge on a defined district, organized by petition to the municipality or, outside one, the board of county commissioners. New Albany uses one as part of its minimum payment.

Payment in lieu of taxes: a negotiated payment that replaces some or all of the tax an abatement removes. Formulas, recipients, and instruments vary.

Tax on real property based on assessed value and millage. The main thing a local government can trade in a data center deal.

Tax on purchases. The state exemption on data center equipment is what “DCTE” refers to. Counties get a share of ordinary sales tax and have no role in the exemption decision.

The separate agreement under which a school district negotiates its share of revenue when an abatement is granted (R.C. 5709.82, 5709.83, 3735.671). Where a municipality grants the exemption and new payroll reaches the indexed threshold, R.C. 5709.82(C) requires the municipality to negotiate one, with a 50 percent income tax default if it can’t.

The state body that approves the data center exemption and other state incentives. Not local.

Tax increment financing: redirects the tax on the growth in a parcel’s value, land and buildings, into service payments for public improvements. Municipal (R.C. 5709.40), township (5709.73), and county (5709.77) versions. Reviewed annually by the TIRC.

Tax Incentive Review Council: the county body that reviews every CRA and enterprise zone agreement, and every TIF exemption, annually under R.C. 5709.85, receives the company’s required annual report, and recommends that each agreement continue, change, or end; the granting body must vote on the recommendation within 60 days.

A property owner’s challenge to the auditor’s assessed value. Successful appeals reduce tax revenue over the life of a project.

Community benefits agreement: a binding contract recording a developer’s commitments to a community. Enforceable only against parties who validly signed.

The person or company that ultimately owns or controls a project entity, behind any shell company or LLC that holds the land or signs the agreement. Disclosure of it as a condition of incentives was one witness’s central ask (Part 6, Stage 2).

The alias a developer uses for a project during site selection. Normal; the end user’s identity is usually the real secret.

The time a party has to fix a violation after notice before remedies apply. Typically 30 to 60 days.

In an exemption agreement, an investment or job figure the company offers without committing to it. Common in Ohio CRA templates; ask whether the figures are estimates or commitments with remedies, and whether a minimum payment makes the difference moot.

Removing equipment and restoring the site when a facility closes. Ohio requires a plan and a bond for large solar and wind; for data centers it exists only where a community negotiates it, up front and backed by security.

The company whose equipment will actually occupy the facility. Often undisclosed until late.

An Ohio EPA permit for wastewater sent to a municipal treatment plant rather than a stream, which may be required depending on the discharge’s volume against the plant’s capacity or at the municipality’s request (4.2).

The consultant or intermediary who makes first contact and screens sites for a developer.

Nondisclosure agreement: a promise to keep project information confidential. Standard in site selection; negotiable; who signs matters under public records law.

Ohio’s requirement (R.C. 121.22) that public bodies deliberate in public. Executive session is allowed to consider an applicant’s confidential information or negotiations for economic development assistance, on a unanimous roll-call vote and only for the programs the statute lists (division (G)(8)).

A developer’s right to buy land at a set price within a set time. Land control without ownership; often the first sign of a project.

Ohio’s requirement (R.C. 149.43) that government records be available to the public, with limited exceptions. An NDA doesn’t override it.

An obligation attached to the property itself, so it binds any future owner. The difference between a commitment and a guarantee.

Terms requiring a buyer, new tenant, or new operator to assume the original commitments.

County Commissioners Association of Ohio.

Ohio’s private nonprofit economic development corporation, working through seven regional network partners. Compiled the original reference guide. JobsOhio says its only data center incentive was a one-time incentive for AWS’s first New Albany data center in 2014 and 2015; it does fund suppliers to the industry (its June 11 testimony cites grants to Vertiv, Westrafo, and AC Green); it decides nothing about local approvals. [Cooper]

The Ohio General Assembly’s joint committee that held five hearings in May and June 2026 and requested the reference guide.

Ohio Consumers’ Counsel. The state agency that represents residential utility customers before PUCO; the address for residents’ rate questions (5.4).

Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Registers water withdrawals; testified it can’t isolate data center water use inside municipal totals.

Ohio Department of Development. Administers state incentives with the Tax Credit Authority.

Issues air permits for generators and permits for wetlands and direct water discharges. Most data centers send wastewater to a municipal plant and need no Ohio EPA discharge permit; the plant’s capacity and pretreatment rules govern instead.

Ohio Municipal League.

Ohio Power Siting Board. Certifies power plants of 50 MW or more and transmission of 100 kV or more under R.C. Chapter 4906, including on-site plants serving data centers.

Ohio School Boards Association.

Ohio Township Association.

Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Regulates investor-owned utilities and their tariffs.

One of JobsOhio’s seven regional economic development organizations, which may receive early site inquiries.