In Twinsburg, the debate over data centers began with a landowner asking whether he could market a 40-acre property to the industry.
The city’s answer was no, according to Councilman Bill Furey. Data centers were not a permitted use under its zoning code. The landowner began an appeal process, residents raised objections and council imposed a moratorium to give officials time to study the issue.
Furey said the city first needs to define what counts as a data center.
“We want to make sure that we define what we’re talking about,” Furey said.
The issue is now moving from zoning chambers to discussions around utility bills, jobs and Ohio elections.
Townships and cities throughout Ohio – including several in Portage and Summit counties – have enacted moratoriums like Twinsburg’s. In Shalersville Township, trustees amended industrial zoning definitions on Oct. 6, creating new regulations prompted by a proposed 750-megawatt data-center campus from Geis Companies and Bitdeer Technologies Group near the Ohio Turnpike.
The changes place operations capable of using or generating at least 25 megawatts in the heavy-industrial category, although the township has no land zoned for that use. The township’s data-center moratorium remains in place until early November, and trustees have said they will extend it if necessary.
So many people were interested in the Shalersville meetings that audience members stood outside the building and listened through open windows in June. The Portage County Regional Planning Commission, which took up the issue at the Oct. 14 meeting, anticipated such a large crowd that they relocated from their normal small meeting place to a larger room at nearby Crestwood schools.
Michael Ensley, a political scientist at Kent State University, said data centers offer a common concern for people whose political viewpoints otherwise might be wildly different.
Some, he said, worry about electricity bills or water consumption. Others fear job losses associated with artificial intelligence, dislike incentives given by governments to corporations or distrust the relationship between technology companies and government.
“No matter how you approach politics at the moment, there’s something to latch onto here that you don’t like,” Ensley said.
People can oppose the same projects for different reasons, and candidates can appeal to those concerns.
It’s become a “Swiss Army knife … for our politics,” he said. “It doesn’t fit easily into right versus left.”
Voters are watching that play out in elections this fall, from local to national, and everywhere in between.
In Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, Democrat Sherrod Brown has made data centers part of his affordability argument, criticizing Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s support for the industry and calling for developers to pay their full utility costs, in addition to ending tax breaks and allowing residents to have a say in whether projects enter their communities.
Husted has defended the developments’ economic benefits while promoting the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require state utility regulators to consider standards making large electricity users cover infrastructure costs. The House passed the measure, but it failed to advance in the Senate Sept. 30 amid Democratic objections that it would not require states to adopt those protections.
In the governor’s race, Democrat Amy Acton supports a conditional moratorium on data centers until developers meet requirements addressing utility costs, union labor, transparency, environmental protection and community benefits. Her proposal would require new facilities to be located on brownfields or previously developed industrial sites rather than farmland.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy proposes temporarily halting new project approvals until legislation establishes his conditions, including free electricity for nearby households, property-tax relief funded by data-center revenues and environmental safeguards. His plan prioritizes former industrial sites.
The issue has also entered the Portage County commissioner race. Democrat Jenny D. Adams told the League of Women Voters she opposes data centers and supports zoning regulations prohibiting that land use.
“I personally am not in favor of data centers,” she wrote.
Republican Mike Tinlin had not responded when the guide was published, but he told The Portager, "I believe our residents have made a no data center plea very clear. I agree and I work with and for those residents."
In Twinsburg, Furey said the city wants to hear competing perspectives before deciding whether to change its rules. Existing businesses, schools and the city itself use servers, he noted. Furey wants rules that distinguish between large data centers and smaller server racks already in use at businesses and public organizations.
“Just because you have servers, I don’t want to say that’s a data center,” Furey said. “We’re not in a hurry to do anything. We’re going to take our time.”
While local governments – and candidates – grapple with the issue, the Ohio legislature is also taking it on. Furey said he had contacted state Rep. Heidi Workman’s office seeking a conversation about that work. Ohio lawmakers convened a bipartisan select committee, including Workman, to gather testimony from community members, businesses and other stakeholders. Separately, House Bill 646, originally introduced to establish a data-center study commission, passed the House in March but has not passed the Senate.
The state discussion also raises a question for communities writing their own rules: How much authority will remain local?
Asked about the possibility of state action overriding local restrictions, Furey pointed to Twinsburg’s charter and its authority over local zoning.
“I would say that I’m a charter city, which means that I get to make my own rules,” he said, adding, “to a certain extent.”