The petitioners now need to gather signatures and submit those to the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office before the proposed amendment makes it onto the ballot.
This petition comes as Ohioans’ concern over data center growth in the state is rising. Data centers use a lot of electricity and water, and proposed projects in Ohio have garnered tax breaks.
Proponents of the new centers said that it brings in jobs, particularly in construction and electrical fields.
Bobby Angst, business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 648, said that the construction of the data centers are bringing back demand for electricians, adding that he had multiple pages of applicants he could put on the projects.
However, critics of the centers like Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, said that they don’t think the centers will bring lasting economic benefits to the area.
O’Leary compared the centers to fracking and natural gas production, which is similarly capital-intensive but uses much less labor. He said that the companies hire very few workers from the area, and with tax incentives don’t provide much revenue for the host communities either.
He pointed to the more than $110 billion in investment to build fracking infrastructure in Eastern Ohio.
“I mean, process that number for a moment: $110 billion in a region that only has a combined population of 300,000 people. Now, you would think that if billion-dollar investments were going to be economically game-changing, this place should be Shangri-La. In fact, those eight counties have experienced the worst job loss and the worst population loss in the state of Ohio since the beginning of the natural gas boom,” he said.
Ohio’s process to put citizen petitions on the ballot requires that the petitioners gather signatures from 44 of the 88 counties, and get signatures equal to at least 5% of the number of people who voted in that county in the last gubernatorial election. In total, those petitions need to equal 10% of the number of people in Ohio that voted in the last gubernatorial election.
The secretary of state’s office would then need to verify sufficient signatures by at least 65 days before the election before the measure makes it onto the ballot.
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