Village voters get say in multi-million-dollar data center project

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(The Center Square) – The tiny Ohio village of Ashville, population around 4,500, has a data center and natural gas power plant headed its way.

In April, the village signed a multi-million-dollar contract with a company called EdgeConnex for the lucrative 195-acre project as Ohio continues to attract more data centers – and the opposition that follows them.

But the Ohio Supreme Court recently put the brakes on the data center and power plant project, ruling that the village must first submit a referendum petition to the board of elections seeking a public vote on the contract.

The village initially did not seek a referendum, instead approved the projects as an emergency “necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health, and safety of this municipality,” according to an Ohio State Supreme Court ruling.

The village fiscal office made the determination that the projects were emergencies, according to the Supreme Court ruling.

A citizens group called Pickaway Informed Citizens came out strongly against the Ashville data center and power plant in briefs to the Ohio Supreme Court.

“The profusion of hundreds of gigantic data centers across Ohio is increasingly pitting residents against their own local governments on issues ranging from zoning to dramatic environmental effects to various public subsidies running from the tens into hundreds of millions of dollars,” the group wrote, “Pickaway County is presently beset with at least two major data center development efforts, one in Asheville and another in Commercial Point, a village about eight miles away. There are citizen referendum campaigns in both villages in opposition to data centers.”

Referendums are crucial to the process of deciding whether communities allow data centers, the citizens groups wrote.

 “It is the city itself legislating through its voters an exercise by the voters of their traditional right through direct legislation to override the views of their elected representatives as to what serves the public interest,” the group said.

In arguing that the Village acted correctly in declaring an emergency rather than a referendum petition, the village in court documents stated, “Article II, Section 1f of the Ohio Constitution reserves the power of referendum only for matters involving legislative actions.”

Approving the data center and power plant quickly was also because of financial reasons, the village argued.

“Council adopted it as an emergency for a very specific municipal reason – to approve the term sheet and its summary terms, including funding being directed to the Village,” the village wrote.