Jerome Township

It secured a 30-year property tax abatement in New Albany, paying nothing for the first 15 years.

And in Jerome Township, where two enormous Amazon data centers now sit, the facilities pay no property taxes under the abatements they received.

Meanwhile, they've called local emergency services 84 times since 2021.

In April 2025, a single fire kept firefighters on site for 30 hours.

In his veto message, he wrote that Ohio needed the exemption to remain competitive with other states for technology jobs and capital investment.

The communities absorbing the cost took a different view.

Jerome Township was the first local government in Ohio to impose a moratorium on new data center construction.

Lordstown followed and Washington Township too.

But data centers are getting thrown up really quickly and they keep catching fire.

Two Amazon data centers in Jerome Township in Ohio started construction in 2021 and they called the local fire department 84 times between 2021 and 2025.

Of course, Amazon is not paying for any of this.

They got a 10-year tax abatement.

The fire chief wrote to Amazon, quote, The very lives of our employees and the lives of my firefighters are at stake and no one at AWS seems to care.

Unquote.

Jerome Township ended up freezing new data centers for nine months.

Data centers catching fire has been a chronic problem for years.

Even Moore's Republican colleagues in the supermajority Kentucky legislature are coming around to modifying tax abatements after a Republican Senate leader said that the levy was no longer necessary.

In 2025, Jerome Township, Ohio was strapped.

Its fire department and other services couldn't handle the 84 emergencies that two Amazon data centers racked up since 2021.

One fire took about 30 hours to extinguish.