Today in Ohio - Oct. 15, 2026 A new reason for Ohioans to be outraged about the state government's embrace of data centers

Leila, in what has to be one of the most outrageous stories to come from Ohio's incredibly anti-citizen embrace of data centers, Anna Staver, like I said, tells the story about how a data center has the right to pretty much condemn private property for use in transmitting power.

Let's talk about this travesty.

Yeah, Chris, I, I think we're, we're seeing here how far Ohio is willing to go to accommodate the data center industry, even at the expense of its own residents.

Anna tells the story of Lauren Dill Morton, whose family has farmed 523 acres in Ross County for more than 200 years.

It's land that's been in her family since President Thomas Jefferson signed the original land grant.

And now she faces the possibility of having a 150-foot steel transmission towers running through her cornfields, all to deliver electricity to a massive AI data center being developed in Piketon.

And she doesn't wanna sell, but Ohio law could allow the utility to take the land anyway through eminent domain.

Eminent domain is supposed to be reserved for projects that serve the public good, and Ohio actually strengthened its property rights protections back in 2007, specifically to prevent the government from taking people's property for private commercial development.

But lawmakers carved out an exception for utilities, whose projects are presumed to serve the public.

Well, that was before these enormous data centers came along.

This particular project could require 10 gigawatts of electricity.

That's more than all the households in Ohio combined, and the utility is planning three transmission lines to serve it.

The developer, SoftBank, has even agreed to cover the cost of this.

So we're talking about infrastructure being built specifically to accommodate one private company's extraordinary electricity demands.

And yet because the utility is building those lines, it potentially gets to invoke eminent domain and force unwilling property owners to give up rights to their land.

The Ohio Business Roundtable has actually proposed going further, giving energy projects expanded powers to take property even while owners are appealing their compensation.

There is one lawmaker, at least one, Democrat Tristan Rader of Lakewood, who wants the legislature to revisit these rules.

But with Republicans controlling both chambers, the prospects aren't particularly promising.

Well, I do think voters are going to speak loudly on data centers on November 3rd with respect to John Husted's role in data centers, so maybe the Republicans in Columbus will get that message.

People are furious about them.

This is just completely wrong.

When, when you look at the power the utilities have now to just, just abuse us in support of data centers, which gives them a huge market for their electricity sales, it, it's a sin.

This, these laws were created to help electrify Ohio, to make sure that everybody had access to power.

It was never intended to let a big tech company just wantonly steal precious land from a longtime farmer.

Anna did a story not long ago that looked at how unregulated the transmission line work can be.

Leila, in what has to be one of the most outrageous stories to come from Ohio's incredibly anti-citizen embrace of data centers, Anna Staver, like I said, tells the story about how a data center has the right to pretty much condemn private property for use in transmitting power.

Let's talk about this travesty.

Yeah, Chris, I, I think we're, we're seeing here how far Ohio is willing to go to accommodate the data center industry, even at the expense of its own residents.

Anna tells the story of Lauren Dill Morton, whose family has farmed 523 acres in Ross County for more than 200 years.

It's land that's been in her family since President Thomas Jefferson signed the original land grant.

And now she faces the possibility of having a 150-foot steel transmission towers running through her cornfields, all to deliver electricity to a massive AI data center being developed in Piketon.

And she doesn't wanna sell, but Ohio law could allow the utility to take the land anyway through eminent domain.

Eminent domain is supposed to be reserved for projects that serve the public good, and Ohio actually strengthened its property rights protections back in 2007, specifically to prevent the government from taking people's property for private commercial development.

But lawmakers carved out an exception for utilities, whose projects are presumed to serve the public.

Well, that was before these enormous data centers came along.

This particular project could require 10 gigawatts of electricity.

That's more than all the households in Ohio combined, and the utility is planning three transmission lines to serve it.

The developer, SoftBank, has even agreed to cover the cost of this.

So we're talking about infrastructure being built specifically to accommodate one private company's extraordinary electricity demands.

And yet because the utility is building those lines, it potentially gets to invoke eminent domain and force unwilling property owners to give up rights to their land.

The Ohio Business Roundtable has actually proposed going further, giving energy projects expanded powers to take property even while owners are appealing their compensation.

There is one lawmaker, at least one, Democrat Tristan Rader of Lakewood, who wants the legislature to revisit these rules.

But with Republicans controlling both chambers, the prospects aren't particularly promising.

Well, I do think voters are going to speak loudly on data centers on November 3rd with respect to John Husted's role in data centers, so maybe the Republicans in Columbus will get that message.

People are furious about them.

This is just completely wrong.

When, when you look at the power the utilities have now to just, just abuse us in support of data centers, which gives them a huge market for their electricity sales, it, it's a sin.

This, these laws were created to help electrify Ohio, to make sure that everybody had access to power.

It was never intended to let a big tech company just wantonly steal precious land from a longtime farmer.

Anna did a story not long ago that looked at how unregulated the transmission line work can be.