Jon Husted

Jon Husted spent years rolling out the red carpet for data centers in Ohio. He cut ribbon after ribbon, issued press release after press release, and handed out tax breaks that would make your head spin.

Now, with a Senate election on the line, he’s suddenly positioning himself as the guy who’s going to rein them in, and Today in Ohio podcast hosts just aren’t buying it.

Husted’s “Ratepayer Protection Act” would direct state utility regulators to ensure that large power consumers — like data centers — pay the full cost of any grid upgrades needed to serve them. It would also require those companies to provide financial guarantees so that ordinary ratepayers aren’t left holding the bag if a tech giant backs out.

Podcast host Laura Johnston noted that Husted makes the proposal as his opponent, Sherrod Brown, has been hammering Husted on the data center issue. Data centers have become terribly unpopular in Ohio and elsewhere, and Husted’s deep ties to them are a political liability. Host Chris Quinn said Husted, as lieutenant governor, was a data center’s best friend.

“John Husted and Mike DeWine could not do enough to get data centers into Ohio and they never cared about what it would do to the grid and to our bills,” Quinn said.

In 2024 alone, Husted stood alongside Google executives to celebrate a $2.3 billion data center investment in central Ohio, hailing the company as proof that the state was becoming a major tech hub. What he didn’t advertise at the podium: Ohio had granted Google, Amazon, and Meta a 100% sales tax exemption for up to 40 years, Johnston said. .

For Google, that breaks down to roughly $30 million in tax breaks per job created.

Ohio now hosts more than 200 data centers, making it one of the national leaders. Those centers are power-hungry by design, and the strain on the electrical grid has been enormous. Utility companies — longtime political allies of both Husted and DeWine — have profited handsomely, while ordinary Ohioans have watched their electric bills climb. Quinn asked where Husted’s desire to regulate the data centers was when he was bringing them to Ohio by the dozen.

“If he actually cared about us, he would have insisted on this all the way back at the beginning. He’s only doing it now because he could lose this election,” Quinn said.

Lisa Garvin added that even the new bill doesn’t go far enough, suggesting Husted should be requiring data centers to commit to powering their operations with renewable energy. Johnston pushed further, arguing that communities housing these massive facilities deserve something back in return. The Ohio Business Roundtable has projected that energy demands could jump another 50% over the next decade because of data center growth — meaning the problem is only going to get worse.

Quinn’s prescription? Husted should be going back to every tech company that received a sweetheart deal in Ohio renegotiating those 40-year tax exemptions. That would be a genuine act of accountability. A new bill, passed now, while those deals remain locked in, won’t have much meaning.

“He’s the one that put us in this situation. It’s just too little, too late. And I think it’s just a desperation election move. He’s blinking,” Quinn said.

The bipartisan support for the bill — a similar version passed in the House — suggests Republicans have recognized how toxic this issue has become with voters.

Listen to the episode here.

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