DeWine says local government should be ‘aggressive’ with data centers, as OpenAI plans $500 billion project

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine told people in Ohio’s cities and towns on Tuesday that they should be more “aggressive” when they negotiate deals with the data center developers.

DeWine offered the advice at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Big Bets for America summit in Cleveland, according to Signal Ohio. His remarks come as OpenAI says that it wants to build a giant $500 billion data center in the Buckeye State.

“I know it’s been controversial,” DeWine said. “Here is my message to any community that is not worried about data centers: cut a good deal. The deal is in your hands.”

DeWine also brought up the fact that Ohioans previously expressed concerns over the data centers negatively affecting the environment, their health, and their bills, saying that these local communities have a right to demand that the data center developers stop doing all of those things and “be aggressive” when they negotiate a deal with these Big Tech companies.

“Don’t just take what they give you,” he said, according to the news source.

DeWine, however, then opposed the complete abolition of the data centers in Ohio.

“We can’t throw them completely out and say, ‘Oh no, we don’t — we want to close the walls of the state of Ohio, and we don’t want any data centers to come in’ any more than we can do that to any other business,” he said. “It’s just where the future is. This is now, and we have to be, we have to be part of it.”

DeWine previously paused a sales tax exemption for new data centers being built in the state, adding that he still expects data centers to open even without the exemption.

Meanwhile, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, a well-known AI chatbot, announced it is currently negotiating with the federal government to lease a 10-gigawatt data center campus in southern Ohio, Reuters reported. According to the report, the data center could cost at least $500 billion to build, and OpenAI would control it for 20 years starting in 2028.

Meanwhile, Ohio lawmakers are fighting data centers in the state by introducing several bills, including one that would permanently eliminate tax exemptions for data centers, per NBC 4.

State Rep. Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, a sponsor of House Bill 975, said that DeWine’s temporary pause was a “step in the right direction, but it is not nearly enough,” according to the news source.

“In a state where people have to constantly stretch their dollar further, do more with less, and even completely go without certain services, it is shameful that the state government would choose to give away over a billion dollars to Big Tech,” Rader said, according to NBC 4.

Rader added that his legislation is a companion bill to the bipartisan Senate Bill 374. The only difference between the two bills is that Rader’s bill would end the sales tax exemption on Oct. 1, and Senate Bill 374 would do the same only one year after that.

Substitute House Bill 646 was also introduced to regulate Ohio’s constantly growing development of data centers, according to 9 WCPO. On Thursday, the Joint Data Center Committee held its fifth public hearing, during which many organizations testified, including the Ohio Department of Development, JobsOhio, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

In his testimony, JobsOhio’s Senior Managing Director, External Affairs, Drew Cooper, said that the organization’s “engagement with specific data center projects is largely indirect and advisory,” and that it “does not currently offer JobsOhio grants, loans, or other financial incentives to attract data center projects and has not done so in more than a decade.”