We’re now seeing communities like Hilliard and Lordstown trying to ban data centers — the next major wave of investment and job creation in Ohio. These projects would bring high-paying, tech-driven employment to rural and suburban areas, yet local councils are moving to outlaw them outright. The rationale? The same fear-driven talking points used to block renewable energy: “too much water,” “too noisy,” “hurts property values.”
Once government emboldens one group of neighbors to restrict what others can do with their land, it never stops there. If they can tell a farmer he can’t lease land for a solar project, what’s next? Telling him he can’t raise cattle because the new subdivision down the road doesn’t like the smell? Once the precedent is set, every industry — every landowner — is at risk.
Property rights are the foundation of a free society. Without them, we are no longer owners, but tenants under government permission. That’s not liberty — it’s socialism in slow motion.
Ohio’s economic strength has always come from private investment and individual enterprise. Data centers, renewable energy, and agriculture all depend on the same freedom: the right to use one’s property as one chooses, within the law. When local governments begin outlawing industries, they aren’t protecting communities — they’re dismantling the very system that built them.
We should be asking ourselves: who’s next? When government is given the power to decide what’s acceptable use of private land, every citizen’s rights are on borrowed time. It’s time for Ohioans — farmers, business owners, and local leaders alike — to stand up and say enough.
Freedom doesn’t disappear all at once. It’s chipped away — one ordinance, one ban, one veto at a time. And if we don’t protect our property rights now, we’ll soon find we don’t have any left to defend.
Tony Zartman is a former Paulding County Commissioner and Director of Programs & Operations, Property Rights Ohio and the Ohio Conservative Energy Forum.
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