Produce Here, Power Here, Keep the Return Here

Build dependable energy, protect households from speculative costs, and require data centers to leave Ohio better off.

Ohio will need more electricity as homes, vehicles, factories, data centers, and other parts of the economy electrify. We should meet that demand by producing more dependable energy, strengthening the grid, and using the resources Ohio has.

Families should not have to choose between reliability, affordability, and cleaner technology. Nor should they be forced to subsidize enormous private energy users through higher utility bills.

My standard is performance, safety, and public return, not loyalty to one industry.

Build an all-of-the-above energy system

I support a practical mix of advanced nuclear power, existing nuclear generation, natural gas, solar, storage, transmission, efficiency, and emerging technologies wherever they can deliver dependable energy at a responsible cost.

These tools do different jobs:

Nuclear and natural gas can provide dependable generation.
Solar and storage can add power quickly, reduce peak demand, and improve flexibility.
Transmission connects regions and lets the system move electricity where it is needed.
Efficiency and demand management can reduce the amount of expensive new capacity customers must finance.

Ohio should stop treating energy sources as political identities and start judging how they work together.

Make Ohio a home for advanced nuclear power

Ohio already has a Nuclear Development Authority. It should move from broad ambition to a public, practical roadmap for small modular reactors, advanced research reactors, isotope production, and the manufacturing supply chain that supports them.

That roadmap should:

Coordinate Ohio universities, manufacturers, utilities, federal regulators, labor, and potential host communities.
Identify sites where new generation could serve industrial and household demand without shifting unnecessary costs to ratepayers.
Publish realistic construction, operating, waste-management, and decommissioning plans.
Tie public support to federal safety approval and measurable project milestones.
Protect taxpayers and ratepayers if a project is delayed, abandoned, or fails to perform.

Supporting nuclear development does not mean writing a blank check. It means using an authority Ohio has already created to do serious technical, financial, and workforce planning.

Strengthen the grid and make new demand pay its way

Ohio needs clear forecasts showing how much generation, transmission, distribution, and storage capacity is required; what it will cost; and who will pay.

I support:

Faster, coordinated review of responsible generation, storage, transmission, and distribution projects.
Clear permitting deadlines that preserve air, water, safety, property, and due-process protections.
Separate or clearly identifiable rate treatment for unusually large new loads.
Meaningful deposits, credit support, minimum-demand commitments, and exit charges before utilities build around speculative demand.
Protection for households and small businesses from stranded costs when a proposed project is delayed, downsized, or abandoned.
Public reporting that compares projected demand with actual use and updates infrastructure plans accordingly.

An ordinary customer should not finance infrastructure built for a multibillion-dollar company and then keep paying when that company changes its plans.

Data centers: build it right, or do not build it here

Artificial intelligence is real technology. Used well, it can make Ohio businesses and workers more productive. But enthusiasm for AI does not make every data-center proposal a good bargain.

Data centers can require enormous amounts of electricity, grid infrastructure, land, water, and backup generation while creating relatively few permanent jobs. Ohioans should not be left paying for overbuilding if demand forecasts fail or computing technology changes.

The General Assembly is already debating this issue. The Senate's 2026 version of House Bill 646 proposed a separate rate class and cost allocation for data centers, along with major tax and local-government changes, but the chambers did not reach agreement before the bill returned to committee. House Bill 706 separately proposes minimum requirements for data-center customers.

Those are useful starting points. My complete public-interest test is:

Big power users pay their own way

Recover the grid, transmission, generation, and connection costs created by unusually large loads from those customers.
Require binding financial commitments before utilities begin major construction.
Do not let a special contract quietly transfer risk to residential and small-business customers.
Apply baseline protections across Ohio instead of waiting for a crisis in each utility territory.

No blank-check tax breaks

Before any future state incentive is approved, the public should see:

The estimated value and duration of the tax benefit.
The number of permanent jobs, expected payroll, and local tax revenue.
Expected electricity, water, and wastewater demand.
Required public infrastructure and who will pay for it.
Enforceable performance milestones and automatic clawbacks.

An incentive should buy a measurable public benefit. It should not reward a project merely for being large.

Protect local communities and natural resources

Preserve meaningful local authority over zoning, siting, setbacks, noise, traffic, and community fit.
Require public water-use, wastewater, and drought-contingency plans.
Enforce air-quality rules for backup generation and emergency operations.
Coordinate data-center approvals with real additions to dependable generation and grid capacity.
Require emergency-response planning with local fire and public-safety agencies.

I reject both a blank check and a blanket statewide ban. Clear rules can distinguish a useful project from a bad bargain.

AI safety: regulate the risk, not the buzzword

Artificial intelligence policy should distinguish between ordinary software and the highest-capability systems that can create much larger safety, cybersecurity, privacy, or misuse risks.

Ohio should not build a licensing regime for every startup, open-source project, classroom experiment, or hobbyist model. Rules should focus on the largest developers and operators when a system crosses clearly defined capability, compute, deployment, or critical-infrastructure thresholds.

For those higher-risk systems, I support:

Using the NIST AI Risk Management Framework and its generative-AI guidance as a common technical baseline instead of inventing an incompatible Ohio-only checklist.
Requiring a documented safety and security plan that identifies foreseeable high-consequence risks, the controls used to reduce them, and who inside the organization is responsible for those controls.
Independent testing and evaluation appropriate to the system's risk before high-capability models are deployed in critical state functions or other high-consequence settings.
Timely reporting of serious incidents, including material failures of safety controls, theft or unauthorized access to high-value model weights, major cybersecurity breaches, or deployment incidents that cause substantial harm.
Protecting employees and contractors who report concealed safety problems, falsified evaluations, or violations of required safeguards.
Strong cybersecurity around model weights, training infrastructure, sensitive data, and access controls.
Clear disclosure when a state agency uses AI to make or materially influence a high-impact decision affecting a person's liberty, benefits, employment, education, or access to services, along with a meaningful path to human review.

The state should review thresholds regularly as the technology changes. The goal is not to freeze AI development. It is to make sure the companies building the most capable systems have basic duties to test, secure, report, and take responsibility for what they deploy.

Capture a fair public return from Ohio's resources

Domestic energy production can create jobs, reduce risk, and generate lasting public value, but only if Ohio negotiates for Ohioans as seriously as private companies negotiate for themselves.

Ohio's core severance tax remains ten cents per barrel of oil and two-and-one-half cents per thousand cubic feet of natural gas, in addition to separate regulatory assessments. Before changing a rate, Ohio should publish a complete comparison of its severance taxes, royalties, fees, regulatory costs, and producing-community support against other energy-producing states.

Then Ohio should offer a clear bargain: faster and more predictable permitting, stable rules, and honest timelines in exchange for competitive compensation to taxpayers and host communities.

The order of priorities matters:

Fully fund regulators, environmental protection, orphan-well cleanup, and infrastructure needs in producing communities.
Use competitive terms and public disclosure for every lease of a publicly owned resource.
Tie incentives to enforceable performance standards and recover funds when promises are not kept.
Appropriate any additional public-return revenue openly to defined, high-value purposes rather than letting it disappear into ordinary spending.

Programs such as maternity-cost relief and medical-service scholarships may deserve a defined share of new revenue, but I am not promising benefits against money that has not been collected. Funding must be appropriated transparently, and recurring commitments should not depend on volatile revenue.

Help willing communities buy power together

Ohio law already permits municipalities, townships, and counties to aggregate electricity demand and to work together. The state should offer optional technical support and a purchasing pool that helps willing local governments negotiate at a larger scale while preserving local and household choice.

Every participating contract should use competitive bids, independent auditing, a clear comparison with the utility's default rate, and an easy consumer opt-out. I do not support forcing the entire state into one politically controlled contract.

The goal is energy abundance with accountability: produce more here, make the system stronger, and keep a fair share of the value here for the people of Ohio.