This article first appeared on Policy Matters Ohio
$1.6B: Amount of revenue lost to Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption last year — about 11 times the originally projected cost. Back in January of 2025, we called that original number a lowball estimate, but we didn’t know it would be that low. This billion-and-a-half-dollar subsidy for some of the world’s richest corporations is far more expensive than advertised, while producing relatively few permanent jobs. After the real cost was revealed, even Gov. DeWine — who once vetoed a repeal of the exemption — had to pump the breaks, pausing consideration of new applications for the break. If lawmakers are serious about responsible budgeting, they should repeal the break for new projects. They will also need to figure out a way to deal with the existing agreements — the ones responsible for that $1.6B price tag, which benefit the likes of Google, Amazon, and Meta — since a repeal won’t affect them. That’s just one of the many issues facing the legislature’s new joint committee on data centers.
$26.8M: Amountof revenue lost to Ohio’s tax exemption for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) in 2023. That’s $26.8 million dollars that Ohio did not collect from taxpayers and therefore couldn’t use for public goods such as education, healthcare, and health and human services. (Remember all the things the legislature said we couldn’t afford to include in the state budget? The SGO credit is a drop in the bucket, but when combined with all the other credits, deductions, exemptions and preferential rates in Ohio’s tax code, it isn’t hard to see where all the money went.) Starting in 2027, the federal government will also offer an income tax credit for donations to SGOs. All of which makes it a good time to get to know how SGOs work, and why Ohio shouldn’t reward their donors with a dollar-for-dollar credit.
3: Number of elements that determine the success of a behavioral health care continuum: someone to call, someone to respond, and somewhere to go. As highlighted in our recent policy update, Cleveland and Cuyahoga County have made some progress on all three, while leaving lots of room for improvement. Expanding non-police response teams is a big step, but without integrating 911 and 988, the service won’t reach many of the people who need it. Non-police responders can reduce the number of routine calls that end with police violence, but repairing trust with communities will require the City of Cleveland to fulfill the terms of its consent decree. And new facilities lose impact when they replace, rather than add to, existing capacity. A functioning crisis care continuum requires all three working together — not tradeoffs or half-measures that come up short.
5: Number of years since Gov. DeWine prematurely ended unemployment payments to Ohio workers through the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation program. Ohioans have been challenging the move in court for almost as long. Last year, a judge ordered the governor to claim the funding and restore the lost benefits. He didn’t. Instead, Gov. DeWine had his lawyers file multiple appeals, taking the case all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. That’s right: Ohio’s governor has spent the last five years fighting in court to avoid claiming up to $900M in federal funding for Ohioans who lost their jobs during the pandemic.
0.5: Percentage-point decline in union representation in Ohio last year, from 13.3% of the workforce to 12.8%. On the bright side, Ohio’s public sector workers added more than 15,000 members. Gains in healthcare, social assistance, and cultural institutions show workers are still organizing, but decades of policy decisions continue to erode overall membership. Laws like Taft-Hartley and recent state actions such as Senate Bill 1 restricting faculty strikes weaken workers’ bargaining power, even as union approval remains strong. As we showed in our recent report, these trends reflect policy choices. And as report author Heather Smith argues in a recent op-ed for Cleveland.com, reversing the decline will require lawmakers to stop restricting collective bargaining and instead strengthen it.