A proposal to regulate Ohio data centers stalled this week after lawmakers failed to reach agreement on Substitute House Bill 646, legislation that raised significant concerns for manufacturers and other electric customers.
With the Senate not expected to return before summer recess, the bill is likely dead until lame duck, giving lawmakers time to replace a rushed utility-driven framework with real customer protections.
In a key vote alert to lawmakers, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) strongly opposed the bill in its current form and urged removal of the tariff mechanism, warning it could create long-term cost-shifting risks for Ohio customers. Real customer protection means requiring utilities to prove projected demand before customers are asked to pay for it.
While OMA is not asking lawmakers to shield any customer from costs it causes, those costs must be based on actual cost causation, verified demand and nondiscriminatory rules.
“HB 646 did not deserve to cross the finish line,” said OMA President Ryan Augsburger. “It asked Ohio customers to trust utility forecasts, accept discriminatory ratemaking and hope the costs would not come back to them later. That is the opposite of customer protection. That is a blank check.”
The electricity provisions in the bill did nothing to require utilities to prove their forecasts before customers are asked to pay. They did nothing to stop speculative demand from becoming real costs. And they did nothing to protect Ohio families, small businesses or manufacturers from utility planning assumptions that may never materialize.
OMA warned that the bill moved away from Ohio’s traditional cost-causation framework by selectively targeting a single industry based primarily on its end use of electricity. Creating discriminatory utility policies for one industry opens the door for future efforts to penalize other industry sectors or customer types, including manufacturing.
John Seryak, founder of RunnerStone LLC and energy engineer for OMA Energy Group, told the Senate Energy Committee this week that the core principle behind the bill is sound: customers that create costs should bear those costs. But he warned that the bill’s current approach, including separate data center rate classes and minimum demand charges, could be unworkable and may increase costs for other customers by inflating utility load forecasts, triggering unnecessary transmission investments and driving higher PJM capacity costs.
Instead, Seryak urged lawmakers to allow large-load customers to pay for grid upgrades upfront through contribution-in-aid-of-construction mechanisms, which he said is the clearest way to prevent cost shifting and avoid saddling ratepayers with decades of utility-financed infrastructure costs.
OMA has repeatedly warned policymakers when utility-driven energy policy puts customers at risk. Whether the issue is above-market charges, customer-funded bailouts or cost-shifting schemes dressed up as reliability policy, the pattern is familiar: Point to a crisis. Demand new authority. Shift risk onto customers. Call it protection.
That is not reform. That is business as usual.
OMA will continue urging lawmakers to pursue serious, fact-based energy policy grounded in verified demand, cost causation and fair rules that apply across industries. House Bill 646 may be likely dead until lame duck, but the fight to protect Ohio customers from speculative forecasts and utility wish lists is far from over. 6/11/2026
