Ohio HB 646 / substitute bill / sales tax 50-75% / BTM incentive

Plain-English framing. Yesterday's digest flagged HB 646 with a 48-hour-to-floor-vote scenario. That outer-bound timing did not materialize. The substitute bill was discussed in committee June 10, but a committee report-out and Senate floor vote did not happen. The bill is alive, the sponsors remain bipartisan (Reps. Rader and Thomas in the House, Sen. Chavez in the Senate), and the substitute text is the version most likely to advance — but the legislative session calendar now puts the next plausible markup window in the following week. What the substitute bill contains. The biggest single change versus the original is the sales tax break — currently data centers in Ohio get a 100% exemption on equipment purchases. HB 646 substitute cuts that to between 50% and 75%, with the higher rate available only if the project (a) locates on a brownfield, or (b) generates its own electricity from off-grid sources (which is essentially the Meta New Albany model — BTM gas under a Williams contract). Both carve-outs are explicit policy signals: Ohio wants developers to either reuse industrial land or bring their own power. Additional substitute provisions: statewide water-use standards with annual reporting, mandatory closed-loop cooling, surety bond equal to ten years of average data center worker salaries, restrictions on NDAs in siting deals so the public can see terms. Policy Matters Ohio (the progressive policy shop in Cleveland) is critical of the bill, calling it insufficient — they want the entire sales tax exemption gone, not partially trimmed.

Primary source · Statehouse News Bureau / Policy Matters Ohio ↗