Ohio let counties ban solar. In Richland, it’s now on the ballot

In Richland County, the power of the sun is on the primary ballot.

Last July, the county’s three commissioners, all Republicans, added Richland to a growing list of 27 Ohio counties that have banned utility-scale wind and solar power developments. In the rural stretch of north central Ohio, that would only apply to 11 of 18 townships, whose trustees requested inclusion when the commissioners asked.

The county-level renewable bans in Ohio exist under a 2021 law, passed by statehouse Republicans, that gives local officials unique powers to kill individual wind and solar projects in town or prohibit them entirely. State law is explicit that with other energy projects like oil wells and gas plants, only state officials, who aren’t exposed to the same political and electoral pressure, and not local ones can make the siting decisions. But in Richland, local citizens are fighting back. After turning in just a few dozen more than the required 3,300 valid signatures within 30 days of the commission vote last year, the Richland County Citizens for Property Rights & Job Development has put the ban up for a referendum.

That means a county that President Donald Trump won by more than 44 points will have the future of solar development on the ballot May 5. This marks the second challenge of a renewable ban, after Crawford County voters in 2022 overwhelmingly upheld a wind power ban there.

Supporters of the ban say the issue is about preserving farmland. Opponents say it’s about property rights and government overreach. And notably, neither side is offering solar power as a bulwark against climate change, even as domestic oil and gas production hits record levels and the past 11 years have all been the warmest on record for the planet, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

Morgan Carroll, a Shelby woman who by day raises her 3-year-old and 5-month-old, has been working on the referendum at night ever since the commissioners made their abrupt vote last year with little public notice. She said she has never been engaged in political activism before.

In an interview, Carroll said she and others backing the referendum see the county ban as a government infringing on farmers’ rights to do as they please with their land. If landowners swap soy beans for solar panels, why should the local government tell them they can’t?

“Government overreach is impeding on that,” she said.

The well-monied referendum supporters are facing a powerful opposition. In Ohio, grassroots fervor in rural communities around the state have managed to pressure the Ohio Power Siting Board to reject seven major solar projects. These projects would have been worth hundreds of millions each, collectively producing enough electricity to power millions of homes.

Republican interests fund pro-ban ads; national environmentalists oppose

Some established Republican interests have waded into the race. Dustin McIntyre – a political operative who has served as treasurer for conservative political action committees around the country – recently formed the Richland Farmland Preservation PAC.

Richland Farmland Preservation’s website urges voters to keep the bans in place in the interest of “farmland preservation.” The site warns against “out of state, special interests” pushing the referendum, like the Natural Resources Defense Council. And it warns of birds killed by wind turbines each year.

“Solar requires (tilde)20x more land than natural gas,” the site states.

Calls to a phone number listed on the organization’s campaign records were not returned.

County-level campaign finance reports obtained in a records request suggest establishment Republican interests are supporting the existing wind and solar ban. Meanwhile, progressive grassroots organizations have been lending huge amounts of staff and resources to back the overturn effort.

Richland Farmland Preservation has only so far disclosed some of its early fundraising, current as of April 15.

The PAC has raised money from some local farmers; $1,500 from Republican state Sen. Mark Romanchuk; and $2,500 from Whatman Farms, owned by Tom Whatman of the GOP political firm Majority Strategies.

And Majority Strategies, per campaign finance records, has charged the committee for more than $12,000 worth of digital advertising and text messaging on the campaign.

In comparison, Richland County Citizens for Property Rights & Job Development has raised nearly $84,000 in cash – mostly via $74,000 from Ohio Citizen Action, a grassroots advocacy, and small-dollar contributions from locals.

The Natural Resources Defense Council provided $250,000 in in-kind contributions to pay for ads and media, the disclosures say.

And Ohio Citizens Action provided another $56,000 as an in-kind contribution, funding staff, message testing, food, consulting and canvassing.

Nearby Ohio counties have restricted solar development

There’s no project in the Ohio Power Siting Board development queue in Richland County. But not far from there, you can find an operational solar plant, and locals who have blocked another before it ever broke ground.

In Crawford County, developers recently began construction on Sycamore Creek Solar, a 117 megawatt project spread over 917 acres. Geronimo Power, the developers, say it’ll generate $16 million in new tax revenue over the first 20 years of operation.

The county commission there, meanwhile, has voted to ban all further solar development within the jurisdiction.

Nearby, in Morrow County, the Ohio Power Siting Board last month voted to kill Crossroads Solar, a $98 million, 726-acre development. There, as in the six similarly rejected projects since 2020, the Ohio Power Siting Board said the project met all the technical requirements in Ohio law. But the local opposition from some members of the public, township trustees and county commissions convinced the OPSB to nix them.

“This is no longer a good business proposition,” said Craig Adair, vice president of Open Road Renewables, in a previous interview. “We’re not starting any new projects in Ohio.”

’We want to preserve farmland’

The petitioners have every right to oppose the ban, but Commissioner Daryl Banks, who has served in the role for 10 years now, said he’s suspicious of the money coming into Richland County from New York (the NRDC) and Columbus (Ohio Citizens Action).

He said he doesn’t buy the claim that it’s a “property rights” issue – if that’s true, so is every zoning law that says you can’t build a gas station in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Plus, as he emphasized, the county only banned industrial scale solar (i.e. huge operations, not rooftop panels) in places where elected leaders asked commissioners to.

He questioned the viability of any solar project in the area, and said that a natural gas-fed power plant can produce far more electricity with much smaller acreage.

“We want to preserve farmland,” he said. “Once it goes to solar power or wind power, it’ll never be farmland again.”

Union backed

Brian McPeek works as the business manager and financial secretary for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 688 in Mansfield. But by night, he has been gathering signatures to keep the door open for solar in Ohio to try to attract the kind of projects his union might help build.

He said there’s a lot of “misinformation” in the ether that riles people up about solar. But to anyone who worries about some of the naysayers’ claims that solar is a means through which Chinese entities could “take over” our electric grid, he points to First Solar, near Toledo, the nation’s largest domestic solar panel manufacturer according to the Federal Reserve of Cleveland.

He said it’s an election about government overreach, not solar power, and he questioned who any township trustee or county commissioner is to tell landowners what they can and can’t do on their farms.

Richland County, he said, is the land of firsts. The first home microwave, glass-windowed oven, seamless tubing, and Elektro (the robot from the 1939 World Fair) all came from there.

“Mansfield used to be on the cutting edge of development for a long time,” he said. “It’s fitting that we have a historic vote and that development is once again being decided at the ballots.”

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This story was originally published by Signal Ohio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.