Wednesday, August 12th, 2026

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On this day in 1994, major league players struck, canceling the World Series. The Reds were 66-48 and leading the NL Central. The Indians were 66-47 in their first season at Jacobs Field.

U.S. News puts Ohio in the bottom 10, and Cleveland Clinic starts dropping prescriptions from the sky. Find both at the Top of the Fold.

And Domino's builds a pizza you don't have to share, while one Ohio town shows what happens when a city asks what it gets instead of whether to allow it.

COLUMBUS — Two months after CNBC named Ohio its top state for business, U.S. News & World Report ranked it 42nd overall for 2026, down from 38th last year and 36th in 2024. 

Ohio scored worst in natural environment at 43rd and economy at 38th, best in opportunity at 18th, and trailed neighbors Indiana, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

BEACHWOOD — Cleveland Clinic has launched prescription drone delivery with Zipline, calling it the first long-term deployment by a U.S. health system.

Drones hover about 300 feet up and lower packages by tether into a patient's yard, with flights averaging under five minutes. 

The service covers addresses within five miles of the Clinic's Beachwood campus, is free and voluntary, and is limited to shelf-stable prescriptions, not controlled substances.

COLUMBUS — Gov. Mike DeWine signed an executive order Monday putting the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health in charge of certifying addiction recovery housing, replacing a third-party accreditation model run by Oxford House Inc. and Ohio Recovery Housing. 

The change comes as recovery houses in Ohio have grown from 356 in 2022 to more than 1,700, and it gives the department direct authority to receive complaints, investigate, and enforce compliance.

Domino's Pizza will introduce a rectangular single-serving pie this month aimed at customers who would otherwise order a burger or a chicken sandwich, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The new item, called the Domino, comes as the U.S. pizza industry slumps. Papa John's and Pizza Hut are closing hundreds of locations. Domino's, the world's largest pizza company, has held up better than most rivals but reported flat quarterly sales last month, and executives told investors they weren't satisfied.

Incoming chief executive Joe Jordan, currently president and set to take over in October, is championing the format. He told the Journal the company spent two years researching how Americans choose fast food, and that thousands of interviews pointed to the same thing: people often want their own meal even when eating with others. Burgers, burritos and subs are built for that. Pizza, traditionally, is not.

Customers kept telling the company that sharing means compromising. Domino's is betting a personal-size pie will change that.

Mark Zuckerberg wrote a long essay this week about artificial intelligence. Meta will spend up to $145 billion on data centers this year, and by 2028 it could reach $600 billion.

He also promised a $1 billion fund for the towns that host them. And he told a small story. In Richland Parish, Louisiana, a sales tax tied to a Meta data center helped pay teachers a $50,000 bonus.

Zuckerberg used a phrase worth remembering. Community compacts.

Here's what that means. If a company wants to build something huge in your town, the town gets something back in writing.

Ohio is having two different arguments about this.

Lordstown passed a moratorium and ended up in a legal fight with a developer. Grove City votes in November on a charter amendment that would send big projects to the ballot permanently. Both fights are about whether to allow these things at all.

Van Wert also went looking for this. The city marketed that megasite for nearly twenty years. Grove City didn't ask for a project and got one anyway, which is a harder starting place.

But it's not an excuse. Neither town will ever know what kind of deal it could have made. The fight over whether swallowed the question of what for.

Van Wert asked something else.

The city council held a public hearing first. The room was split. People worried about water and noise, and they said so out loud.

Then officials cut a deal. They negotiated against the facts instead of the people who believe yelling at a city council meeting is democracy.

According to QTS, its $10 billion campus north of town will pay $200 million in taxes over 20 years, cover the power upgrades so residents' bills don't rise, and fund a community account Van Wert spends on its own priorities.

We're not telling you to like data centers. And a $1 billion fund against a $600 billion build isn't much.

But a moratorium buys you time. It doesn't buy a school levy.

Ask your council what our deal is.

Questions, comments, and letters to the editor are welcome at [email protected].

Should Rep. Max Miller resign?
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- Undecided - 50%

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