Monday, August 24th, 2026

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Pennant. To listen to this newsletter, click the “Listen Online” link in the top right corner of this email.

On this day in 1989, Pete Rose accepted a lifetime ban from baseball over gambling, never admitting he bet. Commissioner Giamatti announced it, then died eight days later.

Ohio's Supreme Court could decide a data center ballot fight this week. Les Wexner cedes his medical center chair. Those stories and more are at the top of the fold.

And a Grove City lawyer's letter about the November charter amendment never mentions data centers — but it explains why Mount Carmel Hospital should worry. Our editorial.

COLUMBUS  — The Ohio Supreme Court could rule any day in Trenton's data center fight, an expedited mandamus action against City Council that the justices put on an election schedule with November ballot deadlines pressing. 

Five residents want a data center moratorium charter amendment before voters, saying 336 verified signatures cleared the bar; the city contends its reading of "electors" required 820.

COLUMBUS — Les Wexner, 88, is stepping down as chairman of Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center board, though he stays on as chair emeritus. An Ohio State trustees committee approved the change; the full board votes in September. 

M/I Homes president Robert Schottenstein becomes chairman, with Quantum Health founder Kara Trott as vice-chair. 

Wexner has not attended a board meeting since May 2025. No reason was given for the change.

COLUMBUS — Ohio has averaged 6.15 inches of rain through Aug. 18, the fourth-wettest August since recordkeeping began in 1895, with two weeks still to go. 

The record is 6.77 inches. Storms flooded fields, flattened crops and killed livestock, hitting Perry, Morgan, Muskingum and Fairfield counties hardest. 

Losses will hinge on how long fields stay underwater, said Ohio State crop scientist Alex Lindsey. 

Soybeans, now filling pods, are more vulnerable than corn, and flooding of four days or longer should deepen yield damage.

The U.S. will need 130,000 more electricians by 2030 just to build AI infrastructure, McKinsey projects, plus 240,000 construction laborers and 150,000 supervisors. The country has roughly 818,700 electricians now and about 81,000 unfilled openings a year. Trade wages are up some 30 percent in four years, and first-year apprentices start near $42,000 with no student debt.

Central Ohio is answering. The Independent Electrical Contractors of Central Ohio report a record enrollment of more than 800 apprentices, a number the group expects to approach 900 by January.

They will be needed. Meta is launching its America's Workforce Academy in Ohio and Indiana, and every data center announced here bids for the same electricians who wire houses in Grove City and Marysville.

GROVE CITY — Attorney Jeffrey E. Buskirk, whose practice sits on Broadway in Grove City, wrote to his neighbors on Aug. 14 about the charter amendment headed for the November ballot. 

The letter has unsettled the measure's supporters. It is worth reading for a reason they may not expect - it never mentions data centers.

Buskirk's summary of the amendment is the part that should give local voters pause. The change would require voter approval for any development that occupies 50 or more contiguous acres, draws more than 20 megawatts at peak, or uses more than 500,000 gallons of water per day. 

Those are thresholds, not categories. Nothing in that language limits itself to buildings full of servers.

His first concern follows directly, and the petition text confirms it. The amendment does not exempt Mount Carmel Hospital — there is no health care carve-out anywhere in the document, and one section expressly bars any city official from granting one. Nor are the penalties nominal. 

Fines start at $25,000 a day and escalate to $500,000 a day past 90 days. The petition's own worked example puts a 95-day violation at $17.9 million. 

A quarterly report deemed materially false or incomplete draws another $50,000, and a violation found willful multiplies every daily fine by three. Whatever one thinks about data centers, few residents set out to put a hospital expansion under that schedule.

His second concern is about geography and time. If every significant project must survive an election, developers will seek land contiguous to Columbus and the surrounding communities instead. Grove City would gradually become landlocked, absorbing the traffic and infrastructure demands of growth at its borders while collecting none of the tax revenue.

City Council has tabled its vote on whether to endorse the amendment. The Ohio Supreme Court has a related signature case pending and, as of this writing, has not ruled. The delay is real. The campaign against development is not.

Buskirk asks only that voters consider these questions carefully. That is the right frame, and it is not a question about data centers. It is a question about what Grove City becomes when it makes growth a ballot measure.

Questions and comments are welcome at [email protected].

How did you get to school as a kid?
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