Trenton officials are proposing a slate of financial benefits for residents that would only take effect if voters reject a ballot measure aimed at banning data centers.
City Council introduced five resolutions last week that promise property tax cuts, discounted YMCA memberships and a freeze on levy requests if voters reject Issue 17 at the November election, and allow two Amazon Web Services data centers to be constructed.
The move drew scrutiny from some residents, like Josh Bluhm.
“It seems like it's just a poorly veiled attempt to unduly influence the upcoming ballot issue in November,” he told council at a public meeting last week.
Bluhm specifically questioned whether the proposed property tax holiday violates the state’s election bribery laws.
Under Trenton’s resolution, the city would waive its 3.24-mill general fund inside property tax for tax year 2026. Finance Director Matthew Mesisklis says homeowners would get a benefit of $113.40 per $100,000 of market property value.
Mesisklis says that would be possible because of the economic benefits the data centers would provide the city. He adds, without the AWS data center contributing to the local tax base, residents could be asked to approve up to 7 mills in additional property taxes, about $735 annually on a $300,000 home, to maintain city services.
City Attorney Nick Ziepfel says Trenton is showing people the financial impacts of voting for or against the ballot measure.
“This is no different than how the school boards will show the financial consequences of voting for or against the levy,” he said.
Council could vote on the resolutions at its regular meeting Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall. The same day, AWS is also hosting a Community Forum on its data center projects at Edgewood Middle School from 5-8 p.m.
'Legal gray area'
A law expert says Trenton’s proposed legislation offering residents a property tax cut if Issue 17 fails could face legal challenges.
Northern Kentucky University Law Professor Ken Katkin says the proposal falls into a gray area in Ohio's election bribery and campaigning laws.
“Not only are there cases that go either way on whether this is legal or not, but even within those cases, there's a lot of court opinions where there's dissenting opinions as well as majority opinions,” Katkin said. “So, it's right at the legal line.”
Section 3599.01 of the Ohio Revised Code makes it a crime to give or promise to give any money or any other valuable consideration to any voter as a means to induce such voter to vote for a particular person, question, or issue.
Katkin says opponents of the city’s proposal would argue it’s a textbook violation of the law.
“There's payment offered to voters in the form of this property tax holiday, or at least a promise to pay, which also falls within the statute, if they vote a certain way,” he told WVXU.
However, Trenton officials say they are simply describing the fiscal impacts of a ballot initiative to the public, which previous legal cases have deemed permissible.
“They all say that the state and the city are not allowed to expend taxpayer funds to engage in political campaigning, but there's a little bit of wiggle room around situations where the taxpayer funds are being expended for what the court might consider to accurately describe the fiscal implications of a ballot initiative. So that is allowed,” Katkin said.
Whether or not anyone will litigate Trenton's proposal remains to be seen.
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