Ohio
Ohio GOP infighting stalls marijuana legislation
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio House and Senate Republicans had finally agreed on a bill changing the state’s recreational marijuana policy, but hours before the vote was supposed to take place, it was pulled from the schedule.
Voters spoke loud and clear in November of 2023, with 57% of Ohioans voting yes on Issue 2: legalizing recreational marijuana.
“I voted for it,” state Rep. Jamie Callender (R-Concord), the House’s resident cannabis expert.
Callender has been smoking marijuana for decades and has been trying to reduce stigma around the product for just as long.
If you are 21 years old, you can smoke, vape, and ingest marijuana. Individually, you can grow six plants, but you can grow up to 12 plants per household if you live with others.
But since then, other Republican leaders have been trying to change the law.
For the past several months, the House and Senate chambers have been trying to compromise on their separate bills.
I have been covering marijuana policy extensively for years, including a series answering viewer questions about cannabis.
Ohio GOP plans to pass marijuana restrictions by end of June
In short, the Senate’s proposal decreases THC content, reduces home growing from 12 plants to 6, imposes more criminal penalties and takes away tax money from local municipalities that have dispensaries. The House’s latest version had none of those.
Click here for Senate version and here for House version changes.
“The Senate had proposed taking that tax away, and the House has fought really hard to keep that in…” Callender said. “We finally had that negotiated so it would stay in.”
Recently, Callender told me an agreement was reached on following most of the House’s new version, which mainly focused on preventing children from accessing the drug. The bill was set to hit the House floor Wednesday.
But in a turn of events, Republican infighting is preventing the bill from being passed.
“Apparently, the Senate changed their mind,” Callender said.
In a shock to House Speaker Matt Huffman (R-Lima), the Senate pulled out of the compromise.
“I’m pretty disappointed — we’re not going to have it on the floor today,” Huffman said. “To my surprise, there was a whole new set of issues, additional issues, which were raised Monday night by the Senate regarding what we were trying to do.”
It was a Senate push for 16 changes, ones that Huffman didn’t get to even see until the day before the vote was set to take place.
“They wanted to make a mandatory jail sentence for passing a joint between friends,” Callender said, referencing a provision on “sharing.”
The main holdup is the tax money, he added.
The law gives the 10% tax revenue from each marijuana sale to four different venues: 36% to the social equity fund, to help people disproportionately impacted by marijuana-related laws; 36% to host cities — ones that have dispensaries; 25% to the state’s mental health and addiction services department; and 3% to the state’s cannabis control department.
Instead, the Senate wants all the revenue from the tax to be sent to the state’s General Revenue Fund, meaning lawmakers can choose to allocate that money toward whatever they want.
The House, as Callender had mentioned, has a major sticking point with making sure that at least the local municipalities get at least some percentage of the tax revenue.
“What changed in the past 72 hours to pull the Senate out of the marijuana deal?” I asked Senate President Rob McColley (R-Napoleon)
“Well, I wouldn’t say anything has changed; I think the conversations have gone pretty well on it,” McColley responded. “I think, maybe, there was a misunderstanding as to where we might have been on the bill as both chambers.”
The president wants to follow his version of the legislation.
“Our priorities are in the bill that we already passed,” he said.
The teams will work together to actually come to an agreement as soon as possible, he continued.
“I would like to get something done by the end of June; I think [Huffman] would like to get something done by the end of June,” McColley added. “We’ll see if we can get something done in the next week.”
Huffman said he’s “not very optimistic” about that.
“I just told my caucus: ‘We’re not going to just say, “OK,” because we’re so anxious to pass the marijuana bill,’ which I’d like to get it done, but we’re not going to give up house priorities to do that,” the speaker said.
Several hours later, Huffman responded to additional cannabis questions.
“I thought we were on a path, this time last week, to pass it [this week],” the speaker said. “That was the kind of clear indication we had.”
However, when I pointed out to Huffman how McColley denied their agreement, he switched gears.
“There was no agreement to pull out of,” he said.
I asked why he would put a bill on the floor if there wasn’t an agreement.
“We were hoping that there would be, anticipating there would be, sounded like we might have, but it’s not correct to say that there was an agreement that anybody pulled out of,” he said.
However, his cousin and the resident marijuana expert in the opposite chamber, state Sen. Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City), said there was. The senator had been the main negotiating party for that chamber.
“We were in an agreement,” S. Huffman said.
He continued that policy staff and McColley brought “ongoing concerns” to him, but he believes they could be easily fixed. An additional reason why it was pulled is due to drafting issues with the bill language, he added.
“I believe that things are still being worked out, and I have the utmost confidence that we will resolve this by next Wednesday,” the senator said.
Callender isn’t so sure about that.
“Do you believe that the Senate will be going against the will of the voters with all of their requests?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said.
Callender said that this reminds him of the last General Assembly, when M. Huffman and former Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) were squabbling constantly about everything, but especially marijuana.
Stephens and Callender prevented then-Senate President Huffman’s legislation from passing. Back in 2023-24, Huffman proposed a bill very similar to the Senate’s current version.
It appears that Huffman, with the House GOP, has shifted away from a more restrictive view to a position similar to the one Stephens held in the past.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.
TOLEDO, Ohio (WTVG) – The FBI was part of a search of multiple properties related to Stansley Mining on Friday, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed.
A Public Affairs Officer for the FBI Cleveland Division confirmed to the 13 Action News I-TEAM that authorities searched a business in the area of Siliva Road in Sylvania, as well as property in Ottawa County by State Route 590 in Benton Township.
Officials with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation told the 13 Action News I-TEAM that they executed a search warrant at the property in Benton Township. Ohio BCI’s environmental division and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency were involved in the search.
It’s unclear exactly what officials were looking for. The FBI spokesperson said there wasn’t additional information to share at this point, but added there is no threat to the public.
Stansley Mining is the entity that owns Rocky Ridge Development, a company at the center of extensive 13 Action News coverage after its South Toledo mining operation was improperly working in a residentially-zoned area.
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CLEVELAND, Ohio — A critically acclaimed name in Cleveland’s food scene is making a comeback of sorts and entering a new era in the food and restaurant business.
After the official closure of Melt Bar and Grilled locations across the area in late 2024, founder Matt Fish is stepping back into the restaurant business with a brand-new concept in Ohio City.
More Melts close
Fish is preparing to open “Proof Public House” inside the former Proof BBQ space along Lorain Avenue.
The new restaurant and bar is expected to officially open in mid-June after recently obtaining its food service license.
The announcement was just made on the restaurant’s official Instagram page this week.
But Fish says this project is very different from Melt’s previous projects, with more than a dozen locations across Ohio.
“I’m starting from scratch. Brand new concept. Brand new feeling, brand new attitude,” Fish said. “I wanna get back to basics.”
Fish describes Proof Public House as a punk rock-inspired neighborhood bar and restaurant with elevated comfort food, craft drinks, and an evolving seasonal menu.
“I’ve always wanted to get back to my roots,” Fish said. “I’ve always wanted to get back to a small place and recapture that magic of what Melt Bar and Grilled was when it first opened up.”
The longtime chef and restaurateur says music and creativity will help define the atmosphere and capture the essence.
Fish grew up on punk rock music and is also a drummer.
He says Cleveland’s history and punk rock roots make this latest project feel even more special.
The menu, he says, will feature chef-driven comfort food with rotating seasonal dishes and a specialized beverage program.
“Just have fun with the menu,” Fish said. “The beverage program will be very seasonal. It’s gonna be very evolving.”
Although many fans still associate Fish with the iconic grilled cheese sandwiches that helped make Melt Bar and Grilled a Northeast Ohio staple after opening in 2006, he says this new chapter is about moving forward.
“That part of my life is over and gone, but it was something special to so many of us,” Fish said.
Still, longtime Melt fans may notice subtle nods to the past.
Fish hinted there would be occasional “odes to Melt” appearing on the menu in the future, in some capacity.
He also credits former Proof BBQ and current Visible Voice Books owner Dave Ferrante for encouraging him to jump back into the hospitality business.
Fish quietly consulted on projects behind the scenes after Melt’s closure, including work connected to Visible Voice.
“I want to do something for myself, do something for the City of Cleveland, do something for my family and friends,” Fish said.
Proof Public House is expected to announce an official opening date soon.
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Ohio, one of the nation’s data center destination hot spots, is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states to attract the massive new facilities that power and train artificial intelligence chatbots.
The move Wednesday by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets and the industry is under pressure to pay the full costs of the vast network of its computing warehouses needed to power AI.
The size of Ohio’s tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact.
In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November’s midterm election ballot that’s designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S.
DeWine’s office cited the rising utilization of the tax break and the state Legislature’s new research undertaking to declare a “pause” in granting it to new applicants.
“The governor felt it was the right time to let the citizens know, let businesses know that we’re going to pause on new offers of this tax incentive while that process plays out,” DeWine’s spokesperson, Dan Tierney, said Thursday.
DeWine has stressed that he supports data centers — calling them a critical component in today’s economy — and that the roughly $37 billion in data center-related investments in 2024 and 2025 in the state has been worthwhile.
The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported.
The resumption of Ohio’s tax break — should it resume — could happen under a new governor: DeWine is term-limited and the race is on to replace him. The Republican nominee, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy — an Ivy League-educated biotech billionaire — likes to talk about turning the Ohio River Valley into the next Silicon Valley.
However, Ramaswamy and Democratic nominee Amy Acton could share the midterm ballot in November with the citizen-led drive to ban the construction of data centers across Ohio. It faces a July 1 deadline to gather more than 400,000 voter signatures.
State tax breaks for the massive data center industry are facing growing criticism by governors and lawmakers.
The cost is likely rising as data center and AI-related investments drive higher consumer spending in the U.S. and tech giants keep boosting their spending commitment to hyperscale data centers.
In Virginia, negotiations between the state House and Senate have been hung up for months on a bid by Senate Democrats to eliminate the roughly $1.6 billion annual tax break.
Thirty-eight states have some form of a sales tax break for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Many were approved more than five years ago, when data centers were a small, but growing part of the economy, and well before the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched an intensifying buildout of increasingly large data centers.
Ohio’s exemption is fairly broad, applying not only to construction materials, but to the expensive equipment — such as server racks and cooling systems — used in data centers. Operators might buy new server racks every couple of years as the technology improves.
DeWine’s order was a surprise.
Dorsey Hager, executive secretary-treasurer of the Columbus/Central Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council, where union members spend much of their time on data center projects, said he was upset with DeWine and trying to understand the governor’s reasons.
He worried, he said, that developers that were in the midst of trying to finalize plans or permits for a project might have second thoughts.
Lawmakers acknowledged the opposition in announcing their joint data center committee on May 13.
“We’re well aware of initiatives to limit Ohio data center development during this critical point in America’s history,” state Rep. Adam Holmes told a news conference. “This public concern has become a priority issue for us and could have dramatic impact on Ohio and American’s future.”
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Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter
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