The Ohio burgee. (Getty images file photo.)
Every morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio and around the country and world that is catching our attention. We call this feature Catching Our Eye, republished here.
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Catching Our Eye
• Ohio Haitians. Mother Jones’ Sarah Szilagy reports, “The Supreme Court’s Pending Decision on Haitians’ Humanitarian Status Is a Matter of “Life and Death”.”
Vilès Dorsainvil has thought a lot about desperation recently. Specifically, what desperation forces people to do, and the tragedy it seems to attract. As a Haitian immigrant and the executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, he has seen a desperate community seeking stability in the United States, only to find that the ground has shifted…
As Haitians and TPS holders around the country wait for the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to allow the Trump administration to end their legal status, in Springfield, they’ve retreated into the shadows. Haitians are leaving the city, Dorsainvil says, though it’s been far from a “mass exodus.” Some have attempted to go to Canada, others to Columbus. “I call it, ‘To leave or not to leave,’ because where are you going to go?” Dorsainvil tells me. “If you leave to go somewhere else in the USA, you will still be a target.”
• Renter electric bills. Signal Ohio’s Jake Zuckerman reports, “The Ohio Supreme Court set safeguards for renters’ electric bills. Lawmakers rolled them back.”
The Ohio Supreme Court in April issued a landmark opinion on a long-running conflict, ruling that submetering companies are public utilities – a technical finding that triggered a broad set of financial and legal protections for tens of thousands of renters in submetered apartments.
Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate voted roughly on party lines to send to Gov. Mike DeWine legislation to roll that decision back.
• Data center tax breaks. The Dayton Daily News’ Avery Kreemer reports, “$1.6B tax break dispute stalls Ohio data center regulations.”
The Ohio legislature will have to come back to the table after failing to pass regulations on data centers during a marathon legislative session this week despite fast-tracking proposals through committee…
House leaders were particularly aggrieved when news broke that the state lost out on $1.6 billion in tax revenue in 2025, a year the state estimated it would forgo only $136 million in tax revenues for data centers. The news caused Gov. Mike DeWine to pause additional exemptions altogether, despite the program still being law.
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