The bill for the AI-era buildout came due in print today. Ohio Capital Journal published two same-day pieces putting concrete numbers on Ohio ratepayer stress — a 22% year-over-year electric bill increase, the country's biggest utility-CEO compensation package, and an Ohio Supreme Court reversal of the state utility commission on submetering. Pennsylvania convened its own hearing on grid resource adequacy, where FirstEnergy's CEO told PJM publicly he won't sign Phase 2 of its proposed data-center backstop auction. And three local governments in three states each picked a different regulatory tool to slow data-center development on the same Friday.
Ohio electricity bills rose 22% in February compared to a year earlier — the sharpest increase of any state except Virginia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. The same morning, a new Energy & Policy Institute report and Ohio Capital Journal reporting put AEP CEO Bill Fehrman's 2025 compensation at $37 million, the largest utility-CEO package in the country, after a $23 million raise. Combined CEO pay across the four utilities serving Ohio reached $81 million. AEP disconnected service to Ohio customers 173,000 times between June 2024 and May 2025.
Hours later, the Ohio Supreme Court reversed a 2023 Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ruling and held that submetering companies — which buy electricity wholesale and resell it to apartment-complex tenants — are utilities under state law and fall within PUCO jurisdiction. Justice Pat DeWine, writing for the majority: "As a matter of plain English, this reading of the statute is self-evidently wrong. There is little question that NEP is in the business of providing power." The case returns to PUCO for further hearings.
State Rep. Sean Brennan (D-Parma), who has co-sponsored a bill treating submetering companies as utilities: "The court made it clear — if you're supplying electricity to Ohio consumers, you are a utility, and you must follow the same rules as any other utility."
Sources: Marty Schladen / Ohio Capital Journal (CEO compensation); Nick Evans / Ohio Capital Journal (submetering ruling).
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), chairman of the Pennsylvania Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, convened a hearing at the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh with testimony from the Pennsylvania PUC, PJM Interconnection, and ReliabilityFirst. The committee heard projections that PJM will face resource shortfalls as early as 2029 absent decisive action. PJM disclosed that its latest interconnection window attracted 220 gigawatts of new generation proposals from 811 projects, but Yaw cautioned that most of that capacity remains in permitting and study and is years away from service.
Andrew Tubbs, president and CEO of the Energy Association of Pennsylvania, told the committee that some of the new power being announced in the state is being built specifically for data centers and will not serve homes and businesses. PUC Chairman Stephen DeFrank said new generation is not coming online fast enough due to supply-chain delays, pipeline constraints, and slow siting.
Same day, on FirstEnergy's quarterly earnings call, Chairman, President and CEO Brian X. Tierney rejected a key element of PJM's proposed Reliability Backstop Procurement auction. Tierney: "We are not going to sign contracts where our companies take commodity risk on generation and energy. It's not going to happen." Tierney's framing of the cost-allocation question: "The wrong people are going to end up paying with PJM in the middle." FirstEnergy reported 4.3 gigawatts of contracted data centers set to come online by 2031, up nearly 50% from February 2025.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, in a letter to utility leaders the same day, said his administration would oppose rate-case requests that fail three tests — most cost-effective forms of capital, cost-benefit analysis showing significant savings or reliability benefits, and transparent justifiable equity returns. Shapiro: "The 20th century utility model is broken — we can no longer simply prioritize corporate profitability to drive infrastructure development."
Sources: States News Service / Sen. Gene Yaw's office (Pittsburgh hearing); Diana DiGangi / Utility Dive (FirstEnergy earnings call and Shapiro letter).
Three local governments slowed data-center development on the same Friday using three different procedural tools. The Muncy Township Board of Supervisors in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, passed a nine-month moratorium on data centers and similar high-intensity data processing facilities, with explicit anti-evasion language: "No application shall avoid the moratorium by re-labeling, reclassification or use of alternative terminology. If the use meets the definition in substance, the moratorium shall apply." The freeze covers zoning permits, building permits, subdivision applications, and conditional-use applications, including any application not yet formally accepted.
The Strasburg, Virginia, Planning Commission voted unanimously to send Town Council a new Industrial Use Design Standards package — 60 dB daytime / 55 dB nighttime noise caps measured at the property line, viewshed rules within 1,000 feet of a roadway and 2,500 feet of a designated battlefield, balloon tests for structures over 50 feet, façade-color rules within sight of registered battlefields, and screening requirements. Brian Otis, Strasburg's director of planning and infrastructure, told the commission he pulled language from Loudoun, Henrico, Culpeper, and Albemarle counties. The standards will not apply to Project Tallmadge, the proposed two-building 160-megawatt data center campus on Borden Mowery Drive that drove the framework — the project is vested under the existing rules. Commissioner and Council member Emily McCoryn: "I know that there are some people here that are expecting us to say the word data center, and we may not."
In Wyoming, the Cheyenne City Council postponed until September a proposed annexation of approximately 1,260 acres west of town intended for a ViaWest data center. Cindy DeLancey, an attorney representing ViaWest, asked the council to pause the vote so the developer could engage further with public concerns. Glissmeyer, ViaWest's regional market leader: "It's very obvious that Cheyenne is a very close knit community, and we take that very seriously. I want to respect that and have the discussions unfold in an appropriate timeline."
Sources: Pat Crossley / Williamsport Sun-Gazette (Muncy Township); Northern Virginia Daily (Strasburg); Alyssa Tolman / Wyoming Tribune-Eagle (Cheyenne).
Two Ohio direct-democracy items resolve Tuesday. Richland County voters decide whether to repeal a July 2025 ban on large-scale wind and solar in 11 of 18 townships — yes preserves the ban, no repeals it. The same day, Ohio's Democratic gubernatorial primary closes; Dr. Amy Acton, who held an affordability-themed roundtable in Cincinnati's Bond Hill neighborhood last week, is the most prominent candidate aligning with the cost-shifting framing the data-center constitutional-amendment campaign is collecting signatures behind. Both results are leading indicators for the volunteer-driven petition drive seeking to put a 25-megawatt statewide data-center cap on the November 2026 ballot — its July 1 deadline requires 413,000 signatures from at least 44 of Ohio's 88 counties.
Source: States Newsroom — Ohio Capital Journal.
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