Mayor from Ohio. (Getty image file photo.)
Each morning in the Ohio Capital Journal’s free newsletter, The Eye-Opener, we round up the news and commentary from across Ohio, the country and the world that catches our eye. We call this feature Catching Our Eye and have published it here.
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Catching our eyes
• Haitians from Ohio. Sarah Szilagy of Mother Jones reports: “The Supreme Court’s pending decision on the humanitarian status of Haitians is a matter of “life and death.”“
Vilès Dorsainvil has been thinking a lot about desperation lately. Specifically, what desperation forces people to do and what tragedies it seems to attract. As a Haitian immigrant and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, he saw a desperate community seeking stability in the United States, only to find that things had changed…
While Haitians and TPS holders across the country await the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to allow the Trump administration to end their legal status, in Springfield they have retreated into the background. Dorsainvil says Haitians are leaving the city, though it’s far from a “mass exodus.” Some tried to go to Canada, others to Columbus. “I call it ‘To Leave or Not to Leave’ because where are you going?” Dorsainvil tells me. “If you go anywhere else in the U.S., you will still be a target.”
• Electricity bills. Signal Ohio’s Jake Zuckerman reports: “The Ohio Supreme Court has established protections for tenants’ electric bills. Lawmakers withdrew them“
In April, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a landmark opinion on a long-running conflict, ruling that submetering companies are public utilities – a technical finding that created a broad set of financial and legal protections for tens of thousands of tenants in submetered apartments.
Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate voted roughly along party lines to send Gov. Mike DeWine legislation to reverse the decision.
• Data center tax breaks. Avery Kreemer of the Dayton Daily News reports: “$1.6 Billion Tax Break Dispute Stalls Ohio Data Center Regulations“
The Ohio Legislature will have to come back to the table after failing to pass data center legislation during this week’s marathon legislative session, despite fast-tracked proposals from the committee…
Chamber leaders were particularly saddened when news broke that the state had lost $1.6 billion in tax revenue in 2025, a year in which the state estimated it would forgo only $136 million in data center tax revenue. This news caused Governor Mike DeWine to completely halt additional waivers, even though the program was still in effect under the law.
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