ASHVILLE, Ohio — The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday ordered Ashville Fiscal Officer April Grube to certify a referendum petition on a village council resolution tied to a proposed EdgeConneX data center project, ruling that she had no legal authority to keep the question off the ballot.
The court’s per curiam opinion, released Aug. 7, granted a peremptory writ of mandamus compelling Grube to send the petition to the Pickaway County Board of Elections, which will now make its own determination on whether the referendum can appear on the Nov. 3 general-election ballot. Six of the court’s seven justices joined the opinion in full.
The dispute traces back to April 6, when Ashville’s village council voted 5-1 to adopt Resolution No. 06-2026, approving a “term summary” outlining a future development-and-supply agreement with EdgeConneX, Inc., and an affiliated company, EdgeConneX MCN Ashville Properties 1, LLC. According to the resolution, EdgeConneX intends to build two single-story data-center buildings in the village and, through an affiliate, is seeking a permit from the Ohio Power Siting Board to build a natural-gas power-generating facility on the same property. The village’s mayor approved the resolution April 10.
Under the term summary, EdgeConneX agreed to reimburse the village for engineering and legal review costs tied to negotiating a future agreement and to pay between $50,000 and $100,000 for Ashville to hire outside advisers on the project. In turn, the village agreed to suspend, as necessary, a previously enacted moratorium on data centers as it applies to the EdgeConneX project and to use its best efforts to approve permits the company needs, according to the resolution’s text.
Three Ashville residents — Laura V. McNamara-Smith, Brian Thomas Meyers and Allison G. Meade — organized a committee to put the resolution to a village-wide vote. On April 15, McNamara-Smith submitted a certified copy of a referendum petition to the village and began collecting signatures. The completed petition, submitted May 5, was forwarded to the Pickaway County Board of Elections, which notified Grube on May 22 that it contained 669 verified signatures, enough to meet the state’s signature threshold for a village referendum.
Grube refused to certify the petition, writing to the board of elections on June 26 that she had determined it was “insufficient and invalid” because the underlying resolution was both an emergency measure and an administrative action — two categories of legislation that Ohio law exempts from voter referendum.
McNamara-Smith and the other two residents filed suit directly with the Ohio Supreme Court on July 14, seeking a writ ordering Grube to certify the petition in time for the November ballot. EdgeConneX intervened as a co-respondent in the case, and two advocacy groups, Data Center Resistance and Pickaway Informed Voters, were granted leave to file briefs supporting the residents as amici curiae.
In its opinion, the court found that Resolution No. 06-2026’s emergency declaration contained only “conclusory statements” that failed to explain why a 30-day delay in the resolution taking effect would have harmed the project, noting the measure did not tie its emergency language to any specific timeline or cost consequence. The court also held that deciding whether a resolution qualifies as an “administrative action” is a judicial question beyond a fiscal officer’s discretionary authority, and that such determinations belong to boards of elections, not municipal officials acting on their own.
The opinion was joined by Chief Justice Kennedy and Justices Fischer, DeWine, Deters, Hawkins and Shanahan. Justice Brunner concurred in part and dissented in part, writing that she would have granted a more limited order and set an expedited schedule to directly decide whether the resolution was an administrative action not subject to referendum — a question the majority opinion left unresolved.
The court noted that the deadline for certifying petitions for the Nov. 3 ballot had already passed, on Aug. 5, but ruled that Grube’s “unjustified delay” in acting on the petition should not cost the residents their chance at a vote. The Pickaway County Board of Elections must still independently determine whether the petition and the underlying resolution are eligible for the ballot.
This story is based on the Ohio Supreme Court’s Aug. 7, 2026 opinion in State ex rel. McNamara-Smith v. Grube, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3035, and the court’s case announcement for that date.
