Findlay Council to attend data center briefing

FINDLAY — Findlay City Council members have been invited to attend a 4 p.m. data center briefing Wednesday that will be closed to the public. Mayor Christina Muryn said the meeting is informational only and therefore not subject to Ohio's open meeting laws. She said council members were invited to attend, but aren't required to attend. State law defines a meeting as any prearranged gathering of a majority of council members to discuss public business. The Ohio Attorney General's Sunshine Laws Manual says informational briefings and training sessions are treated as public meetings when a majority is present and public business will be discussed. Virtual gatherings are treated the same as in-person gatherings. Council has been actively discussing data centers for months. A 12-month moratorium on data center construction is already in place until April 2027, and the Planning and Zoning Committee has spent recent meetings reviewing a sweeping set of proposed regulations. At today's meeting, council is expected to hear a presentation from the New Albany Economic Development group, a public entity that manages the New Albany International Business Park, home to Intel's $28 billion semiconductor campus. Without public notice, details about the meeting, including location, virtual or in-person, remain unclear.