Ohio Citizen Action

Ohio Citizen Action opened its Columbus office in 1975 as a consumer and environmental organizing group modeled on the state-based Citizens Action coalitions of the 1970s. Its early campaigns focused on utility rate cases, toxic air releases near working-class neighborhoods, and the legislative defense of Ohio’s Public Utilities Commission as a forum where ordinary ratepayers could be heard. Sandy Buchanan served as executive director for more than two decades and built the door-to-door canvass operation that has carried the organization through every subsequent campaign.

The group’s method is the one Fred Ross and the Citizens Action network developed in the 1970s. Canvassers knock doors, collect petition signatures, and build block-by-block mailing lists that feed into hearings, regulatory comment periods, and legislative votes. The canvass produces a public record that utility counsel, corporate consultants, and legislators cannot match. Ohio Citizen Action holds that record and releases it when a fight reaches the statehouse or the commission.

In 2026 the organization launched a statewide petition drive for a ban on supersized data centers in Ohio. The petition language targets facilities above a threshold the group sets by peak megawatt demand and by groundwater draw, and it proposes a statutory moratorium until the Ohio General Assembly writes siting, water, and ratepayer protections into the state code. The drive has seeded conversations in Licking County, Delaware County, and the Mahoning Valley, the three regions where hyperscaler land assemblages have moved fastest since 2022.

Ohio Citizen Action does not litigate. The group refers litigation and intervenor work to the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, to the Environmental Law and Policy Center, and to local counsel engaged by township trustees. The division of labor matches the one Cooper Square Committee used in New York: build the organizing record and the membership rolls, then hand the legal fight to partners who carry statutory standing. The record the canvass produces is the evidence the statutory actors need.