Campaigning in favor of the ban was Richland Farmland Preservation, a group that claimed the amount of land required for solar and was incompatible with preserving the area’s agricultural character. Darrell Banks, a committee member for that effort who is also a Richland County Commissioner, said of Tuesday’s results, “I think this is an affirmation by the voters that their township trustees and county commissioners are aligned with the best interests of their communities, and we appreciate the support of Richland County very much.”
Richland Farmland Preservation’s funders included organizations with ties to people and groups who have promoted the natural gas industry. Emails released last Friday show communications between Banks and a strategist for a political consulting firm that has done substantial work for The Empowerment Alliance, a dark-money group that promotes natural gas. Banks said that the strategist, Tom Whatman, is a “family friend.”
The links “should trouble every Richland County resident, regardless of how they voted,” said Bella Bogin, director of programs for Ohio Citizen Action, a statewide advocacy organization whose volunteers assisted Richland County Citizens for Property Rights and Job Development on the referendum. “This community deserved a fair process, and the fight to bring that back to the county is not over.”
Despite the loss, Brian McPeek, another leader of the campaign to end the renewables ban, stressed that the margin by which it lost in the very Republican county was quite narrow. “The big thing that we showed yesterday is that this was not a partisan issue.”
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