For more than two years, Wood County residents have watched the Meta data center project reshape Middleton Township, from farmland turning into industrial parcels to a natural gas plant rising to power it. Most of that process has played out in public meetings, even if few residents noticed until recently. But one part of the story deserves more attention than it has gotten: the role of our own prosecutor’s office in shaping how the county responds to this project, at the same time the prosecutor had a personal financial transaction with the company at its center.
Here is what the public record shows. County records reflect that Paul Dobson sold his home to Liames LLC in May 2025. Liames LLC is the entity that has purchased land and filed the zoning applications for the Meta project since 2023, and it continues to do so today. Eight months after that sale closed, on January 12, 2026, Prosecutor Dobson personally signed and sent Wood County townships a letter and a model moratorium resolution his office had drafted, addressing whether and how townships could pause new data center approvals. This letter arrived just five days after Assistant Prosecutor Linda Holmes told Middleton Township trustees, at their Jan. 7 meeting, that the office needed to research whether a moratorium was even legally permissible. A five-day turnaround is hard to square with the idea that extended research was required, and it’s fair to ask what that delay was really about when other county examples exist.
Separately, the Wood County Planning Commission has repeatedly voted to recommend rezoning land for this project at Liames LLC’s request, most recently in June and July of this year. Planning Commission member Jeffrey Schaller, who is also president of a construction firm active on the Meta site, has voted in favor of these requests. I understand that a determination was made that he has no conflict of interest requiring recusal, reportedly made in consultation with, or on the recommendation of, the prosecutor’s office.
To be clear about what I am not saying. I am not alleging that the Dobsons’ home sale was for anything other than fair market value, and I am not asserting that any specific decision by the prosecutor’s office was legally improper. What I am saying is that the timing and the overlap here, a sitting prosecutor’s personal transaction with a company, followed closely by his office’s active, ongoing legal role in matters affecting that same company, are exactly the kind of facts that Ohio’s ethics laws exist to examine. The public deserves to know that decisions shaping our county are made free of any personal stake, real or perceived, and right now that assurance is missing.
I have sent a written request asking Prosecutor Dobson to recuse his office from further involvement in matters touching Liames LLC and the Meta project, and to refer them to independent counsel. I am also submitting this matter for review to the Ohio Ethics Commission’s office. I am not asking anyone to assume wrongdoing. I am asking that these questions are answered by someone without a personal stake in the answer, and that the process be transparent enough for the rest of us to judge for ourselves.
Chris Coultrip
Perrysburg
