Ohio Valley Digest — Sunday, May 10, 2026
Your Mother’s Day news brief for the Valley.
The week in one paragraph
It is a Mother’s Day weekend, the West Virginia primary is Tuesday, and gas at the pump in Ohio is $4.72/gallon — about $1.40 more than this time last year, the highest level since 2022. On Friday the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported that the West Virginia Office of Energy is paying a Richmond, Virginia consultant — whose principal is an outspoken data-center booster — about $195,000 a year to advise it on how to attract more data centers. On Saturday, Mountain State Spotlight reported that disabled West Virginians on Social Security are watching their power bills climb past $400 a month — and that the state senator who tried to make the Public Service Commission elected by voters had his bill blocked from a hearing by the senate committee chair. Six fentanyl-laced cocaine overdoses hit Weirton in a week; one of them was fatal. And a sixteen-year-old foster kid in Jefferson County is calling himself by his foster family’s last name.
What happened this week
West Virginia’s energy-policy table is now visible. The state Office of Energy signed a $15,000-per-month consulting contract with Davis Energy & Infrastructure Strategy Group of Richmond, Virginia, effective March 1, 2026. The principal, Glenn Davis, was Virginia’s energy director under Gov. Glenn Youngkin and is publicly aligned with the data-center industry. The scope of the contract names “data center attraction and siting” as a service line. (Charleston Gazette-Mail, Friday.)
Power bills keep climbing, and the bill that might do something about it never got a hearing. Sen. Mike Woelfel (D-Cabell) introduced legislation this session to make the three Public Service Commission members elected by voters rather than appointed by the governor. The Senate Government Organization Committee chair — Sen. Robbie Morris (R-Randolph) — declined to put it on his committee’s agenda. Mountain State Spotlight tells the story through ratepayers paying hundreds of dollars a month on fixed incomes. (Mountain State Spotlight, Saturday.)
The first WV election to require a photo on your ID is Tuesday. Polls open 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM Tuesday May 12. WV driver’s licenses, US passports, military and government photo IDs all qualify. If you don’t have a photo ID, you can still vote — bring along someone who’s known you for six months and can verify your identity, or vote a provisional ballot. Free photo IDs are available at every county courthouse. Ohio County voters: precincts 20 and 31 no longer vote at the Masonic Lodge in Fulton — voting moves upstairs at Generations Restaurant and Pub, 338 National Road.
Fentanyl-laced cocaine has hit the Northern Panhandle. Weirton Police Chief Charlie Kush said his department dealt with six overdoses in a week. One person has died; two are still hospitalized. The Hancock-Brooke-Weirton Drug Task Force has made an arrest for distribution. Across the river in Jefferson County, the health district confirmed earlier this week that eight people have died of overdose in 2026 already, four in April alone — against ten in all of 2025.
A long-empty downtown Wellsburg building is back open. The Wellsburg Urban Renewal Authority — chair Alex Weld, all volunteers — used a Capito-secured Small Business Administration award to rehab a vacant downtown building. The Kookie Jar opened on the ground floor; apartments come online on the second and third floors in the next few weeks.
Belmont County has 47 foster homes and asked for more. Belmont County commissioners read a Foster Parent Appreciation Month proclamation this week. Next door, Jefferson County has 60 children in care. West Virginia joined the federal “A Home for Every Child” initiative on Friday — its current ratio is 57 foster homes per 100 children in care.
Three OV mayoral and house races worth knowing. Cameron (Marshall County): Mayor Sherry Johnson vs. Zebadiah McIlvain. Bethlehem (Ohio County): Mayor Matthew Saseen vs. Public Works' Scott Himrod. WV House District 2 (Hancock-Brooke): Del. Mark Zatezalo vs. Weirton real estate broker Tony Viola — the central campaign issue is Weirton’s potential $190 million water upgrade.
What might cost you more (or less) this week
Gas: AAA national average $4.53/gallon Sunday morning; Ohio average $4.72/gallon — about $1.40 a gallon more than last year, the highest level since 2022. Iran-US tensions sent oil prices on a $20-per-barrel weekly swing.
Diesel and fertilizer for OV farms: Diesel hit $5.40/gallon in south-central Ohio. Urea (the world’s most-used solid nitrogen fertilizer) is up more than 33% since late February. The “28” liquid nitrogen Ohio corn growers depend on relies on 20–25% supply from the Strait of Hormuz region. Ohio’s Farmer Bridge Assistance Program is activated for many.
Electric bill: PJM (the regional grid operator) named David Mills its permanent CEO May 1 and on May 6 published a frank document — “Powering Reliability Through Market Design” — laying out “high prices, burgeoning electricity demand, and reluctant investors.” Capacity-auction prices already hit a record cap of $329.17/MW-day for next year. None of that has hit residential bills yet. It will.
Beer at the bar: Teamsters Local 175 is in a contract dispute with The Beverage Market — the Charleston-area distributor of Miller, Coors, Modelo, and Red Bull. The company is asking workers to absorb a 900% health-insurance premium increase and major retirement cuts. NLRB unfair-labor-practices complaint filed.
Names to know this week
Tuesday’s WV primary: Saseen v. Himrod (Bethlehem mayor); Johnson v. McIlvain (Cameron mayor); Zatezalo v. Viola (House Dist 2); Eddy v. Chapman (Senate Dist 1); Chek v. Jones (Hancock Commission); Saseen-Himrod and Eddy-Dobkin both reflect contested local-Republican fights worth following.
Shawn Fluharty (D, House Dist 3) announced a state senate run against incumbent Republican Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman in District 1 — the most-watched OV Senate race going into 2028.
Sen. Jim Justice filed an amended motion Friday alleging that Texas billionaire Robert Rowling’s TRT Holdings — Omni Hotels' parent — used a September 2024 “private equity consultant” visit to The Greenbrier under a confidentiality agreement to plan its March 25 acquisition of $289.5 million in resort debt from Carter Bank, then filed for emergency receivership the same day.
Black Lung Program payments switch to electronic Friday May 15. Beneficiaries without direct deposit or the OWCP debit-card alternative are at risk of a payment gap.
This weekend in the Valley
Mother’s Day (today, Sunday May 10). The International Mother’s Day Shrine sits in Grafton, WV — about an hour south of Wheeling. Anna Jarvis, a Grafton native, founded Mother’s Day in 1908 and spent the second half of her life trying to undo it after watching florists, candy companies, and greeting-card publishers commercialize it. By 1943 she was lobbying to have the holiday revoked.
In the longer view
A Harrison County resident — Jonathan Bratten of Hopedale — wrote to the Harrison News-Herald this week to take the Harrison County Community Improvement Corporation to task for equating data-center environmental impact to “solar panels.” His letter walks through grid drawdown, noise (the bitcoin mine outside Hopedale generates noise heard five miles away), and water demand stressing aquifers already strained by fracking. “Since the mid-1800s, Harrison County has been stripped of its resources by people outside the county. First coal mines, then oil rigs, strip mines and fracking. Are we going to add data centers, too?”
The same week, the Times Leader reported that 10 of 14 economists on the Scioto Analysis Ohio Economic Experts Panel agreed that data-center tax incentives are not an efficient use of public funds. Volunteers across Ohio are circulating a constitutional-amendment petition to ban new data centers above 25 MW peak load.
Three states, three angles, one regional question.
Got a tip, an obituary, or something we should know about? Reply here or send an email to tips@ohiovalleydigest.org — it goes straight to Jeremy.
The Ohio Valley Digest covers Belmont, Jefferson, Harrison, Columbiana, Monroe, Noble, Morgan, Guernsey, and Washington (OH) counties; Marshall, Wetzel, Ohio, Brooke, and Hancock (WV).