First posted on Instagram
Republican Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy on Friday, October 30, 2026, announced seven executive orders he pledges to sign on his first day as governor, on January 11, 2027, if he wins Tuesday's election. The orders cover property-tax investigations, sanctuary cities, a pause on new data-center projects, Medicaid fraud, violent crime, state contracts and a new anti-fraud task force — all to be signed before midnight on his first day in office, according to his campaign.
The first order directs Ohio's Department of Taxation, working with the Auditor of State, to review property-tax changes in every county, township, municipality, school district and special district in the state. Every jurisdiction where property taxes have risen by more than 100 percent since 2020 would face a full investigation into how the additional revenue has been spent. The announcement follows Ramaswamy's pledge earlier in the week to launch investigations of local property-tax hikes.
The second order would end sanctuary cities across Ohio. It would bar cities, townships, counties and other local jurisdictions from adopting policies that prevent or impede their law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. A local government that does not honor federal detainer requests or share information as federal law allows would lose eligibility for state grants run by executive agencies, including public-safety and homeland-security grants, until it complies, and the policy would also be referred for possible legal action.
The third order pauses new data-center projects. It directs every state agency, board and commission to pause action on any application, permit, incentive or approval for a new data center, to give the Ohio General Assembly time to pass comprehensive data-center legislation built around what Ramaswamy calls his non-negotiable principles.
The fourth order directs the Department of Medicaid to investigate waste, fraud and abuse by applying for a Section 1115 waiver that caps Ohio's Medicaid spending, modelled on Tennessee's original TennCare III waiver, which let that state keep up to 55 percent of federal savings when it spent below the cap. Under similar terms, more of every dollar of fraud Ohio stops would return to Ohio, the campaign said.
The fifth order directs the Departments of Public Safety and of Rehabilitation and Corrections to prioritize violent-crime clearance rates in discretionary funding available to support local law enforcement, using tools including advanced forensic science to raise the share of violent crimes solved from the current 34 percent level and, in the campaign's words, aggressively eliminate violent criminality in Ohio cities.
The sixth order requires a comprehensive review of every executive-branch contract paid in part or in full from the state's General Revenue Fund. The Department of Administrative Services, working with the Office of Budget and Management, would review each contract's legal basis, necessity, performance and alternatives, and the cost of ending it versus continuing it, then recommend continuation or termination.
The seventh order establishes an inter-agency anti-fraud task force reporting directly to the governor, focused on Medicaid fraud, benefits fraud and child-care fraud, visa fraud, voter-registration fraud, trucking fraud, foreign commercial driver's licence licensure and abuse of foreign hiring by public entities. It would draw experts from across state government and the private sector and could include representatives from the Auditor of State, the Secretary of State and the Attorney General.
The orders are campaign pledges, not enacted law: they would take effect only if Ramaswamy wins the November 3 election, in which he faces Democratic nominee Amy Acton and Libertarian Don Kissick. A Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network Ohio poll released this week put Acton at 48 percent and Ramaswamy at 44 percent, with Kissick at 4 percent.