John Caleb Bell

John Caleb Bell is chair of Bricker & Eckler’s Public Finance practice group with a statewide practice that emphasizes public finance and economic development matters. He has served as bond counsel in a wide variety of transactions.

His clients include Ohio municipalities, counties, townships, school districts, and public universities, as well as private developers and property owners. Caleb is well known for his representation of special purpose financing entities such as port authorities, new community authorities (NCA), special improvement districts (SID) and energy special improvement districts (ESID).

Caleb has diverse economic development experience and is sought after for his knowledge of development tools such as tax increment financing (TIF), special assessments, community redevelopment area (CRA) abatements, enterprise zone (EZ) abatements, joint economic development districts (JEDD) and zones (JEDZ), and job creation tax credits.

In addition, Caleb has been instrumental in advancing energy financing in Ohio and Kentucky. He has served as bond counsel and underwriters’ counsel in more than $4 billion of natural gas and electricity prepayment bonds, including Ohio’s only tax-exempt refunding of energy prepayment bonds.

Caleb has also served as bond counsel for multiple qualified energy conservation bond (QECB) transactions. He was retained by clients to author Ohio’s property assessed clean energy (PACE) financing statute, he served as bond counsel for Ohio’s first issue of PACE-secured bonds, he has financed over 100 PACE projects, and he routinely works with public and private PACE lenders.

Caleb is an experienced negotiator, regularly advising his clients on complex projects involving multiple aspects of Ohio public finance and economic development law. He advises both public entities and private developers, and he brings a broad-based perspective to every negotiation.