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- At least five Wisconsin communities have signed nondisclosure agreements with data center developers, including the town of Beloit.
- Even in communities without an NDA, there has been pushback against transparency. For example, Port Washington was sued because it released emails referencing a project, but not the attached files.
- It’s unclear if the state Senate will take up a bill that would ban data center NDAs, but the Assembly has already adjourned without passing the bill.
At a Jan. 28 public forum on Wisconsin data centers, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke boasted that his city did not sign a nondisclosure agreement that would have concealed plans for a $15 billion facility that is now under construction.
“If you’ve got the courage and you push back and say, ‘Listen, we’re just not going to do it,’ (the data center developers) will find a way to operate without having to sign an NDA,” Neitzke said. “So, we did not and we will not.”
On the same day Neitzke was touting his community’s openness, Port Washington was in court over its refusal to provide communications about its data center. The city had turned over emails, but not documents attached to the emails.
It’s one example, beyond NDAs, of local governments hiding details of proposed large-scale AI data centers, which are projected to span hundreds of acres, cost billions of dollars and transform communities.
Wisconsin Watch reported in January that NDAs were signed in at least four Wisconsin communities where artificial intelligence data centers are proposed or being built — Beaver Dam, Kenosha, Janesville and Menomonie. Since then, Wisconsin Watch has learned about a fifth project with an NDA, this one in the town of Beloit — showing that discussions there occurred more than a year before any public announcement was made.
Port Washington stymies public records requests
Construction began in December on Lighthouse, the 672-acre Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee.
Four months earlier, philanthropist Lynde Uihlein, a town of Port Washington resident, environmentalist and major Democratic donor, made a public records request of the city. She asked for any communications between the city and the data center developer dating back to Jan. 1, 2025.
The Wisconsin public records law declares that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and that governmental bodies must respond to requests “as soon as practicable and without delay.”
After nearly three months, the city did not reply to Uihlein’s request, so she sued.
The city responded by turning over emails, but not the documents attached to those emails, such as a draft development agreement. The city’s attorney explained that Uihlein didn’t specifically ask for the attachments.
“When cities want to court large, community-changing development, they also should be prepared to act with maximum transparency,” said Madison lawyer Christa Westerberg, one of the lawyers representing Uihlein.
“The city of Port Washington has been too slow to respond to requests about the data center and even when it has, there are gaps, like providing emails without attachments. This was foreseeable and avoidable.”
Wisconsin Watch is one of Westerberg’s clients, but is not a party to this case. Westerberg did not participate in the writing or editing of this report.
City Attorney Matthew Nugent told Wisconsin Watch: “The assertion that the city refused to produce email attachments is inaccurate. The city reasonably interpreted the original request to seek the email communications themselves, that is, the body of the email message, not the separate documents attached to those communications.”
At a court hearing Jan. 28, Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Adam Gerol rejected the idea that documents attached to emails aren’t part of the emails themselves. “There has not been a complete response to the open records request,” he said.
In February, the city turned over emails along with attachments to Uihlein, and Gerol ruled that city officials must submit to depositions to answer questions from Uihlein’s lawyers.
Gerol will be asked to determine whether the city has fully complied with the public records law, whether its delay in replying violated the law and whether it should have to pay Uihlein’s legal fees.
Another denial
The city used the same rationale to partially deny another public records request.
Port Washington resident Michael Beaster, an opponent of the data center, asked the city Nov. 20 for emails and other communications between city officials and the data center developer.
The city replied six weeks later, sending some emails but no attachments to the emails. An attorney for the city told Beaster he would need to submit another request if he wanted attachments because Beaster did not specifically request those.
“It feels like they’re being overly cautious in trying to protect the city,” Beaster said, “which certainly isn’t serving the public.”
Beaster is running unopposed April 7 for an open seat on the Port Washington city council. He helped lead a failed effort to recall Neitzke over the data center.
Neitzke said he could not comment on why the city has not turned over email attachments, other than to say he is not part of the process of releasing records.
NDA for possible Beloit data center
News surfaced this month of a possible data center an hour southeast of Madison in the town of Beloit. The town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions” and signed a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC.
Wisconsin Watch has since learned that the town signed an NDA with Cambrin in February 2025 — more than a year before making its announcement.
The NDA and other documents provided to Wisconsin Watch in response to a public records request do not directly refer to a data center.
The documents indicate that “Project Corn Maze” would initially include 700,000 square feet of buildings, employ 50 people and require tax incremental financing from the town.
The records also show that the town has exchanged emails about the project since April 2025. They indicate that Cambrin LLC was formed to make the development proposal and don’t identify what company would operate the data center.
Signs of openness
Access to records also was at issue for the first phase of a data center complex south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant. The first center in that Microsoft complex is expected to open later this year.
This month the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council announced it is giving its annual citizen openness advocate award to Midwest Environmental Advocates. The public interest law firm successfully sued the city of Racine for records disclosing how much water it is projecting to provide for the Mount Pleasant data center.
The council also gave an award to Wisconsin Watch for its story on data center NDAs.
Amid reports of a possible data center in Grant County and as Meta seeks to add a data center to one it is building in Beaver Dam, there is movement toward more openness on several fronts.
The state Public Service Commission, which approves requests for new utility plants and utility rates, initially accepted a confidentiality request from Alliant Energy in its application to serve the Beaver Dam data center despite numerous redactions — including how much energy the center would use.
On Feb. 26, however, state administrative law judge Michael Newmark, who is overseeing the PSC hearings on the request, told Alliant to resubmit its request with fewer redactions. Alliant did the next day with less information blacked out.
“It seemed like the redactions were not going to allow us to do sort of the basic functions of open government,” Newmark said at the hearing. Fewer redactions would enable the commission to rule on the application in a way that is “defensible in court and in the court of public opinion,” he said.
Last week the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy released a model for state legislation to “promote transparency and environmental protections” for data centers.
The model, which recommends temporary statewide moratoriums on data centers, makes several recommendations to increase transparency, including a ban on local governments signing NDAs and requiring public disclosures on water and electricity use before any approvals are given.
The “continued absence of comprehensive and timely disclosure requirements,” the report said, “undermines public understanding and limits informed decision-making around siting, permitting and environmental impacts.”
And on Friday, a state Senate committee on a 4-1 vote approved Senate Bill 969, which would prohibit local governments from signing NDAs with data center developers. No further action has yet been scheduled.
The committee also advanced, 3-2, Assembly Bill 840, which would require the Public Service Commission to protect ratepayers from the costs of providing electricity to data centers. The bill contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be located on the site. The Assembly passed the bill 53-44 in January.
Legislation banning NDAs is pending in several states, including two that took action last week.
A Minnesota House of Representatives committee approved a bill banning data center NDAs and sent it to the House floor.
In Florida, a provision banning NDAs that industry groups lobbied against was removed from a data center bill.
A report released last week by the Alliance of Great Lakes urged governmental bodies to limit the use of NDAs so that the public can know how much water and energy a data center will use.
“When critical information is withheld, decision-making shifts risk from private developers to communities and public utilities,” the report said.
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