At least four Wisconsin municipalities are understood to have signed underhanded nondisclosure agreements concerning new data centers while negotiating their development, according to reporting published this week by Wisconsin Watch. The agreements were used during talks on projects valued in the billions of dollars and restricted what local elected officials could publicly disclose about the developments, even as decisions were made on land use and incentives.
Beaver Dam, Menomonie, Kenosha, and Janesville are the four municipalities identified by Wisconsin Watch as entering into such NDAs with prospective data center developers. In almost all cases, the developers were represented by different LLCs with little public presence, and records released under public information requests were partially redacted.
