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.
Meta has been identified as the developer behind one of the largest proposed projects in Beaver Dam, which is planning an investment valued at more than $1 billion. City officials were bound by a strict NDA while negotiating with the company, which operated locally through an entity named Degas LLC. The NDA meant that officials could not name Meta publicly or discuss key aspects of the project until negotiations were substantially complete, despite the scale of the project and its potential infrastructure demands.
It’s easy to see why this secrecy has drawn scrutiny, because it coincides with one of the country’s most generous data center incentive frameworks. Wisconsin’s qualified data center program provides sales and use tax exemptions on a wide range of equipment once state officials have certified a project. Eligible equipment includes servers, storage systems, networking equipment, racks, fiber and copper cabling, batteries, backup generators, and the electricity consumed by the project.
Although it’s pretty typical for officials not go out of their way to announce development projects that are still in the planning stages, the lack of public disclosure in these cases raises legitimate questions about how much time the public should have to digest and respond to projects of this scale. Electricity grids are already being stretched thin as more data centers come online, and some communities have risen against new developments following skyrocketing electricity bills.
Other projects approved under the program include one led by Microsoft. In May 2024, it signed an NDA with Kenosha, some six months before news reports first surfaced that the NDA meant the proposed operator’s name — Microsoft — was confidential. It was later announced that Microsoft purchased 240 acres in a neighboring town, which Kenosha annexed in December 2024.
Prior to Wisoncin Watch’s reporting, at least seven major data center projects were underway across Wisconsin with an estimated combined value of some $57 billion, but a $12 billion project has been blocked by the Village of DeForest as of January 27. It is unclear whether other projects subject to similar NDAs will be affected at this stage.
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