Data Center Accountability

Growth Should Benefit Wisconsin — Not Cost Our Communities

Technology and data centers are already part of our economy, and they will continue to play an important role in how businesses, government, healthcare, education, and everyday life operate.

The question should not simply be whether Wisconsin is for or against data centers.

The question should be whether these projects are right for the communities being asked to host them — and whether residents have the information they need to make that decision.

As someone seeking to represent District 72, I believe economic development and new technology can bring opportunity. But opportunity should never require communities to write a blank check with their water, land, electrical infrastructure, tax dollars, or utility bills.

Growth must come with transparency, accountability, and measurable benefits for the people who live here.

My Priorities

As your representative, I will work to:

• Protect local communities' ability to determine whether a proposed data center is right for them.

• Require meaningful public disclosure of projected energy, water, infrastructure, land, and other resource demands before major projects receive final approval.

• Protect Wisconsin families and small businesses from being forced to subsidize the energy and infrastructure demands of extraordinarily large private developments.

• Support greater transparency in development agreements and oppose nondisclosure provisions that prevent communities from understanding projects that could affect them for decades.

• Require clear accounting of promised construction jobs, permanent jobs, tax revenue, public costs, and other claimed economic benefits.

• Support strong protections for groundwater, lakes, rivers, farmland, and other natural resources affected by large-scale development.

• Ensure that important environmental, infrastructure, and resource commitments remain enforceable when ownership, operators, or tenants change.

• Demand accountability for public incentives, including measurable performance requirements and protections for taxpayers when promised benefits are not delivered.

Technology Isn't the Enemy. Lack of Accountability Is.

Wisconsin should not have to choose between technological progress and protecting our communities.

We can welcome innovation while still asking hard questions.

How much electricity will a project require? How much water? Who pays for new infrastructure? What happens if the tenant changes? How many permanent jobs will remain after construction? What protections exist if projections turn out to be wrong?

Those aren't anti-business questions.

They're responsible-government questions.

Working Together for Wisconsin

There is growing agreement across Wisconsin that communities deserve transparency, local input, protection from higher utility costs, and honest information about the effects of large data center developments.

Where I believe we need to go further is making sure accountability doesn't end when an agreement is signed.

If a project changes hands, its responsibilities to the community shouldn't simply disappear with the previous company's name.

Wisconsin should remain open to economic opportunity. But the burden should be on developers to demonstrate that their projects strengthen the communities that host them — not on residents to prove years later that the promises didn't materialize.

My Commitment

If elected, I will approach data center legislation the same way I believe we should approach every major development decision: listen first, demand the facts, protect taxpayers and natural resources, and make decisions based on the long-term interests of the people who live here.

I don't believe the answer is automatically yes.

I don't believe the answer is automatically no.

I believe Wisconsin deserves enough transparency to know when the answer should be yes — and when it needs to be no.