How Policy Around Data Centers and NDAs Are Moving at the Minnesota Legislature

April 9 Update

Despite previously passing the Elections Finance and Government Operations committee with no opposition,  9 Republicans on the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee rejected HF4077, legislation authored by Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL-Minneapolis) and Rep. Drew Roach (GOP-Farmington) that would ban municipalities from entering into non-disclosure agreements. Republicans voted against the bill after testimony from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce and Minnesota Business Partnership.

“There is no reason this bill shouldn’t have passed today. If we voted on banning NDAs on the House Floor, it would pass,” said Rep. Greenman. “We all saw a stark contrast in committee: everyday Minnesotans and local leaders on one side, big Tech and the Chamber on the other. Republicans on the committee picked the side of the CEOs.”

She added, “In a tied legislature, this is exactly the type of bill Minnesotans expect to pass — a bill banning NDAs and secret meetings that progressive DFLers and conservative Republicans support. We’ll keep fighting for this bill to become law this session.”

The Senate companion bill (SF4379) is still active.

Previous Story from March 23

Members of the Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee heard testimony on March 11 regarding Bill HF4077: “A bill for an act relating to local government; prohibiting municipalities from entering into nondisclosure agreements or contracts that restrict the municipality from disclosing information about certain projects using public funding; proposing coding for a new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 471.”

Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL–Minneapolis)

Rep. Emma Greenman (DFL-Minneapolis 63B), the bill’s co-author with Rep. Drew Roach (R-GOP), presented corporate secrecy as the “simple and common-sense” target.

Since then, the number of data center developments currently in progress in Minnesota has increased. Currently, more than a dozen projects are progressing at various stages across the state; retrospective action is the only course. “This isn’t hypothetical,” said Greenman. “NDAs have already done real harm, eroding trust with local decision makers, and evading the process of public deliberation and participation that our entire government and democracy is built on.” 

Greenman reassured fellow policymakers that banning NDAs would not upset “the very delicate balance of trade secrets and non-public information that decades of law has built up.” The bill would more simply prohibit local governments from entering into agreements that would undermine public trust. “Whether you like or don’t like data centers, the question is: do you think the public should be involved in that decision?” Greenman said. “The vast majority of conversations about economic development, about land use, are not happening with these NDAs.”

Developers and local governments have used NDAs to hide concessions made by city leaders to developers in order to avoid scrutiny from residents — such as a practice to side-step existing zoning rules to classify developments as “light manufacturing” instead of “heavy industrial,” or allowing data centers to take from local water supplies (with costs passed on to residents).

Sarah Mooradian. Photo Sarah Whiting

Sarah Mooradian, Government Relations and Policy Director for CURE, testified that when small towns are approached by multi-billion dollar corporations, “local governments may feel understandably eager to welcome the proposed projects, so signing NDAs may seem like a simple and inevitable ask.” 

“Project Loon” in Hermantown, for example, has been moving forward since 2023, yet the work was revealed to be an expansive data center in September 2025; the Star Tribune recently identified it as a Google project. Residents feel betrayed by their city leadership’s lack of transparency about the development, which will be larger than the State Fairgrounds.

“We’re not asking for secret engineering plans or designs. We’re just asking for information that affects our communities. We want to know how much it’s going to pollute and how it will affect our wells,” testified  Hermantown resident Richard Hilton. Banning NDAs “is a chance to earn back some trust.”

Cathy Johnson. Photo by Sarah Whiting

Cathy Johnson, the Farmington-based leader of the Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development, spoke of the rapid momentum that developers have gained in Minnesota thanks to the use of NDAs. “We now recognize that there is a template. Developers come to small communities with faux promises of permanent jobs and tax revenues,” she explained to the committee.

“In return they ask city employees and councils to sign NDAs and promise water from the domestic water allocation — with no citizen input. The template is being used all over the state to convince tax-hungry small town [leaders] to work against their own citizens to approve plans without input,” she said. 

Ashley Grimm, a St. Louis County Commissioner, testified that she has not “seen anything erode trust at the county level as fast or as broadly as commissioners signing NDAs last year” with Google. She indicated the NDAs “gave a private company up to five years to build relationships and lobby a data center project without the public present.”

NDAs — which tend to be signed at the city or county staff level — are neither normal nor necessary, said Grimm. She said that banning NDAs on the statewide level is the only way forward in order to build and retain trust and transparency. Community members want to be part of the process before decisions are made, rather than having the focus be on meeting the needs of unnamed, undisclosed developers. 

Testifer Aubree Derksen of Pine Island, where Google has proposed another data center, expressed the widespread fear of the irrevocable transformation that will happen without public discourse: “Data centers will permanently alter small towns like mine. [Currently] our biggest building is the grain elevator.”

The House Elections Finance and Government Operations Committee approved HF4077 and sent it to the House Floor. No audible dissent was heard.

 NOTEBOOK: Other Challenges and Solutions 

Developing community benefits input, cleaner energy infrastructure around data centers, and a better understanding of what multibillion-dollar data centers are doing under corporate ownership are why many Minnesota legislators and advocates also are calling for a two-year moratorium. To avoid mistakes made in Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, and other states around data center development, a moratorium would give time to create smarter solutions.

In Georgia, for example, the state is experiencing a strain on power grids and water resources, resulting in at least eight cities and counties passing temporary development moratoriums in 2025. The issues they are experiencing are common complaints:

• Residents have reported their water wells going dry following the construction of nearby data centers.
• Current and planned data centers in Georgia are estimated to require as much energy as 3.9 million homes, putting immense pressure on the electrical grid.
• Construction has led to sediment pollution and chemical discharge into local watersheds, including the Flint River.
• Nearby residents complain of constant industrial noise from cooling systems and bright security lights operating 24/7.
• A Georgia audit revealed the state has lost roughly $1.5 billion in tax revenue due to incentives.

NEW 3/25: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders recently announced a new policy to place a moratorium on the construction of data centers.

NEW 4/2: Maine is prepared to create a moratorium until November 2027 on building data centers

Problem: “Hidden” subsidies have given tax breaks to corporations, without involving the public in assessing if the investment offers a good return. 

For example, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a CBA for an “artificial intelligence hub” involved upfront contributions of $10 million to the Lancaster County Community Foundation and upfront contributions of $10 million to the City’s Sustainable Development and Clean Energy Fund. Targeted benefits include local job training and hiring. Operational commitments include emergency management, noise control, and decommissioning planning.

Problem: Because data centers can consume 10 times more energy than regular web searches, transparency allows communities to fight for renewable energy integration rather than fossil fuel reliance. 

Solution: In Virginia, where early data centers were built, policy has changed that require data centers to report quarterly on water and energy use to the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), with data published on a public site starting July 2026.

Problem: When locals are not informed, the tenets of democracy are eroded.

A small Louisiana community had no community input. “Meta’s $27-billion data center will consume three times the electricity that the city of New Orleans uses in a year and chug millions of gallons of water a day to cool its massive data servers that power the company’s artificial intelligence. … [People] found out about the data center the way everyone else in Holly Ridge did. One day, they just started digging.”

Problem: Concerns to resolve about the use of data centers for surveillance gathering.

Data & Society has a commentary titled “Situating Virginia’s Data Center Alley in a New Era of Tech Power.” It notes the growing concern about what these exponentially growing data centers are tasked to do. After Amazon sought to build a data center in Tucson, Arizona, for example, community concerns were raised about Amazon’s relationship with Palantir around surveillance. MediaJustice executive director Steven Renderos explained on a Tech Policy podcast that the data for “surveillance technologies being used by federal and local law enforcement agencies to target and criminalize protests” is data that “all lives somewhere.”

The Data & Society commentary concluded: “As researchers, in addition to tracking individual site fights around data centers, we’re looking at how the politics, economics, and cultural factors of a place inform what strategies are possible and effective. Our intention is to connect situated data center politics to the larger systemic harms afforded by data center expansion and data centers’ relation to the fossil fuel industry and surveillance state.”

What’s Next?

To support our ongoing coverage about data center development: