Both pillars
Data Centers & Compute
The largest capital projects in Wisconsin’s digital economy, and the least visible terms. We are not in the siting fight. We are in the disclosure one.
Where this stands
The growth fight is crowded. The transparency ground is empty.
Wisconsin already has an organized pro-development voice: the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, less than a year old, with dozens of founding and core members and WMC, MMAC and the Building Trades as strategic partners. It does not need another one.
What the siting argument has produced is deadlock. The Data Center Requirements Act (AB 840 / SB 843) drew registered opposition from the building trades and the major environmental groups and the Citizens Utility Board, while the utilities, Meta, Vantage, WMC and MMAC all registered as “Other.” There is no position on siting that holds a coalition together, which is why it went nowhere.
Then there is AB 1036, which would have required disclosure of data-center non-disclosure agreements. Nobody registered in favor of it. Not one principal. That is not a crowded field. That is an empty one.
Our position
Wisconsin should know the terms of its own deals.
These projects draw on the state’s power, water and tax base, and they are negotiated under agreements the public and often the local officials cannot read. Four asks, none of which require taking a side on whether a given facility gets built:
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Ask 01
Disclose the agreements
Non-disclosure agreements between developers and public bodies should be disclosable. A community cannot consent to terms it is not allowed to see.
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Ask 02
Report the exemption
The sales-and-use tax exemption for qualified data centers sits at Wis. Stat. § 77.54(70). What it costs and what it buys should be reported on a schedule, like any other economic-development expenditure.
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Ask 03
Show the ratepayer effect
Large-load interconnection changes who pays for transmission and generation. Those cost allocations should be public before approval, not reconstructed afterwards from a rate case.
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Ask 04
Meter the water
Consumptive water use should be measured and published. In a Great Lakes state this is the one number that will decide public patience for the whole sector.
This is a position both caucuses can hold, and the reason we can carry it: we are not paid by the developers or by the groups opposing them.
Bill numbers, votes and committee composition are drawn from the Wisconsin Legislature and Legislative Council records; lobbying registrations from Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. See the legislative tracker for live bill status, or the full agenda for how this fits the two pillars.