The Liberty Daily 
(The Center Square)—In nearly half of municipalities hosting the state’s most prominent data center projects, local public officials or staff signed non-disclosure agreements with companies, a dynamic that is fueling concerns that the public’s access to information is being compromised.
Public records requests submitted by The Center Square to municipalities hosting nine data center proposals that were in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s “fast track” state permitting program in early June revealed that four had signed “NDA’s.” Officials in a fifth fast-track municipality – Kline Township in Schuylkill County – stopped responding to requests by the news outlet for information.
“These things cut the public out of the conversation and I think that is a serious problem,” David Cuillier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida, said of those findings. “These NDA’s are totally against what we believe in a democracy.”
Over a period of months, Right-to-Know requests were submitted to 30 Pennsylvania municipalities with data center proposals, seeking NDA’s or similar documents. Outside of those on the “fast-track” list, the recipients were chosen largely at random.
In Salem Township in Luzerne County, supervisor Ernest Ashbridge III in 2024 signed an NDA involving Amazon, and in 2025 signed one involving Quality Technology Services, or QTS. In Falls Township, Bucks County, the supervisors’ chairman in 2024 signed an NDA which did not name the project sponsor – but whose other signing party was an attorney who has represented Amazon.
In Shippingport, Beaver County, borough Secretary Kayla Wilkinson in October signed an Oracle America Inc. NDA, although the document provided by the borough was not signed by Oracle.
On Friday, Wilkinson said Oracle America is no longer involved in the project in Shippingport. Ashbridge is no longer on the Salem Township supervisors’ board. Attempts to contact the Falls Township official were not successful.
All four of those projects were in the fast track program, which was introduced by a then-data center friendly Shapiro in late 2024. It was intended to allow state approvals for key or “critical” projects to occur “at the speed of business.”
By June, nine of the 17 projects on the list were data centers.
Shapiro abruptly reversed his public messaging on data centers on Aug. 18, when he blasted much of the data center industry as speculative troublemakers. He signed an executive order that booted data centers off the fast track list and created standards for data developers going forward.
A fifth project that was on the fast track list in June is located in Kline Township, which straddles I-81 about 70 miles northeast of Harrisburg. The township initially responded to a records request about NDA’s by writing that a “legal review” was necessary, then stopped making written responses.
Borough Open Records Officer Kathy Brooks twice told a reporter that calls seeking clarification would be returned, but no return calls were received. Repeated calls made to attorney Mark Semanchik of Frackville, township solicitor, were not returned. The Center Square has resubmitted the written request for records.
On Friday, Amazon web pages continued to show the data center projects in Falls, Kline, and Salem townships as being accepted into the Pennsylvania Fast Track program. The pages provided a link to a state Fast Track web page that no longer bears any trace of the Amazon projects.
All around the nation, corporations are twisting the arms of local politicians to have them sign secrecy agreements about data center projects, Cuillier said.
“I understand why the corporations are doing it,” Cuillier said. “It is in their best interest to have it all secret. But it is not in the public’s best interest.”
Among Pennsylvania municipalities with a non-Fast Track data center proposal that were asked about NDA’s or similar documents, nearly all said they had not signed one.
The exceptions were Lower Mount Bethel Township in Northampton County, where eight different elected officials or staff each signed a “mutual confidentiality agreement” from Talen Energy Supply; and Clinton Township in Wayne County.
In the latter place, supervisors signed a “Joint Waiver of Conflict of Interest and Informed Consent” with a newly hired solicitor who disclosed to them that he was a longtime friend of the data center company president.
One of the Lower Mount Bethel officials, supervisors’ chairman David Ascani, said the Talen documents were intended to apply to a potential land acquisition by Talen – which has a power plant in the township – and never became effective because they were never signed by Talen.
It’s a good thing so many Pennsylvania municipalities have not signed NDA’s, according to Eric Bonds, a sociology professor at Mary Washington University in Virginia. In a study there, he found that 25 out of 31 local- and county-level governments surveyed had signed NDA’s tied to data center work
Such documents, he said, “cut the public out of the conversation” on major projects.
One of the most prominent public records and transparency attorneys in the Pennsylvania for decades, Craig Staudenmaier, said municipal NDA’s tied to data center projects create “a really bad impression with the public.”
Attorney Chad Schnee, author of a book on the Right-to-Know Law and a former assistant chief counsel for the state Office of Open Records, said the NDA’s tied to major data center projects are very concerning. They also are not legally enforceable, according to Schnee.
Nonetheless, Schnee said he understood the tremendous pressure on municipal officials created by data center developers. It gets to the point, he said, where “a municipality might be willing to sign whatever piece of paper is put in front of them.”
Even an attorney whose clients include data center developers, Frank Hoegen, said he would never encourage a developer dealing with a municipality on a data center to seek an NDA. While the documents are routine in many private business interactions, in a data center proposal there is a need to protect the public’s interests, according to Hoegen. His office is in Wilkes-Barre.
Shapiro’s Aug. 18 executive order said the use of NDA’s in data center projects was not permitted “for all agencies under the governor’s jurisdiction.” Asked specifically in writing what impact this had on municipal NDA’s, an administration press secretary instead described when the state uses NDA’s and various facets of the governor’s executive order.
A national investigation into the use of NDA’s in data center projects was launched in March by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat.
“Big tech companies and data center owners use shady non-disclosure agreements to conceal the impact of these projects on energy usage and water access in their towns,” Blumenthal said in a written statement to The Center Square. “Communities should have the facts they need to evaluate these facilities and their costs while there’s still time to stop them. My investigation into the NDAs that operators are using to conceal facts is ongoing.”
