The village of DeForest has paid a communications firm roughly $109,000 to help the village handle public relations around a now-dead data center proposal in the town of Vienna.

According to a November agreement with the village, Mueller Communications LLC was retained to "engage and inform residents and other key audiences" about the QTS proposal. This included providing "strategic communications, media relations and event support related to the public processes associated with the proposed development."

"I think whenever a project as large as a data center comes to a small community, there is consideration of time allocation and resource allocation and it could be overwhelming for communities of our size," says Bill Chang, DeForest village administrator. He adds that those expenses will be reimbursed by QTS.

How to handle public input around data center proposals is one of the issues that a nascent Dane County committee will spend the next year attempting to sort out. In February, the Dane County Advisory Committee on Data Centers convened with a novel purpose: figure out how to regulate data center development in communities across Dane County. The committee’s charge is to get a handle on the catalog of concerns, then develop recommendations. A final report is due in February 2027.

"My interest in this subject is that I observed what was happening elsewhere in our state, and the consternation that was being voiced by the public, and other communities' decision-making process," county board Chair Patrick Miles said as he opened the first meeting on Feb. 10, acknowledging public anxieties over transparency and potential unknowns from data center proposals.

"But I also want to acknowledge that I come to this with some level of opinion; I had my own apprehensions. So I'm trying to approach this with an open mind." Miles urged others to do the same.

Two days after the committee's first meeting, a few dozen protesters gathered on the Capitol steps for a "Day Against Data Centers," demanding a freeze on data center developments, protections against rate increases, and limits on the use of public funds for private infrastructure. Their concerns are ones the committee will spend the next year trying to answer: How much water and energy will these facilities use? What will they cost ratepayers? What happens to the land?

"We should define it before we decide it," said Krista Browne, who is running for mayor of Viroqua this spring. She points to the work of grassroots coalitions in both DeForest and Viroqua who are trying to understand a flurry of proposals for data centers and the electrical lines that will power them. 

Browne's not anti-technology, but says communities across Wisconsin don't yet have all the information necessary. She thinks Wisconsin should impose a moratorium on data center development. "The problem we're looking at is so large in scale, but also, obviously connected. I believe we have to put a pause button on it."

The Midwest’s growing reputation as a climate haven is one of the reasons companies are seeking out Wisconsin for large data storage facilities. In testimony before the state Assembly Committee on Ways and Means in October, one data center provider cited the Midwest as a reliable place to back up data, immune from natural disasters, like earthquakes and hurricanes, that threaten data stored in coastal states.

Wisconsin lawmakers have sweetened the pot. In 2023, they included a sales and use tax exemption for data centers in the two-year state budget. That generosity continued in 2025, in a bipartisan bill that carved out exemptions to the standard TIF rules to make two large data center projects easier to finance.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Wisconsin is one of 37 states with economic incentives designed to foster data center growth. But the tide could be turning. In the last three months, lawmakers in at least Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, and Maryland have introduced proposals to repeal those incentives.

The members of the data center advisory committee are pulled from a variety of backgrounds. Miles calls them "subject matter experts." Roughly half of the members are elected officials, including three Dane County supervisors, two town supervisors, and two village presidents. There are three environmentalists focused on energy, air and land use. There's a representative from the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission and another from Citizens Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group.

And then there's Terry Bradshaw, data center service lead for DoIT, the Department of Information Technology at UW-Madison. Bradshaw is also the president of the Maunesha River Alliance and says that land use is a personal passion. "I find myself at a bit of a crossroads between these two things," he says.

The aim is to provide municipalities, particularly those with smaller staffs, with a roadmap in the event they face a data center proposal. Miles says he wants the committee to"empower communities to be able to decide for themselves what direction they want to go with this type of development, if they so choose."

The committee will meet once a month for the next year, midday on the second Tuesday of the month. For the first six months, members will weigh specific aspects of data center proposals: energy use, water impacts, economic impacts, land considerations, and regulatory questions.

The proposal from QTS Data Centers, which sparked the formation of the committee, is a nonstarter. The DeForest Village Board unanimously voted Feb. 3 to accept village staff's recommendation to reject an annexation petition. 

QTS never formally submitted an application directly with Dane County, says the county's head of planning and development, Todd Violante. He adds that the project would have eventually required an amendment to the county's comprehensive plan, as the land at issue is still designated for agricultural preservation.

A related conditional use permit to expand an existing substation in Vienna, on land owned by the American Transmission Company (ATC), was filed in December to "provide electrical service to a potential new customer." The application was withdrawn at the end of January.

Starting with Microsoft in Mount Pleasant, hyperscale data center proposals have been coming to Wisconsin, including Meta in Beaver Dam and Vantage in Port Washington.

Communities are tackling the issue in a variety of ways. In Menomonie, facing a proposal from Balloonist LLC, the city council adopted additional zoning restrictions for hyperscale data centers, removing it from their definition of warehousing. In Janesville, a proposal from Viridian to redevelop the retired GM plant into a data center campus is now headed directly to voters in a ballot question in November.

The city of Madison has preemptively adopted a one-year moratorium on data center proposals, so city planners can study the issue. But what happens if another data center proposal comes to another Dane County community in the next year, while the committee is still at work?

"Let me answer it this way," says Miles. "DeForest was being asked to consider this QTS proposal. It was my hope, knowing that this was on the horizon, that they would take a pause and say, as part of doing our due diligence, let's let this committee complete its work to inform us so we can make some informed decisions. So that's the option for communities. For example, with the annexation petition. They're not obligated to accept an annexation. They can say no. Which, in this case, DeForest did."