The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. signed an agreement with a company called Balloonist LLC in August 2023, about 23 months before Menomonie publicly announced a proposed data center. The city signed its own agreement with the developer six months after the state agency did. The $1.6 billion project was paused in September 2025 following local opposition.

The state agency’s agreements also covered proposed or active projects in Beaver Dam, DeForest, Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. The Beaver Dam agreement preceded public announcement of Meta’s project by 19 months; the Mount Pleasant agreement with Microsoft came two months before the village announced its proposal. A QTS agreement for a DeForest project was signed eight months before its public announcement. That proposal was later dropped.

In Port Washington, agreements signed in July 2025 for the OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage project came six months after the city announced the proposal. The project is now under construction.

The agreements add to at least five previously identified nondisclosure agreements signed by Wisconsin communities. The combined records show that at least eight state data-center projects used such agreements, with three WEDC agreements involving projects in communities that did not sign local confidentiality pacts.

WEDC said it is committed to transparency and complying with public-records laws. It argued that state law allows some information about pending economic development projects to remain confidential when disclosure could harm their competitive prospects. The agency said nondisclosure agreements help companies share business information while considering investments, expansions or relocations.

State law generally makes WEDC records public, but allows the agency to withhold information about pending grants, loans or economic development projects when it believes confidentiality is needed to protect their competitive nature.

State Rep. Clint Moses, a Menomonie Republican, said he plans to expand legislation he intends to introduce in January to prohibit data-center nondisclosure agreements. His earlier bill, introduced in January but not given a hearing, applied only to local governments.

Moses said the scale of the projects and the unanswered questions surrounding them make a ban necessary, and predicted it could attract bipartisan support.

Port Washington Ald. Michael Beaster, who opposed the local project, criticized the state agency’s role in keeping negotiations confidential. He said a state agency is not accountable to local government.

The secrecy debate comes as Wisconsin considers projects worth tens of billions of dollars. Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant development has grown to a planned $20 billion, while the Port Washington project is valued at $15 billion. Meta’s Beaver Dam investment is estimated at $1 billion.

The projects also intersect with a state sales-tax exemption for certified data centers, enacted in the 2023-25 budget. The exemption, which applies to eligible construction materials, servers and other equipment, is estimated to cost the state more than $2 billion in foregone revenue. Democrats and Republicans have called for changing or ending it.

Business advocates say confidentiality helps Wisconsin compete for investments. The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce has argued that companies expect sensitive business information to remain private while they compare possible locations, and that restricting nondisclosure agreements could jeopardize jobs and tax revenue.

Opponents say secrecy leaves residents with little opportunity to assess projects that can consume large amounts of land, electricity and public resources before major decisions are made. Microsoft announced in 2026 that it would stop signing data-center nondisclosure agreements with local governments and seek to end existing ones; the announcement did not address agreements with WEDC.

At least two local governments have taken steps to limit such agreements. Columbia County barred its board members from signing data-center NDAs, while the Beloit Town Board required approval before town employees could sign them. Both candidates in Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 gubernatorial election, Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany, have expressed support for a ban.