(The Center Square) – Charlie Berens said he couldn’t be at a Madison committee hearing on non-disclosure agreements for data centers in person because he had to go to the casino with his grandma, but his video testimony began a public hearing on a Senate bill to ban NDAs for data centers.
“I looked at these things online and really what I saw was the sentiment of people feeling like they were cut out of the process of having this huge, huge building with unprecedented building size with power usage and they didn’t know it was happening until it was too late,” Berens said. “The more we can allow communities to decide for communities, I think that’s going to create some communities will want these and some communities won’t. But the answer shouldn’t be cutting them out of the process.”
Comedian Charlie Berens testified to start a Wisconsin public hearing on banning NDAs related to data centers (*except related to trade secrets) pic.twitter.com/eMohuiA9CY— Jon Styf (@JonStyf) February 18, 2026
Senate Bill 969 has an exception that allows trade secrets from being publicly disclosed without defining what a trade secret would entail.
Many data centers have claimed that it is a trade secret to divulge the amount of energy or water used on a project or the name of the company involved in the data center.
The bill says that if a prohibited NDA is used, a local government will not be allowed to approve the project.
Sen. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, did specifically mention energy load, land use, infrastructure costs and water requirements as something that local officials would need to know before making a decision on a project.
“Unfortunately, we have witnessed a troubling pattern in Wisconsin and throughout our country, community leaders are signing secrecy deals with big tech companies and their agents to conceal material facts about the development of billion-dollar data centers from the public,” Jacque said. “They seek to hide vital information about the scope and impacts of their intended developments from the local officials charged with guarding their citizen’s welfare.”
Jacque specifically named projects in Beaver Dam, Menomonie, Kenosha and Janesville where NDAs were used to “hide information from local government.”
Jacque said that, if a data center deal is so good for a community, then an NDA shouldn't need to be used because "that's not a development strategy, it's a gag order to hide the warts."
Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, called it a "90-10 issue" with both far right and Democratic supporters who are engaged in the data center disclosure issue.
"It's really brought some odd bedfellows together," Moses said about the issue of a data center in his community.
Brad Tietz, the director of policy for the Data Center Coalition, said that the NDA bill would put Wisconsin at a "competitive disadvantage" related to attracting data center projects.
“NDAs are not tools to hide misconduct, they are standard business instruments used across virtually every industry to protect proprietary information and critical security details,” Tietz said.
