Today’s column (gift link) looks at the raging debate over hyperscale data centers from a new angle. I got the idea from an old friend, Chuck Marohn, who longtime readers will remember as my co-host on the KAXE podcast “Dig Deep.”
Chuck’s a local guy. He’s conservative because he believes government should be local, not centralized. So when he wrote that a town should not be able to make its own deal with a data center company, that caught my attention. The reason he says this is the same reason towns can’t drain another town’s drinking water or pummel them with cows hurled from a medieval trebuchet. It affects other people, not just the town.
Specifically, these massive data centers are not only big energy consumers, they’re financial pits. And while the world’s largest companies today say they’ll cover all the costs, that might not always be the case. What happens when a small town is sitting on a $100 million bill for infrastructure that’s no longer needed?
Read “Data center deals sound sweet, but costs could swamp small towns” in the Thursday, June 11, 2026 edition of the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist and member of the editorial board for the Minnesota Star Tribune. His new book about Hibbing Mayor Victor Power and his momentous fight against the world’s largest corporation will be out soon.
