Normally pro-business Republicans have found themselves pushing back on multimillion projects on behalf of rural constituents.
“A lot of the conservative legislators live out in rural areas, and we love where we live,” DeSana said, “and we see just the scar to the landscape that these data centers create.”
He wouldn’t necessarily mind a data center on a brownfield somewhere in his Downriver district, he said, though he still doesn’t believe operations that will serve some of the wealthiest tech companies in the world should get handouts, like the decades of sales and use tax exemptions on equipment approved by the legislature last year.
“If these are really necessary – and I’m on the side that says they’re not - but if they were really necessary, the market surely would step up and say, ‘We’ve got to have these,” he said.
Tuesday’s rally opened with state Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, repeating criticisms of way the proposal for a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township is being moved forward, particularly DTE’s request for its deal with the data center’s developer to receive fast-tracked approval without formal legal review from outside groups.
“But you can trust this contract, can’t you?” she continued, gesturing to a copy of DTE’s contract to serve the data center with large swaths blacked out. “This contract with all of these areas that have been redacted, where we don’t even know who the signatories to the contract are, where we don’t know the terms and conditions, where we don’t know the exit fees and termination fees for the first couple years, where we have entire areas of the contract where even the headings are redacted?”
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