Secrecy and Process: Who Is Behind It and How to Find Out

Data center site selection is competitive and quiet. A company may scout dozens of sites in several states at once. It does not want land prices to jump when sellers learn a trillion-dollar firm is buying, and it does not want rivals to know where it is expanding. So projects arrive with code names, generic LLCs and confidentiality agreements. That secrecy has a business logic. It also means residents can find themselves arguing about a building without knowing who will own it, how much power and water it needs, or what officials already promised.

The usual layers

• Code name. "Project Blue," "Project Falcon," "Project Juniper." Says nothing about the end user.
• Site-selection consultant or developer. A firm that negotiates on the end user's behalf. In Tucson, Beale Infrastructure fronted Project Blue.
• Special purpose LLC. Holds the land, files permits, signs the utility contract. Meta's Idaho site appears in utility filings as Brisbie LLC, which the 2022 Idaho Power application identified as a Meta affiliate.
• NDAs with officials. Signed by economic development staff, sometimes by elected officials, utilities or procurement directors.

Tucson shows how this plays out. KJZZ reported that Pima County, Tucson Electric Power and the City of Tucson signed early NDAs with the developer. Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz told KOLD that the county's NDA, signed by its procurement director, covered all 7,000 county employees and the five supervisors. Amazon's connection surfaced when the county administrator sent out a document showing it, and Arizona Luminaria later obtained an NDA naming Amazon Web Services. The council rejected the city's part of the project on August 6, 2025, and residents later pressed the county over its June approval of the land sale.

How to find out who is behind it

Work from the documents that a project cannot avoid filing.

Look for repeated names. The same law firm, engineering firm or registered agent across several LLCs often points to the parent. Compare the LLC's mailing address to addresses on other filings. Check whether the "LLC 4" in the name implies LLCs 1 through 3 elsewhere. And read the utility filing: a commission usually needs to know who the customer is to judge credit risk, even if the name is confidential in the public version.

Public records to request

In Idaho, Idaho Code 74-103 gives an agency three working days to grant or deny a resident's request, extendable to 10 working days with written notice. No response by the deadline counts as a denial. Nonresidents get 21 days and 35 with extension. The Idaho FOIA / Public Records Letter Generator builds request letters that cite the statute.

Open meetings

Idaho's Open Meeting Law requires five calendar days' notice for regular meetings and a 48-hour agenda (Idaho Code 74-204). Closed executive sessions are allowed only for listed purposes and need a two-thirds roll call vote that cites the specific subsection (74-206). Subsection (1)(e) allows preliminary negotiations on trade or commerce where the body competes with governing bodies in other states or nations, which is how early data center talks often get closed. Subsection (1)(c) covers acquiring real property not owned by a public agency. No final action may happen in executive session.

If a body breaks the law, an action taken can be declared void, but suit to void must be filed within 30 days; other suits have 180 days. Members can face civil penalties up to $250, or $1,500 for a knowing violation (74-208). Track a body's meetings with the Idaho Open-Meetings Compliance Tracker.

The approval path

Texas now requires large-load customers to disclose duplicate interconnection requests elsewhere in the state under SB 6. Even where no such rule exists, ask the developer directly whether the project has applied for service in other counties or states.