There have been many instances of massive turnout at public meetings about data centers in communities throughout the state of Michigan. Angry and concerned residents are expressing frustration with their public officials about even the potential of a new build, or the concerns over facilities that are already under construction.
In many cases, elected officials may have less recourse on the matter. A new survey from the Ford School for Public Policy at the University of Michigan shows most elected officials also have hesitations or skepticism themselves about new data center proposals. Stephanie Leiser, director of the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy at the U of M's Ford School (CLOSUP), led this survey and joined Stateside's April Baer to discuss.
April Baer: Stephanie, welcome back to Stateside. It's good to see you.
Stephanie Leiser: Wonderful to be here.
AB: Before we get to the results, I'm just curious, were you able to get responses from very many local governments that you asked about this?
SL: Yes. So we run this survey regularly, and it is our goal to achieve a 70% response rate. And there's 1,856 cities, villages, townships, and counties in the state. And so we hear from 70% of them. And I think one thing that allows us to do is hear from parts of the state that we don't often hear from.
AB: Meaning to say smaller units of government.
SL: Smaller communities, smaller townships. And and as we know, these are some of the people who have the strongest feelings about data centers right now.
AB: I saw from the overview of the numbers that a majority of people who responded expected strong opposition. How did that line up with how they actually felt about the data centers themselves?
SL: So we noticed a few interesting things. When you ask sort of generally, do you think data centers, you know, considering all the costs and benefits, do you think they're worth it? When you ask them just themselves in general, there's maybe some receptiveness to it, but still opposition more than support. But then when you sort of zoom in and say, how do you think your residents feel? Or how do you think your city council or your board feels about this? That's when the opposition gets a little bit stronger. There are all kinds of things to consider with data centers in the community and things that might be on the cost side and the benefit side. Not surprisingly, there's a lot of concern about fresh water and utility bills and public health and quality of life. But one thing we uncovered too is there's, you know, generally a recognition among public officials that this may still have some positive effects, like you know, they are thinking about economic competitiveness. They are thinking about impact on local property tax base. And still, well, while you weigh all of those things together, there is, you know, much more opposition than there is support. I think this is a more nuanced conversation than sometimes we hear about.
AB: Did you get a sense of whether municipal leaders in rural settings felt very differently than people in more urban settings?
SL: Yeah, definitely. We see stronger opposition in rural communities. It's partly a function of, you know, this is where they're being sited, right? You can't plunk down a gigantic data center in the middle of a city. And so they are looking at more rural parts of the state, you know, so that's part of it too, is that this is definitely something that is impacting their communities more, but also that you know, when you have smaller townships or smaller communities, it's sort of a David and Goliath situation. Like how can you expect them to bargain with and deal with these massive companies and massive developments. So it's also a sort of a capacity issue as well as a political issue for, for smaller and rural places.
AB: Did you notice many responses to the survey that reflected a sense of inevitability?
SL: I think there's definitely a sense of inevitability. And we did get a lot of comments to that effect. But I think that sort of could go one of two ways. Like it's inevitable. So we might as well take advantage of it, is I think maybe the minority opinion. And then the, you know, maybe we got more opinions to the effect of: this is inevitable. What can we do? We just sort of throw up our hands and accept our fate.
AB: Were there any questions that were part of the survey that that might have given us some insight into how local leaders feel like they're going to decide these questions.
SL: Well, I think one thing that's also really important that pops out of the survey is how much they are sort of begging the state for help. And this is actually somewhat surprising because local governments are often very, you know, like, stay out of our business, let us handle ourselves. But I think in this case, they're, they're really asking the state for help. So, what happens with decommissioning if these projects stop functioning? And this, you know, like they're so big and they're such large users of utilities, this is a big concern for down the road. They want help from the state to think through health and environmental impacts. They want the state to help them deal with regulations around water use and discharge. They don't want the state to interfere in their ability to do zoning and planning and siting of centers. They want to maintain that authority. But the types of resources that they're looking for; 57% say it would be very useful to have model ordinances. 57% say that they'd really like help, you know, guidance negotiating with data centers. They want to try to coordinate with the county and their other local governments. They need help figuring out how to do resident engagement. There's a lot of need. And I think there's a kind of frustration with the state that, you know, the state adopted these incentives for data centers, and now they're just sort of sitting on the sidelines, leaving local governments to fend for themselves and deal with all their angry residents in the process. So it's really they're kind of between a rock and a hard place.
AB: Stephanie Leiser directs the Center for Local, State and Urban Policy within the University of Michigan's Ford School. Stephanie, it's good to talk to you. Thank you for your help with this.
SL: Very happy to. Thanks!
Editor's note: Some quotes in this article have been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can play the full audio of the interview near the top of this page.
