There was a surprise visitor at Monday morning’s commissioner’s meeting at Fulton County Office building that not even the commissioners knew was in attendance.
Thomas Dakich, representing a company called Decennial Group and another company called Transport Indiana, took the floor to speak during an informal public comment session saying he worked for a company that builds data centers and said he’s the one who started the whole data center discussion in the county. Dakich is also an attorney.
Dakich came unannounced and spent more than a half hour explaining why he was there and trying to answer questions from the public at the end of the meeting.
Commissioners said they would have preferred that Dakich call ahead of time to be put on the agenda for the meeting. They also said they had no prior knowledge of Dakich.
According to Data Center Dynamics, Dakich has been a practicing attorney for more than 30 years and his practice has centered on the development of telecommunications and data centers. He has closed more than $500 million in transactions, including the sale or merger of companies on every continent.
“Fulton County is a great place for a data center from our perspective,” said Dakich. “If you all don’t want it, then we’ll go to Miami County or some other place. …
Dakich address non-disclosure agreements. “There’s a couple ways to look at it. First of all, NDAs are abysmal. I actually wrote the legislation. In HB 1333, there’s an anti-NDA provision in there and there’s going to be no NDAs.”
Commissioners made it clear to attendees they have not signed any non-disclosure agreements about data centers.
Dakich compared the necessity of having a data center to the railroad system when it first came about. “That rail system is now filled with fiber,” said Dakich. “Fulton County is uniquely positioned with some of that fiber. You being the residents get no benefits to this.”
He also brought up the interstate highway system, which displaced people.
“At the end of the day, the idea here is to figure out what’s going to happen in this county, how it happens, and is there benefit that’s going to go to this county? The governor and I had a meeting right after you had a meeting with them and basically said go build this in Fulton County because they want it. … We don’t have any land figured out,” said Dakich.
Dakich also said water could be trucked to the data center if citizens are concerned about the water table running dry.
“No data center is dependent anymore on water. It used to be,” said Dakich. “There’s these services that create the water. … At the end of the day, the water is not an issue. The electricity would come off these long-hauled lines and it won’t impact residents.” He said that water would never leave the center’s cooling system. It would be close-looped, and since it does get cold in Fulton County, there will be some cooling tours, but some of it would be air-cooled.
“There is a lot of learning going on across the state. … I built a data center in Hammond and it’s right on Lake Michigan. At the time, this is 2019, we created a system where we pulled water out of Lake Michigan, used it for cooling and put it back in. Because it’s already $3 million and it’s already obsolete. We can’t use it. … We just don’t do that anymore.”
He offered to take people to a data center to show them how it actually works. “To show you that we’ve actually done this and it actually works. … We’ve learned since 2019 when we were taking water out of the lake, putting it back in. We learned as an industry since 2023 when that system was designed. … What’s happened is communities have made it more difficult to slip stuff through.”
One concerned citizen was worried about where the water is being taken from. Dakich said they would “manufacture” the water but didn’t elaborate on where it would come from.
Dakich said Monday he’ll be in town for a couple of days to speak to people on data centers. He can be reached at tdakich@dakichlaw.com or by calling 317-966-4967.
The commissioner also heard from concerned citizen Darlene Drudge, of Akron, who wished to voice her opinion on the rumored data center even though it was not on the agenda. Drudge was the only citizen to speak at the podium besides Dakich.
Drudge said she received a message from a fellow member of an anti-data center social media group who said he had a telephone conversation with Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith about data centers and asked Beckwith to share Fulton County residents’ opinions with Gov. Mike Braun later that day.
“The governor has said he does not want to force this down a community that doesn’t want it, but he is looking for county officials that want this. And according to the Lieutenant Governor, two out of three commissioners have been talking at the state level that we really want this,” said Drudge.
She asked the commissioners what their position was on putting a data center in rural Fulton County.
“After we had our meeting back in August, I had told the secretary of energy, I said I’d be very interested in discussing it,” said Commissioner Dave Sommers. “And that’s what I’ve told different times I’ve seen Gov. Braun for about 15-20 seconds at a time. He said, are you still interested? And I said we’re still interested in talking. And that’s as far as I’ve gone. … I said, financially I would. I think our county can benefit greatly from a data center.”
Drudge went on to speak about Senate Bill 277 and House Bill 1333.
According to the Indiana General Assembly, Senate Bill 277 makes certain changes concerning the purpose, structure, and powers of the department of environmental management or the environmental rules board. It also makes certain changes to various boards or funds and eliminates or amends rulemaking provisions. It makes certain changes to hearing and permitting processes, and changes or eliminates certain reporting requirements. It makes various changes to the water pollution statutes, and makes various changes to the solid waste and hazardous waste management statutes. It repeals or amends various sections regarding: hazardous substances; the voluntary remediation programs; regional water districts; and citizen lawsuits. It amends provisions concerning the establishment of certain fees and the use of fee schedules, and repeals the division of pollution prevention and the office of voluntary compliance. The bill passed Jan. 29.
“There’s a lot of things in this that concern me,” said Drudge. “One of them is it would allow the body’s presiding officers to give consideration whether a person is a county resident – which is fine – and how long we can talk, the order of the speakers, the amount of time allotted. If we can’t speak, what would be the intention of coming to these meetings we didn’t know about in August. … It shouldn’t be that hard to change something that happened at a meeting that nobody knew about. You’re telling us you can’t go back and change those amendments; it’s against the law. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to the public that something can be done in relative secrecy.”
House Bill 1333 is pending in the Senate. It focuses on land use and development, specifically targeting the regulation of data centers and energy projects. It proposes requiring data centers to pay a 1 percent sales tax on equipment and streamlines the approval process for large energy projects, potentially bypassing some local public hearings.
“I just hope you’ll put people before pollution. I hope you’ll put people before your own political ambitions. I hope you’ll put people before all of this crap, and dollars. Money isn’t everything,” said Drudge.
Fulton County Area Plan Commission meets in special at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday in the training room at Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, 2006 Sweetgum Road, to discuss Nov. 24 Area Plan Commission minutes, a discussion about data centers and the county zoning ordinance and a proposed moratorium on data center discussion.
They are also electing officers. Enter through door 2.
All meetings are live-streamed and can be found at www.fultoncoin.portal.civicclerk.com.
Commissioner Rick Ranstead said he won’t answer any questions until the meeting because he serves on the Fulton County Area Plan Commission. “I don’t think it’s fair one way or another to give my opinion, because I’ve got to sit on that board,” said Ranstead.
After the Area Plan Commission makes their decision, according to county attorney Holli Shorter-Pifer, commissioners have to wait 48 hours to call a special meeting if they want to do anything one way or another. The Area Plan Commission can recommend a modification of the zoning ordinance, then it goes back to the commissioners.
“Area Plan makes no decisions,” said Commissioner Bryan Lewis. “They make recommendations to us.”
The attorney for the Area Plan Commission is Andy Perkins.
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