(The Center Square) – A fight has broken out in northeastern Pennsylvania over the future of lovely, forested Clinton Township – a future that could include 20 data center buildings and two power plants – but some residents are dismayed by the way their township is conducting the fight.
Supervisors last month abruptly ended the tenure of the township’s longtime solicitor and hired a new, interim solicitor. The firm of the new lawyer, Ronald M. Bugaj, has in the past done unrelated work for the company behind the big data center proposal; Bugaj also went to high school with the president of the company, and is his “personal friend.”
Those ties and acknowledgment of a long list of “potential conflicts” in the new arrangement are spelled out in a document obtained from the township by The Center Square via a public records request. It was signed by township supervisors, Bugaj, and a data center company executive.
The substance of the “Joint Waiver of Conflict of Interest and Informed Consent” was openly discussed at a recent public meeting and Bugaj, in an interview on Thursday, said there has been full disclosure to all parties.
“I intend to call this fairly and treat people with respect,” he said.
Bugaj stressed that Clinton is very rural and that a lot of people know each other. His “interim” status, he said, means, “I am here for now.”
Beyond that, even residents who oppose the data center say Bugaj has been forthright in his conduct. “The township does need a solicitor,” said Thane Rickard, an engineer by profession who describes the industrial data center proposal as a “predatory.”
Nonetheless, a firestorm of strong feelings has been ignited in the pocket of rolling countryside roughly midway between Scranton and the New York border. Opposition to the data center concept is widespread.
On Thursday, a lawsuit was filed in Wayne County Court that accused the township and its supervisors of violating the state Sunshine Law by releasing the former solicitor outside of a public meeting. And there is a sense that this and many other data center proposals roiling communities statewide are being met with a deaf ear in politically bogged-down Harrisburg.
“This is probably the most drastic thing that has ever happened to this township. We are a rural community with basically no industry at all,” said the plaintiff in the Sunshine Act complaint, former township supervisor Jim Zefran. “Now all of a sudden this monstrosity comes along.”
A grassroots group called “Save Browndale Mountain,” named for the dominant geographic feature near the proposal site, is collecting money to hire its own attorney.
Raelyn Garriga – who, like Rickard, is a member of the grassroots group – said nearly everyone at a recent public township meeting was “concerned about solicitor Bugaj and his position as a personal friend” of the data center company leader. And the proposal itself, she said, represents a giant unknown.
“None of us have been made aware of what this means for our quality of life,” Garriga said. There are concerns, she added, about noise, pollution, and “most importantly, drinking water. Most of us up here are on wells.”
Attempts to obtain comment from current supervisors Mark Lopatofsky, Brad Bates and Brian Non – including a request made personally to staffers in the Clinton Township building – were not successful.
In the interview, Bugaj said he had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment on it.
The situation is one of many flashpoints statewide as development and land professionals tap huge flows of money going into artificial intelligence and try to lock up governmental clearance to build data centers. Both Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro have been major supporters of AI development.
Around data center proposal sites in Pennsylvania, meetings have drawn big crowds, lawsuits have been filed, and there are frequent accusations of a lack of transparency.
At last part of the 682-acre campus proposed in Clinton by Linde Corp. would be situated between Browndale Mountain and the Lackawanna River. Preliminary filed plans describe 20 data center buildings and two on-site power plants.
The deep green foliage of the valley is visible from the home of Kara Erdman in Forest City, just across the line in Susquehanna County.
“We are sick over it. It’s a beautiful view,” Erdman said of the proposal. “We love the rolling hills of Pennsylvania.”
Township solicitors are lawyers who represent the interests of the municipality in legal proceedings.
The “joint waiver” document signed in Clinton Township says Bugaj’s law firm previously represented Linde “in various matters unrelated to the subject of this waiver.” That history, it cautions, when combined with the firm’s representation of the township as solicitor “may create a conflict.”
The document’s “disclosure of potential conflicts” section says they could occur in areas like zoning or traffic, environmental, utility, or public safety concerns. It asks the signers “with full knowledge of the potential conflicts described above” to consent to representation by the firm.
In Harrisburg, the Legislature and Shapiro have not approved any comprehensive set of laws on the wave of data center proposals. Individual lawmakers who were shown the Clinton Township document were dismayed.
“The people that live in that township are going to lose in the end,” said Republican Rep. Jamie Walsh of Luzerne County, which itself has been rocked by multiple data center proposals. “It is a major conflict of interest.”
Walsh has proposed a set of bills on data centers that cover transparency and would include penalties for misleading citizens about the impacts of data centers.
Sen. Katie Muth of Chester County, a Democrat, has proposed a three-year moratorium on hyperscale data center development. Concerning the Clinton Township waiver document, Muth said, “It’s hard to believe this previous relationship wouldn’t impact the outcome for this community.”
Sen. Jarrett Coleman of Lehigh County, a Republican, said it was imperative that potential conflicts for township officials be fully disclosed. He questioned whether the Clinton Township waiver document was publicized as much as it should have been – and he wondered whether it might be necessary to seek legislation to require public posting of such documents.
“People want to know the solicitor that their elected officials are hiring is able to do the job,” Coleman said. “Especially when it comes to data centers.”
The township’s state senator is Republican Sen. Lisa Baker.
Asked for an interview, her office provided a written statement in which Baker said she recognized the “national security and public safety consequences” as well as the “economic, energy, and environmental impacts” in the data center/AI debate. She said she advocates for transparency and local control, and data center projects “should not change the characteristic of the area.”
The area’s House lawmaker, Republican Rep. Jonathan Fritz, said in an interview in the Capitol that land use and zoning are local government issues. He said he respected the work of the township supervisors – calling their job “impossible” and “thankless” – and said he would not question their decisions.
At the same time, he supports a “pause” of some sort in the push for data centers. The governance concept behind that, he said, is “tap the brakes whenever there is something new and overwhelming.”
