That would be great!
Bad deals can be stopped. None of this is inevitable.
WDRB – Controversial Oldham County data center project dropped after backlash Jul 3, 2025 Updated Jul 4, 2025 The announcement from WHP marks the end of months of tension in the county, and for some residents, is a major grassroots victory. “It’s over,” said Barry Laws, a local resident who became a vocal opponent of the project. “When it first started, people said it was a done deal. I said, ‘Wanna bet?’ Now a few folks owe me 100 bucks.” (emphasis added)
This company Western Hospitality Partners that’s being accused of “corruption, favoritism, bribery, misconduct, retaliation, and abuse of power” in Kentucky, is the same company that has been reported to be wheeling and dealing in Lackawanna County Pennsylvania to build a data center on land that was previously purchased from Louis and Dominick DeNaples.
What could possibly go wrong?
WDRB – Corruption claims aired ahead of Oldham County vote to freeze data center projects Marcus Green Jul 1, 2025 Updated Jul 1, 2025 A video attributed to Ender and published on social media this week said that he witnessed ‘corruption, favoritism, bribery, misconduct, retaliation and abuse of power. I documented it. I spoke up, and for that I was stripped of my duties, cut off, silenced and humiliated.’ Voegele said Ender’s allegations are ‘false, baseless, deeply damaging — not only to my reputation, but also the trust placed in me over the last 15 years by the people of this county during his employment.’ The accusations didn’t emerge until after parts of a May recording became public, Voegele said, adding that he asked those in that meeting who made the recording. Purported audio of that meeting, which apparently included representatives of the data center developer, has been shared to social media. Voegele said he asked everyone in that meeting if they made the recording. Ender, he said, refused to answer. That meeting has become a flashpoint in the debate over a data center, with opponents claiming it shows collusion between county officials and the developer, Western Hospitality Partners, or WHP.
So the truth came out in Kentucky. One wonders what’s going on in Lackawanna County Pennsylvania that we don’t know about? This doesn’t build any confidence that’s for sure. Here mostly what I was worried about was politicians and people who work for government signing NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) and then getting information and then doing insider trading type stuff, maybe while keeping things secret from the people they’re supposed to serve, because they’re doing some kind of deal that’s gonna cost the taxpayers.
But now I have to wonder if there’s actual straight up crime going on that we’re going to find out later when someone gets indicted. Although, the problem is that in Pennsylvania, lots of bribery is actually legal.
Data Center Dynamics – The Data Center Construction Channel Plans filed for 1.6 million sq ft data center campus in northeast Pennsylvania Western Hospitality Partners-linked affiliate proposes Project Gravity April 11, 2025 The Times-Tribune reports Archbald 25 Developer LLC initially filed with the Pennsylvania Department of State in October as Western Hospitality Partners — Jermyn LLC. Documents seen by the publication also reference Western Hospitality Partners — La Grange LLC. According to Lackawanna County property records, Western Hospitality Partners — Jermyn LLC signed a memorandum of purchase and sale agreement in October to buy the 186.21-acre parcel in Archbald from property owner Five Up Realty LLC. Five Up Realty bought the land from Louis and Dominick DeNaples’ Dunmore-based D&L Realty Company in May 2023 for $825,000.
And if you’re from somewhere that isn’t rocked by political scandals every two minutes I’ll expand on this just so I don’t sound paranoid or hysterical because it’s actually just a known quantity that corruption is common in northeastern Pennsylvania. And it sure feels like this Western Hospitality Partners outfit might be targeting parts of Appalachia where they think they can corrupt officials. They’re even trying other parts of Kentucky, in Mason County not just Oldham County!
Just this month saw a story about covid-19 corporate welfare program fraud by some landlord in Scranton. Last year an internal affairs investigator was fired and then filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Lackawanna County Prison, claiming corruption. I’ve written before about the local political party machinations and the former Scranton mayor Bill Courtright, who was convicted for corruption back in 2019.
The adjacent county, our neighbors in Luzerne County have an even more storied history of corruption in some ways, being the home of the tragic and awful Kids For Cash scandal in the 2000s. Bizarrely, the media tried to recast these crimes just over a year ago as overreaction or something. The report said that the judges were “accused” of taking kickbacks in exchange for sending the kids to a private juvenile detention center, when in fact they were convicted of crimes, they weren’t just accused. The news story seemed to be suggesting that jailing these judges for corruption 15 years ago was a mistake because (hand waving) “lots of people are saying” the community “went from one extreme to another” and somehow it reached 15 years into the future to the present and made a shortage of private prisons in which to lock up kids as if that’s a tragedy. I imagine they got some feedback on that one. A few months later there was lots of backlash when the Biden administration commuted the sentence of one of the convicts a couple years early. as part of a blanket commutation of inmates who’d qualified for home confinement in 2020 under a pandemic mitigation because of covid ripping through the prisons. That was the judge who at least pleaded guilty. The other one has been fighting his convictions for the past 15 years, and is I believe, a true believer that the kids needed tough treatment and being locked up. I personally heard him mention some really punitive and frankly quite bizarre ideas in public prior to the scandal breaking in the news.
Around 2017 I was at a public panel for Luzerne County board member candidates who when asked if they would hire family members into government jobs, they said they would just recuse themselves from the process… acting like they didn’t understand that of course that’s not going to stop nepotism because board members need the cooperation of their fellow board members to get stuff done and it sets up a situation for corruption. What better way to trade on favours than to hire a fellow board member’s family member that they recused themselves from the process, and then call in the favour later? I was thoroughly disgusted, and frankly I think a lot of people hear such obstinate gall and check out of politics rather than listen to people insulting the intelligence of the public.
So yeah it’s not really a surprise these sketchy dubious data center projects are being proposed all over the place here and that we have a politician who ran on lowering utility bills now excitedly telling us he hopes to see data centers pop up all over the area when surely he knows that these operations are known to skyrocket people’s utility bills wherever they go up.
What did surprise me is that elected officials signing non-disclosure agreements is actually apparently something that’s been happening across the U.S. I don’t think it should be allowed. And frankly I think NDAs are questionable because they always seem to be hiding something from people who really need to know, like crime or corruption or deliberate deceit.