Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – The fix is in.  The approval is being rammed through.

Those are what Sangamon County Board Chair Andy Van Meter claims are things like those he heard from those opposed to data centers, leading up to the vote that ultimately is allowing one near Waverly.

Van Meter vented his frustrations at the “State of Greater Springfield” event last week, hosted by the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce.

“Over the next six months, county government held sixteen public hearings, at which the issue was discussed, and the public was invited to comment and ask questions,” said Van Meter.  “The public did ask many sensible answers, and the county’s professional staff did their best to provide answers.”

Van Meter claims the county first started taking a harder look at data centers — and the zoning for them — about a year ago, before CyrusOne came to the county with their proposal in November.  He says the process used with the CyrusOne Data Center proposal was similar to one several years ago when a carbon dioxide pipeline wanted to locate through the county.

But, Van Meter claims, members of the public said everything they were being told about the project was a lie.  Case in point, he claims, was doubt about property tax the project would pay.

“When it was alleged that the data centers in general and CyrusOne in particular do not pay their assessed taxes, county staff researched CyrusOne’s nationwide record,” said Van Meter.  “In jurisdictions that used Sangamon County’s assessment methods, CyrusOne had paid its assessed taxes annually without protest.”

Van Meter claims that could be as much as $98 million over 20 years to Sangamon County.  He says two different groups came to that conclusion using different methodologies.

What’s more, Van Meter claims, data centers have been operating in the county just fine, without controversy, before now.  During his presentation last week, Van Meter showed photos of two operating inside Springfield’s borders.

“This is a picture of Memorial Hospital‘s data center on West Jefferson that has been operating for decades within 200 hundred yards of multiple subdivisions,” Van Meter said.  “This is a photo of one of the State of Illinois‘ data centers on Adams Street within three blocks of Springfield High School and the state capitol, which has been in operation for some 40 years.”

Van Meter says while much bigger than those two data centers, the Waverly data center would be, he claims, one and a half miles away from any home, and would create noise the equivalent of kids playing outside.

Much like when Van Meter discussed the proposed BOS Center expansion, he also blamed the media for either not asking questions, or not asking questions at all, despite media and members of the public asking plenty of questions on both matters in the last year.