‘You are here,’ says a sticker on a map of the town of Vienna, orienting visitors inside the town hall. Dane County’s advisory committee was prompted by a data center proposal in the town last fall, which involved a petition to annex land to the village of DeForest.
Dane County Board Chair Patrick Miles says he first wanted to propose a county-wide moratorium on data centers last fall, around the same time he floated the idea of an advisory committee to study the issue. The committee came together but the moratorium did not. Miles dropped it after county lawyers told him that state laws “explicitly” prohibit counties from such a move.
His committee on data centers held its first meeting in February. At the May meeting, members discussed a surprising development: Manitowoc County had recently passed a county-wide moratorium on data centers at the urging of several of its towns…