Lane County commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to direct staff to draft an ordinance that would prohibit county employees from signing nondisclosure agreements with companies seeking to build data centers or other undisclosed industrial facilities. The move puts Lane County alongside a growing list of Oregon governments trying to keep negotiations over major industrial projects out of the shadows.
According to KLCC, the proposed ordinance would include a sunset clause, expiring after the upcoming legislative session so the county can revisit the issue once state lawmakers weigh in. Commissioners and staff expect the Oregon Legislature to consider its own rules on NDAs tied to data centers and other industrial developers during that session, per the same report.
Commissioner Laurie Trieger argued that decisions about industrial land should be hashed out publicly rather than behind closed doors. “We’re basically saying, ‘Do your work out in the open,’” Trieger said, according to Lookout Eugene-Springfield. Trieger has also said the ordinance would give county staff clear direction on entering agreements that could otherwise shut the public out of discussions about industrial-land development, per KLCC's reporting.
Commissioner Heather Buch Frames It as a Transparency Tool
Commissioner Heather Buch said the county wants transparency, and the ordinance is one way to provide it, the station reported. Commissioner Pat Farr framed the underlying question more narrowly, saying the debate centers on whether the county should know who is actually building on a given parcel of land. Farr added that data center debates more broadly involve concerns about electricity, water and privacy.
Not every commissioner embraced the idea without reservations. Ryan Ceniga said he favored banning NDAs in this particular situation but warned that a blanket ban could carry unintended consequences for how industrial land gets used across the county. Ceniga said any ban should not prevent companies that rely on proprietary equipment from seeking out industrial property in Lane County, the station's account notes.
Commissioner David Loveall initially expressed skepticism about banning NDAs outright, but he came around once the sunset provision was added to the proposal, per the same KLCC report. Jason Harris, a county staffer, said the primary method companies use to scout potential properties likely would not be affected by the new rule. Companies commonly explore property options statewide through a state agency that solicits site conditions and forwards requests to cities and counties, and localities often respond to those requests without even knowing which company is behind them, according to KLCC.
Eugene and Salem Already Took Similar Steps
Lane County is not breaking new ground here. The city of Eugene created a similar policy by administrative order in September, with City Manager Jenny Haruyama directing the city's more than 1,500 employees not to sign any NDAs related to data centers, according to Lookout Eugene-Springfield.
Salem's experience is the cautionary tale driving much of this momentum. The city manager signed an NDA with data-center developer Verrus in March 2025, and the project, a reported $5.1 billion facility, was not publicly revealed until July 2026, according to PolitiFact. The Salem City Council later voted 8-1 to explore its own policy addressing NDA use, and the council approved a ban on data-center-development NDAs on September 14, followed the next week by a four-month pause on data-center development and construction citywide, PolitiFact reported.
The secrecy problem is not unique to Oregon. Researchers who contacted 31 Virginia localities in 2024 and the following year found that 25 of them had entered into NDAs with data-center companies, according to PolitiFact's reporting. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order banning the use of NDAs for data-center development on August 18, the same outlet noted. The Federation of American Scientists has observed that negotiations between data-center developers and local officials are frequently conducted behind closed doors, protected by NDAs that limit how much influence communities have over a project's terms.
Why Oregon Communities Are Paying Closer Attention
The stakes behind these transparency fights are rising alongside the industry itself. Data centers accounted for about 23% of Oregon's retail electricity sales in 2025, according to OPB, which also reported that researchers expect that consumption to climb to nearly 25 terawatt-hours by 2030. OPB's report identified 111 operational data centers in the state as of September, with 32 more planned or under construction.
Separately, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that data centers already occupy about 2,900 acres statewide, accounting for an estimated 11% of Oregon's electricity use, a figure that differs from OPB's 23% estimate of retail electricity sales. Oregon communities are now planning for roughly 9,100 acres of new data-center development, which would quadruple the industry's current footprint statewide, per the Oregonian/OregonLive report. The Oregon Data Center Advisory Committee has said it received well over 700 substantive written comments reflecting public concern over energy affordability, taxation, water use, climate and air quality, according to the Oregon Department of Energy.
With that growth trajectory in mind, Lane County's sunset-clause approach gives commissioners a chance to test a local rule now while leaving room to adjust once state lawmakers take up the issue. For a county weighing how much secrecy to tolerate around the next data center proposal, that built-in expiration date may prove as significant as the ban itself.
