Craycraft: Data center firm interested in county

County Magistrate Steve Craycraft said Monday he has been in dis­cus­sions since January with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a com­pa­ny that is con­sid­er­ing locat­ing a data cen­ter in Clark County.

“They say nobody’s look­ing, but I actu­al­ly know bet­ter,” he said.

Craycraft, who has draft­ed a pro­posed res­o­lu­tion to impose a two-year mora­to­ri­um on data cen­ters in the coun­ty, said the oth­er mag­is­trates know about the dis­cus­sions, but he was asked by his company’s con­tact not to dis­cuss it with the coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive, who, at the time of the ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion, was Les Yates.

Craycraft added, how­ev­er, that the cur­rent inter­im coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive, R.J. Palmer, also has not been informed.

“I’m cer­tain that he does not know,” the mag­is­trate said.

Palmer con­firmed Tuesday that he hadn’t known any­thing about it until ear­li­er that day.

“Steve has said noth­ing to me,” he said.

When he was dis­cussing Craycraft’s pro­posed res­o­lu­tion ear­li­er Monday, Palmer said that no arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tive had talked with him about a data center.

Yates said Tuesday he didn’t know any­thing about Craycraft’s conversations.

“Not a clue,” he said, when asked. “I nev­er heard a word.”

Craycraft said the mag­is­trates knew because the com­pa­ny asked that he reach out to them to see if there was a “con­sen­sus.”

“They’ve been aware of it,” he said.

Yates said that if Craycraft dis­cussed the issue with the oth­er mag­is­trates, even if it wasn’t at the same time and place, “that’s a meet­ing,” and it would have to com­ply with the state’s open meet­ings law.

WinCity Voices attempt­ed to con­tact every mag­is­trate Tuesday.

Magistrates Daniel Konstantopoulos and Chris Davis both texted that they were unaware of any pro­pos­al and there­fore had no comment.

Robert Blanton said he recalled a brief con­ver­sa­tion in which Craycraft said he had “talked to some­body who had talked to some­body, and he want­ed to know how I felt about it.”

He told Craycraft he had no opin­ion because he had no infor­ma­tion about any­thing specific.

“I dis­re­gard­ed the whole con­ver­sa­tion because I didn’t know [any­thing],” he said.

Blanton said it seemed odd that a com­pa­ny would con­tact a mag­is­trate instead of the coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive and ask the judge-exec­u­tive not to be told.

“That whole thing sounds strange to me,” he said.

WinCity Voices also left mes­sages for Magistrates Ernest Pasley and Dr. Mark Miller, but they had not returned our calls by the time this arti­cle was published.

Craycraft didn’t explain why he was dis­clos­ing the infor­ma­tion now. However, he shared his con­cerns about data centers.

Not only was he con­cerned about the usu­al issues, such as noise and the effects on water sup­ply and util­i­ty rates, but he was even more con­cerned about the poten­tial eco­nom­ic impact. If an AI com­pa­ny were to locate here, he said, they’re going to want all kinds of things from local gov­ern­ment, such as tax abate­ments and prob­a­bly financ­ing through indus­tri­al rev­enue bonds.

He would be cau­tious about IRBs, he said, because until the com­pa­ny paid back the bonds, the coun­ty would own the build­ing and land. And if the enter­prise failed, the local gov­ern­ment would be left with a giant build­ing that would be unsuit­able for any­thing else.

Craycraft said anoth­er AI man­ag­er he talked with last week, a mid-lev­el exec­u­tive for a glob­al com­pa­ny, told him to “pro­ceed care­ful­ly with any­thing they might want to do in your coun­ty” because the returns that AI com­pa­nies are get­ting on their invest­ments aren’t what they expected.

That exec­u­tive, who has no con­nec­tion to the Clark County inquiry, told Craycraft his own com­pa­ny was “40 per­cent off their tar­get for their sales.”

“So, it makes me a lit­tle ner­vous,” Craycraft aid. “I’m afraid it would be like tech stocks years ago, you know. A big bub­ble, and then all of a sud­den, it blew up.”

Craycraft said that’s why be believes the coun­ty gov­ern­ment should “pump the brakes” on the issue.

The pur­pose of a mora­to­ri­um, or tem­po­rary ban on data cen­ters, would be to allow more time to study the issue and gath­er more information.

Craycraft said that he doesn’t know which com­pa­ny would ulti­mate­ly own and oper­ate the data cen­ter. It could be Google, Meta, Anthropic, or anoth­er big firm. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the com­pa­ny inter­est­ed in pos­si­bly locat­ing a data cen­ter here on anoth­er company’s behalf wouldn’t tell him, he said.

“We’ve had so many pie-in-the-sky things” that didn’t work out, Craycraft said, and he didn’t want the coun­ty to get involved in a bad sit­u­a­tion because “we don’t know where all this stuff is going.”

Craycraft said the com­pa­ny may have cho­sen him as its con­tact because they thought he would be coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive next year. He was a can­di­date ear­li­er this year but was elim­i­nat­ed in the Republican pri­ma­ry in May.

Palmer, who was appoint­ed by the gov­er­nor to tem­porar­i­ly fill the posi­tion after Yates quit to run for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, will be out of office when the next coun­ty judge-exec­u­tive is sworn in at the end of the year.

Palmer was asked whether he sup­port­ed Craycraft’s mora­to­ri­um proposal.

“I’m not opposed to it,” he answered.

However, he added, he would be con­tent to “lean on the governor’s exec­u­tive order.”

On Aug. 6, Gov. Andy Beshear issued an exec­u­tive order to impose guardrails on AI com­pa­nies, includ­ing ratepay­er pro­tec­tion, Public Service Commission reg­u­la­tion, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, a require­ment that com­pa­nies pay their “fair share” of local and school tax­es, and that they build “mean­ing­ful” rela­tion­ships with their communities.

“That’s a pret­ty high bar,” Palmer said.

Blanton agreed.

“I don’t see how any­body could com­ply with it,” he remarked.

Not every­one believes the gov­er­nor has the author­i­ty to reg­u­late data cen­ters through exec­u­tive order with­out a state law to back it.

The Kentucky Resources Council, an envi­ron­men­tal group, issued a state­ment on its web­site say­ing it sup­ports the governor’s goals, but that exec­u­tive branch agen­cies, such as the Public Service Commission, are “crea­tures of statute, and their author­i­ty and dis­cre­tion are lim­it­ed by law.”

Therefore, they urged the state leg­is­la­ture to enact a law sim­i­lar to one they proposed.

Justin Charles, the Republican can­di­date for coun­ty judge, has said he doesn’t see the need for a mora­to­ri­um because it might pre­vent the coun­ty from miss­ing a good eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ty, but he would con­sid­er pub­lic opin­ion on the issue if he were in office.

Vaché King, the Democratic can­di­date, said dur­ing a recent debate that she has worked in the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sec­tor for many years, and she cau­tioned that data cen­ters, while they pro­vide con­struc­tion jobs at first, don’t pro­duce many per­ma­nent jobs.

She, too, how­ev­er, said that, if elect­ed, she would pay atten­tion to what the peo­ple want.

The Winchester Board of Commissioners recent­ly approved a one-year mora­to­ri­um on data cen­ters inside the city limits.

A coun­ty mora­to­ri­um would cov­er the unin­cor­po­rat­ed area as well.

Robert Jeffries, direc­tor of plan­ning and zon­ing for the city and coun­ty, made a pre­sen­ta­tion on a pro­posed data cen­ter mora­to­ri­um to the Clark County Fiscal Court this past sum­mer, around the same time he made the rec­om­men­da­tion to the city.

Several oth­er near­by cities and coun­ties had already enact­ed mora­to­ri­ums, includ­ing Lexington and Fayette County, Nicholasville and Jessamine County, Madison County, Versailles, Georgetown and Scott County, Nelson County, and Louisville and Jefferson County.

Craycraft said he mod­eled his pro­posed res­o­lu­tion for a two-year mora­to­ri­um on Boyd County’s. He sub­mit­ted it to Palmer, who passed it on to County Attorney William Elkins so he could go over before it is pre­sent­ed to the Fiscal Court.

Palmer said Elkins want­ed more time to study it, and he will not be able to attend the Fiscal Court meet­ing this Thursday, so it won’t be on the agenda.

Craycraft said he expects that it will be on the agen­da for the next meet­ing, which will be on Nov. 11 at 8:30 a.m. However, because that is a spe­cial called meet­ing, there won’t be pub­lic com­ments. Public com­ments are only allowed dur­ing reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled meetings.