The Hermantown File: Two Years of NDAs, a Recorder in the Trash, a Police Chief on Tape, and a Chamber Endorsement From a Board Whose Vice Chair Works for the Utility Selling Google the Power

Updated: September 5, 2026. Every date, dollar figure, vote tally and quotation below was checked against the source listed at the bottom of this page on that date. Where a fact comes from a single outlet, we name it in the sentence. Where a fact comes from a document, we describe the document.

How to cite this page: SueDataCenters.org, "The Hermantown File," updated September 5, 2026, https://suedatacenters.org/guides/hermantown-google-data-center-what-the-records-show.

One rule governs the sections on people. We report what officials did and said as documented, and what roles they hold as listed on public pages. We do not allege motive, and we do not allege that any contract, payment or benefit flowed from any of the overlaps described below. Where the record would support a question, we ask it. Where it would not, we stop.

On Tuesday, September 1, the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce announced it had "formally adopted a resolution supporting the proposed Google Data Center Project in Hermantown." Board Chair Pat deGrood said the project "represents a significant investment not only in technology and economic development, but in the infrastructure and community assets that will support future growth." Interim President Jim Roche added that "energy and environmental considerations are appropriately part of the conversation."

The Chamber's reasons, as it gave them to Northern News Now, included: no cost shifting to other electric customers because "it is illegal for such cost shifting to take place per Minnesota state law"; Minnesota Power's estimate that other customers "will save between $600 million to $800 million over the life of their 15-year contract"; "at least 40 permanent jobs" and "approximately 1,100 jobs per year"; property tax payments to Hermantown rising from $28,000 to $80,000 a year today to $448,000 to $800,000 a year when operational; and Google's "estimated $130 million toward new public infrastructure."

By Friday, September 4, at least three member businesses had left:

• Townline Farms and Stable, which connects people with disabilities to horses a few miles from the site. Owner Jill Dryke, a member for three years: "My first reaction was deceit, I was devastated." On the horses: "they can feel vibrations on the ground, and they can hear miles away." She is moving to the Cloquet Chamber. To WDIO: "I took my plaque down today. It was hard. It was sad."
• Zenith Bookstore. Owner Sarah Brown: "We were pretty disappointed when we originally saw the statement. We had no input and we had no notice." Overnight the store received a wave of online orders. "If they're not representing the interests of small businesses, then people should rethink if this is a good fit for them."
• Northern Waters Float Center. Owner Liz Prosnick, to WDIO: "I wasn't seeing the ROI, I'm a very small business, it's just me."

Crow and Co. Books and SISU Beauty Co., which had left earlier, publicly supported the departures. The Chamber's interim president was not available for an interview. The written statement said the Chamber "is aware of a handful of members expressing disappointment" and that "memberships in any organization like the Chamber ebb and flow constantly."

Dryke's request was specific: "They opened up Pandora's box, and they have a small window of gray opportunity to fix this and rescind it."

This is the section nobody else has written, and it is drawn entirely from the Chamber's own website.

The Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce's board of directors page, dated August 31, 2026, lists its executive committee. The vice chair is Jennifer Cady, Minnesota Power, an ALLETE Company. Cady is Minnesota Power's vice president for regulatory and legislative affairs, and previously vice president of public policy and external affairs at ALLETE, per her professional listings and press coverage. Minnesota Power is the utility that signed the electric service agreement with Google for this project, the party that filed it with the Public Utilities Commission on March 26, 2026, and the source of the "$600 million to $800 million" customer benefit figure the Chamber's endorsement relies on. When Google's identity was announced on March 3, 2026, Cady was the Minnesota Power executive quoted in the Duluth News Tribune: "We can serve this new Google facility without harming other customers."

The board chair is Pat deGrood, vice president of commercial services at The Jamar Company. Jamar is a Duluth mechanical contractor, HVAC, plumbing, industrial construction and specialty fabrication, owned by APi Group. APi Group's Mission Critical division describes itself as delivering "large, high-tech hyperscale data centers." We searched for and found no record connecting Jamar or APi to the Hermantown project, and we do not suggest one exists. We note the chair's industry because the Chamber's statement describes its support as "absolutely in keeping with its strategic priorities" without describing who set them.

Two more names from the record. Annie Harala, the St. Louis County Board chair who signed a Mortenson NDA, appeared on the Chamber's 2024 board per its Form 990; she is not on the August 2026 board page. And the Chamber's statement, as reported by Northern News Now, WDIO and FOX21, does not mention that its vice chair works for the utility whose numbers it quotes. Neither does the board page. We are connecting the two.

What this does and does not show. It shows that the organization telling Duluth's small businesses that the electricity math is settled has, in its second-ranking volunteer seat, the executive responsible for that math at the company that will be paid under it. It does not show that Cady voted, drafted or recused; the Chamber has not said how the resolution was adopted, and we asked no one to speculate. The question for the Chamber's members is whether they were told.

The Chamber's strongest argument is that the project lowers everyone else's bills. The claim has a paper trail, and the paper trail has a problem.

The number. Minnesota Power's March 26, 2026 filing with the Public Utilities Commission says that once the project is "fully permitted and operational," existing customers would see "an estimated range of $600 million to $800 million in benefit over the 15-year ESA term," expressed as a 15-year net present value, with a "holistic future cost decrease for existing customers up to $15/MWh annually." The mechanism, per Minnesota Power's March 16 presentation to the Hermantown council by Vice President Frank Frederickson, is that "large industrial loads spread fixed costs," citing a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brattle Group study. The presentation also states, in bold, that Google funds new infrastructure, that the 2025 state law means costs of serving new large customers "cannot be passed on to other utility customers," and that the ESA "enables 700 megawatts of new clean energy resources (wind and battery storage) without increasing costs to existing customers."

The law. The 2025 statute created a "very large customer" class at 100 megawatts and above, and requires their service agreements to cover the full cost of service and system upgrades, to avoid burdening other customers if the facility downsizes or closes, and to comply with the state's carbon-free standard, per the Minnesota Reformer's Brian Martucci. The statute is real. Whether it is met depends on how the utility forecasts its costs, which is the unresolved fight. Attorney General Keith Ellison's office called Xcel's proposed forecasting process for the same customer class "opaque" and warned that "contract provisions cannot fully protect other customers unless (Xcel) ensures that new very large customers are covering their actual, not hypothetical, costs." Will Kenworthy of Vote Solar: "We haven't actually seen the agreement yet, and until we do, the devil will be in the details." Google itself asked the commission to scrap Xcel's incremental cost test. The Chamber's "illegal" is a statute. The savings figure is a forecast by the party being paid.

The witness. Here is the part the endorsement does not mention. While the Public Utilities Commission was considering the $6.2 billion sale of Minnesota Power's parent ALLETE to Global Infrastructure Partners, a BlackRock subsidiary, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Minnesota Power financial planning manager Joshua Taran testified on March 4, 2025 that the company "does not have any specific plans related to data centers," per the Duluth News Tribune's Peter Passi. Public records later released by Hermantown include a September 18, 2024 email from City Administrator John Mulder stating that "MN Power introduced this project to us." The environmental group CURE petitioned on December 30, 2025 to reopen the sale record. Minnesota Power spokesperson Amy Rutledge said Taran's testimony was "being taken out of context" and that no data center had been approved. The PUC approved the sale on October 3, 2025, over Administrative Law Judge Megan McKenzie's July recommendation that it would "likely cause higher electrical rates for consumers," imposing a one-year rate freeze and return-on-equity limits through 2030. On February 19, 2026 the commission denied CURE's petition and said data center issues could be addressed in separate cases. CURE's legal director Hudson Kingston: "It's not a smoking gun. It's the fact that there's clearly some information that hasn't been disclosed that could show a conflict of interest."

The utility that introduced the project to the city, that told regulators it had no specific data center plans while the city's administrator was writing "wow," that was then sold to private equity, and whose vice president now sits as vice chair of the chamber vouching for its savings estimate, is the same utility. That is the chain the documents support. We draw it no further.

The agreements were posted by the city in April 2026 and presented on May 4. The terms, from KAXE's Larissa Donovan, MPR, Hoodline and the city's presentations:

Set the Chamber's "$448,000 to $800,000 per year" against Mulder's sentence. The city's own administrator describes the arrangement as tax revenue that is paid to the city and paid back to Google. The Chamber's statement presents the same money as an increase.

Bob Kohlmeier owns land bordering the site. Mortenson offered to buy it in January 2025 and would not tell him what for. "I put 50 years into this. We planted 10,000 pine trees on our property." To Racket: "We don't want to live in the shadow of something we don't know anything about, and we don't trust this government anymore because of their NDAs."

Jill Dryke runs Townline Farms and Stable, which serves people with disabilities. Her horses are the reason she quit the Chamber: "Horses are like dolphins, they can feel vibrations on the ground." Her line about the Chamber, "they want to take my horses to the slaughterhouse," is the one Northern News Now led with.

Jonathan Thornton sat on the comprehensive plan steering committee. He says the committee never saw the finished plan, though its members are listed on it as if they had. He was removed from Google's open house for asking whether questions were screened.

Emma Richtman is the spokeswoman for Stop the Hermantown Data Center and a candidate for City Council. She was the subject of the police chief's recorded comment about crying at a meeting. "The city keeps telling us NDAs are standard practice, but this is not a standard development, this is unprecedented."

Jim Klukkert was the opponent the chief called an "idiot" with a profane variation of his name. He accepted the apology and noted, per the Duluth News Tribune, "There are no Fs in my name."

Ashley Grimm, the county commissioner whose NDA ban could not get a second: "I'd never heard of local elected officials signing non-disclosure agreements with companies."

Jane Kirtley, media law and ethics professor at the University of Minnesota, on the NDAs, to Racket: "Extremely problematic. Many of them are willing to sign their lives away in order to lure businesses to their area."

Jack Carlson of the Duluth Building Trades Council, for the project: "The ability for the Duluth building trades to stay home and eat dinners with their family... is an amazing opportunity." Joe Pike, a supporter: "a generational opportunity." Those voices are real and the construction jobs are real. They are also the only local benefit in the record that does not depend on a forecast.

• The environmental review. The updated AUAR was submitted to the Environmental Quality Board on August 4, 2026; state agency comments were due the last week of August; the City Council must adopt it before any permit. The MCEA suit is paused pending the result. If the redo is inadequate, MCEA says it may file again. A Google representative told the open house that an environmental impact statement, the state's strongest review, was not done because "not enough project details were known then."
• The electric service agreement. Before the PUC, comments closed July 21, 2026. The commission is separately deciding the very large customer tariff that will govern how costs are forecast. That decision, not the Chamber's statement, determines whether the "$600 million to $800 million" is a floor, a ceiling or a hope.
• The abatement and development agreements. Tabled May 4, 2026. No date set.
• The spot zoning suit. Filed April 29, 2026; seeks to set aside the comprehensive plan and land use decisions in the project area.
• The outside investigation. The mayor said on August 17 that an outside entity would investigate the recorded remarks. No findings have been released.
• The election. A council candidate is the opposition's spokeswoman. Opponents are also gathering support for a charter commission. "There's really a lack of responsiveness from the city," Greg Rosenberg told Northern News Now on August 23.
• The NDA ban. HF 4077, the bipartisan bill to bar local officials from signing NDAs, passed two Senate committees and died on a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee in April 2026. It was written because of Hermantown.
• The state senator. Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown co-authored the 35-year data center sales tax exemption signed in June 2025. He met constituents about a possible Hermantown data center the following month, says the talks were "hypotheticals," and says he did not sign an NDA.