Residents urge St. Louis County to ban NDAs and pause Hermantown data-center rezoning

Residents and advocacy groups urged the St. Louis County Board of Commissioners on an item-specific public-comment period to adopt a policy barring county commissioners from signing non‑disclosure agreements and to press the Hermantown City Council to pause rezoning tied to a proposed large data center.

The push for an NDA ban came during extended public comment at the county meeting, where speakers said the secrecy around the project deprived residents of timely information. "We are 0.3 to 0.5 miles from the proposed data center. We will be able to see and hear the effects of this project," said Rebecca Gilbertson, a Hermantown resident who said she learned about the project a week earlier. Gilbertson also told commissioners she understood the Hermantown council planned to rezone 17 homesteads and add roughly 200 acres of commercial zoning to an existing roughly 200 commercial acres near the proposal.

The comments combined two concerns: opposition to elected officials signing NDAs and worries about the Hermantown project itself. "NDAs have no…