What the Public Inquiry Project is and why it exists…
About the Public Inquiry Project
The Public Inquiry Project is a civic initiative focused on building a clear, public-facing record around major development decisions, regulatory actions, and their real impacts on communities. It exists to help residents, small businesses, municipalities, and public-interest advocates understand what is being proposed, what is at stake, and what questions still need to be answered.
We believe public accountability works best when information is organized, accessible, and grounded in evidence. The project brings together research, public education, and structured inquiry so people can participate more effectively in decisions that affect their economy, infrastructure, environment, and quality of life.
Our aim is not noise for its own sake. It is to create a stronger public record, sharpen the questions being asked, and support transparent governance that serves the people who will live with the consequences of these decisions.
Who We Are
Wisconsin Alliance for Responsible Development
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The Wisconsin Alliance for Responsible Development (WARD) is a nonprofit working to advance economic development that genuinely benefits small businesses, local communities, municipalities, and the people who call those places home. WARD supports transparent, evidence-based decision-making and works to strengthen the public’s ability to engage with high-impact development proposals.
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WARD’s role is to help translate complicated proceedings, technical filings, and public-policy questions into usable information. Through projects like the Public Inquiry Project, WARD helps build the public record, elevate overlooked concerns, and promote development practices that are responsible, accountable, and community-centered.
Wisconsin has more than 40 data centers operating, with multi-billion-dollar hyperscale facilities underway — including Microsoft's $7 billion Mount Pleasant campus, Meta's $1 billion Beaver Dam facility, and the $15 billion Vantage/OpenAI/Oracle Stargate campus in Port Washington. The Wisconsin Legislature granted these facilities a no-strings-attached sales tax exemption estimated to cost the state over $2 billion in forgone revenue — with zero opposition lobbying registered when the bill passed.
So, that’s where WARD came in —to protect our people, land, and resources.
A Marquette Law School poll confirmed that 70% of Wisconsin voters believe data center costs outweigh the benefits. Communities like DeForest, Caledonia, Janesville, and Port Washington have fought back — but they've done so without a unified, expert-backed organization to anchor the resistance. WARD is built to be that organization.
The federal government is simultaneously constructing a legal architecture designed to strip states and communities of the tools to stop, slow, or meaningfully regulate hyperscale data centers. On July 23, 2025, Trump signed an executive order gutting NEPA review for data center projects and opening federal lands to developers with no community input required. The window to build state and local institutional capacity is closing — and WARD must become an anchor institution before it does
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WARD's mission is to defend the economic, environmental, and democratic interests of Wisconsin's small businesses, landowners, municipalities, and communities against the unaccountable expansion of large-scale infrastructure development — through expert research, regulatory intervention, public education, and coalition-building.
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Evidence over emotion. Every public claim WARD makes is sourced, documented, and verifiable. The organization does not speculate, does not exaggerate, and does not publish what it cannot defend.
Community first, always. WARD is accountable to the communities it serves — not to funders, not to its own members' visibility, and not to political alliances.
Professional credibility. WARD is technical, trusted, and research-driven — never conspiratorial, drama-driven, or performative.
Person-first representation. Affected communities are not victims or props. They are successful, hardworking people protecting their property and their way of life.
Transparency. WARD publishes its finances, discloses its methods, and invites feedback from the communities it works within.
Responsible development, not no development. WARD does not oppose all infrastructure. It demands that development be transparent, accountable, equitable, and genuinely beneficial to the communities that host it.