2 Effingham voters quiz their commissioner: Why a data center? Why so secret?

Among the crowds of unhappy Effingham County residents who showed up to vent at their elected officials about the $20 billion data center project were fellow churchgoers and long-time Effingham County residents Larry Holloway and Scott Gordy.

Dressed in t-shirts and jeans, the two retirees and self-professed Republicans walked into the crowded Effingham College and Career Academy and made a beeline for their District Two County Commissioner Roger Burdette, a fellow Republican, and as it happens, the boss of Gordy’s adult daughter.

The heated conversation showed how much of a political lightning rod that data centers are in Georgia — and how they unite people across party lines who are worried about the cost of utilities, about the environment and about the perception that the democratic system prioritizes the needs of the rich and powerful over regular folks like them.

For the two retirees, the lack of transparency from their elected officials, people whom they know by first name and whom they consider Godly men, was what got them riled up enough to drive to the auditorium Thursday.

“I was at church Wednesday night, and that’s when I heard about the data center,” said Gordy. “That’s all anyone was talking about. And that was the first anyone had heard of it. I thought ‘how can this be?’ We got all these other communities putting a halt to data centers and our own officials don’t see any red flags? Do they think we wouldn’t care?”

The 15-minute conversation between Burdette, Holloway and Gordy spanned a whole host of issues, from how the massive OpenAI data center would affect the rural way of life the two men loved, to the lack of trust in big tech and their frustrations that voters have had no input on a decision that has happened behind closed doors.

“This whole thing stinks,” said Holloway, a 79-year-old former paper mill worker about the lack of transparency about the deal, which has been discussed as far back as the fall of 2025. “You have known about this for months, haven’t you? So why are we the last to know?”

Burdette, a successful small businessman, told the two men, both retired paper mill workers, tried to find common cause by explaining his journey from skeptic to supporter of OpenAI’s plans in the county. As he slowly revealed pertinent facts, he also sought to distance himself from the major pillars of the deal, telling the men that he had little influence over the decision which was made by Effingham’s Industrial Development Authority.

“This wasn’t a deal that we had any influence over. It was up to the development authority,” Burdette said. “Up until the last minute, there was nothing in writing about this deal, so I didn’t have anything that I could say” to the public. “They told us they were looking at other places, and no one wanted to scare them away,” he added.

That candor brought hoots of derision from the two friends.

“You mean to tell us you didn’t have any influence over this?” Gordy said, raising his eyebrows to the brim of his trucker hat. “Don’t you nominate the people on the development board?”

Burdette conceded that was the case. And clarified that the county commissioners had no direct say over the project because there was nothing for them to vote on.

The site selected by OpenAI is located in the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, on a parcel of land that is already zoned for industrial use under an ordinance that Burdette said included data centers. The land deal between the private owners was not something elected officials had oversight over, he said. And the terms of the deal, valued by OpenAI at $20 billion, included short-term tax abatements that Burdette said was the result of the development authority’s talks.

The project, he said, would be a financial windfall for Effingham residents like the two men. “It’s the first step in eliminating your property taxes. And doesn’t that sound great?” he asked the two men.

That news didn’t shift their views.

Gordy replied with a political view. Rick Jackson, the Republican candidate running for governor, has already promised to eliminate property taxes if he’s elected in November, Gordy said. So why do Effingham residents need to mortgage our future to a data center to make that happen?

Burdette countered with another talking point, one echoed by OpenAI officials through the evening.

OpenAI, he said, will be a good corporate partner, he said. They are going to invest in our schools and our community, he added.

But what about the noise pollution a massive data center will create, and what about the residents who live close by, the two friends asked?

Burdette pivoted back to his own educational journey about data centers.

“I was skeptical, too, when I first heard about this,” the commissioner said. “I didn’t know what to expect about data centers until I went to see one myself,” he said. “They’re quieter than a machine shop. I didn’t even need ear protection.”

A bit later, as Holloway and Gordy pressed him, Burdette eventually disclosed that his visit to a data center was paid for by OpenAI as the company was negotiating in Effingham.

At that point, the two friends smelled a new problem. “They paid for you to go?” they both asked. “Just whose side are you on?”

Burdette continued to patiently explain other talking points included in the county’s press release sent out as the first public announcement of the deal. OpenAI will become the county’s largest taxpayer, he said. It will pay for all the infrastructure costs to build out the electricity infrastructure needed to power the massive center. It won’t use much water. And it will create jobs, he said.

“I would rather see 400 new jobs rather than 1,000 more trucks,” Burdette said, referring to the common complaint that residents around the industrial zone in particular have about the armadas of long-haul trucks serving the growing numbers of warehouses in the area.

Gordy, meanwhile, pressed the commissioner on why data centers seemed like a good fit for the mostly rural county.

“Didn’t you ask around? Did you see any red flags?” asked Gordy, pointing out the fact that neighboring Bulloch County, another Republican stronghold, is moving to pass a data center moratorium, as are residents of Port Wentworth, the town nearest to Rincon, the Effingham County municipality where Thursday’s town hall was held.

Burdette said those places don’t know what’s best for Effingham County. “You should trust us,” he told the men.

That remark was the final straw for Holloway, who turned to a neighbor on his left, snorted and walked away.

At this point, a crowd of more than a dozen local voters had surrounded the commissioner.

One of the listeners, a 35-year-old construction worker in a t-shirt and shorts, pointed his finger at the commissioner. “Trust you? You never even informed us about this. You never even asked us what we thought. You work for us, not the other way around. You can expect us all to vote you out in November” he said.

Two Effingham County Sheriff’s Department deputies who had been flanking Burdette moved a little closer. “Now let’s all be civil,” one said to the jostling crowd. “We need to be respectful.”

Burdette kept trying to get his point across. For a brief moment, however, his placid demeanor slipped.

“Now come on,” he told the dozen people around him. “If this was an announcement about a warehouse, in a place already zoned for warehouses, no one would have said anything about it. But because it’s a data center, suddenly you care?”

“Yes, because that’s an issue that we care about,” Gordy said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

Eventually, both men extricated themselves from the ongoing discussion around Burdette, as more of the commissioner’s constituents pushed for their own answers.

The two friends meandered through the rest of the auditorium, walking past the OpenAI displays explaining the design and engineering of the planned data center and educational graphics about water use.

As they headed for the exit, neither felt better about data centers than they did walking in.

“Why would they think they can decide our future in secret and not feel any consequences?” Holloway said.

Gordy pointed out that Burdette was facing a Democratic rival in the November election, a rare contested seat in the overwhelmingly Republican county. Folks are so riled up that elected incumbents should expect a backlash. “People may not vote for a Democrat, but they may not check the box next to his name, either,” he said, referring to Burdette. “That basically would end up with the same result.”

This article appears in Data Centers for Coastal Georgia.