As Illinois considers new limits on data centers, northern Illinois lawmakers, union workers, and municipal leaders gathered in Springfield on Wednesday for the first of three legislative hearings on data center development, local impact, and energy use.

The House Executive Committee convened Wednesday morning to welcome mayors, representatives from labor and data center groups, and other officials from agencies such as the Illinois Farm Bureau to talk about the local impacts that major tech developments have on Illinois communities.

“We’re interested in learning more and working with you to get the best possible climate for development in Illinois while making sure we balance the needs of the people and human beings and communities first,” said Committee Chairwoman state Rep. Ann Williams, D-Chicago.

The hearings are meant to inform legislators about the data center industry as lawmakers consider what’s called the Illinois POWER Act, proposed in February. The law would regulate future data center builds, implementing a new policy to directly address the local impact on energy prices, water use and environmental concerns.

“The fact of the matter is, data centers are going to be built, they are being built. The question is whether Illinois is ready to build them here,” said Mark Poulos on behalf of Operating Engineers Local 150, which represents about 25,000 laborers in Illinois, Iowa and Indiana.

Poulos spoke in support of data center development. Among those who offered testimony Wednesday were DeKalb Mayor Cohen Barnes, Aurora Mayor John Laesch, Joe Duffy of Climate Jobs Illinois and Joliet resident Portia Gallegos with Joliet Residents for Responsible Growth. Gallegos was a vocal opponent of a 795-acre data center recently approved by the Joliet City Council after significant public input.

Some mayors shared their experiences welcoming data centers to their towns. Discussion centered on energy use, land use and regulation, jobs and property tax revenue. Proponents spoke about how the builds bring needed union jobs, property tax revenue for schools and other public services, economic growth, and make Illinois competitive compared with other states such as Texas and Virginia, which lead the country in the data center industry.

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, opened a 2.3 million-square-foot data center, about a $1 billion investment, in DeKalb in November 2023. In December 2025, the DeKalb City Council approved a massive 560-acre data center by Edged, a subsidiary of Endeavor Energy. Local hearings brought forward residents for and against the project, a common theme at data center hearings throughout the region.

Barnes said growth, coupled with significant industrial manufacturing development on the city’s south side, has brought in needed property tax revenue to DeKalb.

In 2025, DeKalb School District 428 opened a new $33 million elementary school to address its growing student population. The district didn’t take that project out to referendum, a move officials have said was possible in part because of the increase in property tax revenue collected through the Meta Data Center build.

Some data centers also partner with community organizations to offer additional incentives, such as professional development, educational programs or scholarships.

When asked by a committee member whether there should be legislation to mandate such community benefits, Barnes said he prefers local control to remain.

“Ultimately, our motivation is economic development,” Barnes said. “The benefit of creating that in a community and the benefit to the community directly comes from the property taxes, the utility taxes that are generated by those entities and the jobs that they create. For me to demand going above and beyond that, I think, could stifle economic development.”

Speaking on water use concerns, Barnes said Meta’s water use is not the same each day. He said that when school is in session at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, for example, some dormitories report using more water than Meta. He said some industries, including a local hospital and a forge, also sometimes use more water than Meta’s data center. Endeavour’s DeKalb data center won’t use water to cool its servers, plans show.

Some, including Springfield native Marc Ayers – who resigned from the Sangamon County Board this week after voting no on a controversial $500 million CyrusOne data center approved by the board Tuesday night, the Illinois Times reported - spoke about ongoing concerns shared by residents who would live near the developments.

Ayers said noise pollution was an ongoing concern of Sangamon County residents. Aurora also has a CyrusOne data center.

“The noise factor was an issue here in Sangamon County, as well,” Ayers said. “[...] Those residents don’t know a moment’s peace because of the humming and the buzzing of that data center. And yet they haven’t even fixed that problem in Aurora. ... Rather than fixing the noise in Aurora, they’re expanding with a bigger project in Sangamon County. So this aspect of being a good neighbor, we’re torn with that. Because they’re not really being a good neighbor right now in Aurora, and they want to make a bigger data center in Sangamon County.”

But Poulos said he believes data centers have been turned into “the boogeymen of increased power costs,” although Illinois passed a tax incentive package in 2019 meant to encourage data center growth in the state.

State Rep. Jeff Keicher, R-Sycamore, who also spoke during the hearing, said he’s concerned about “fear-mongering” that seeps into local data center hearings ahead of municipal votes. He shared similar statements to Poulos, emphasizing that he believes Illinois needs to maintain an economy that’s welcoming to data center builds, otherwise that industry growth could go elsewhere and deprive Illinoisans of needed tax revenue and jobs.

“We are on the verge of an incredible future that we can’t even formulate in our minds how amazing it’s going to be,” Keicher said in an interview with Shaw Local. “[...] There are plenty of things we need to fix in this space. But the fear-mongering that’s blown out of proportion is not fair to the citizens that actually need accurate information.”

Two more hearings on the topic are planned. On Wednesday, April 15, the committee will hear testimony about data center energy use. On April 22, the committee will hear about data center water use, another hot topic as municipalities across the state grapple with sometimes controversial development votes.

• Capitol News Illinois contributed to this story.