About a month and a half ago, the Women’s Republican Club of Washington County celebrated its new office at 138 West Washington Street. The ribbon-cutting photograph shows Michael T. Fitzgerald alongside Commissioners Jeff Cline, Randal Leatherman, and Neil Parrott, as well as commissioner candidate Dan Young, former state delegate Brenda Thiam, delegate William Wivell, state senator Paul Corderman, and Beth Harvey, chairperson of the Washington County Republican Central Committee. According to multiple registered Republicans in Washington County who reached out to us, Fitzgerald is reportedly providing the space in the Wareham Building to the Women’s Republican Club of Washington County for free.

The ribbon-cutting and celebration came just three months after the building’s tax lien went to auction at Washington County’s June 2, 2026 tax sale results listed $24,020.30 in overdue taxes and charges against the property. By October 1, county records obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request listed $33,240.91 delinquent at that address and $202,725.55 across 27 accounts associated with Fitzgerald and related entities.

A tax sale is the county’s way of collecting property taxes and other eligible charges that have gone unpaid. Under Washington County’s process, the county auctions a lien, a legal claim against the property for the debt. The winning bidder pays the overdue amount to the county and receives a tax sale certificate. The owner keeps the building but must pay the required redemption amount, including interest and applicable costs, to clear the lien. An unresolved lien can eventually lead to court proceedings through which the certificate holder acquires the property.

The purchaser’s payment allows the county to collect the amount covered by the sale, while the owner remains responsible for resolving the claim against the property. By the time Republican leaders gathered for their ribbon cutting, the building’s unpaid obligations had already escalated to that formal collection process.

Since 2020, he and his company Gideon Properties have contributed about $15,000, mostly to Republican candidates, officeholders, and political committees. That includes $6,100 to bankroll state Senator Paul Corderman, $840 to Washington County Republican Club PAC, and $300 to troubled Washington County Commissioner Jeff Cline. Our review also counted 19 companies associated with Fitzgerald in Hagerstown or the surrounding area that are either forfeited or listed as “not in good standing.”

About four months before the office celebration, tenants in Fitzgerald’s rental business were dealing with the consequences of another unpaid bill. In May, WUSA9 reported that more than 60 residents at Long Meadow Apartments went eight days without gas and hot water after the property owner failed to pay Columbia Gas on time. Hagerstown temporarily condemned the building, leaving some residents paying for hotels while others said they had nowhere to go. One resident said gas was included in her rent, yet she had been boiling water to bathe.

Complaints about Gideon Properties have also been shared online, including in this local Facebook discussion. In a BBB review posted March 19, 2026, a reviewer alleged an apartment infestation and paint thinner stored near a gas water heater. On Indeed, reviewers identifying themselves as former workers have criticized management, and a maintenance technician’s review alleged late pay and pressure to cut corners on repairs. These are published allegations from people describing their experiences with the business.

Rental licensing allegations also appear in official court records. Page 489 of the Maryland Judiciary’s April 1, 2026 cases-filed report lists three municipal infraction citations filed against Gideon Properties, LLC on March 31, with Fitzgerald named in the company’s mailing information. Each alleges failure to register rental property for the 2025–2026 licensing year, and one expressly references prior notice.

It is stunning to see local politicians and party leaders celebrating a new, possibly free office for the Women’s Republican Club of Washington County from Fitzgerald given the many allegations of his current and past residential tenants. Jeff Cline, Randal Leatherman, Dan Young, Paul Corderman, Brenda Thiam, William Wivell, and Beth Harvey posed alongside him at a building whose unpaid obligations had already triggered a tax sale, months after tenants in his rental business were left scrambling for somewhere to sleep. The people who paid for hotels or boiled water to bathe deserve at least as much attention as the political organization receiving his reported generosity.

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The Washington County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Association of Maryland, Inc. is listed as a 501(c)(3) charity. Cline’s campaign reported receiving $100 from the association on August 24, 2022. His annual reports also list $125 contributions on September 1, 2023, September 13, 2024, and September 16, 2025, bringing the association’s reported contributions to $475 across those four years.

Cline was not the association’s only reported recipient. A separate Maryland campaign finance record lists $150 to Terry Baker’s campaign on August 26, 2026. Both contribution detail screens reviewed for those donations display “No data available” under returned contributions.

Then there is America’s Hauling for Hope, also listed as a 501(c)(3) charity. Cline’s campaign reported four contributions totaling $1,600: $100 on August 24, 2022, followed by $500 on November 15, 2023, September 13, 2024, and September 16, 2025.

The campaign’s own 2025 annual report even identifies the contributor as “AMERICA’S HAULING FOR HOPE-NONPROFIT.” Whoever prepared that report apparently had no trouble identifying the organization as a nonprofit while recording its $500 campaign contribution.

Cline’s campaign committees have already paid two unrelated campaign finance penalties. According to the State Board of Elections’ January 16, 2020 minutes, Citizens for Jeff Cline paid $300 on January 7, 2020, for “failing to record all contributions and expenditures.” The March 10, 2022 minutes record $250 paid by Friends of Jeff Cline on February 16, 2022, for “disbursement by an unauthorized individual.”

These donations add to a long list of ethics concerns involving Cline, including his involvement in public funding efforts benefiting private developers. Cline previously served on the Western Maryland Economic Future Investment Board and currently serves as vice-chair of the Tri-County Council for Western Maryland, which helps administer the Senator George C. Edwards Fund. Those connections matter in three separate funding matters.

In September 2026, Cline voted for Washington County to seek $1.25 million through the Senator George C. Edwards Fund on behalf of Cascade Town Centre’s developer. The county would receive and administer the grant, then pass the money to the developer for improvements to its privately controlled property.

There was also the separate $809,820 sewer infrastructure proposal benefiting the same redevelopment, consisting of $404,910 in requested ARC funding and a $404,910 county match. Emails obtained through our MPIA request show how officials linked that infrastructure funding to JG Group’s pursuit of an Edwards Fund grant, with Cline using his position and connections to advocate on the developer’s behalf.

In a separate incident, Hager 5 LLC, a business partially owned by Cline’s largest campaign donor, Paul Crampton Jr, was approved for a $500,000 award through that same Senator George C. Edwards Fund while Cline served as a voting member of the board overseeing the money. The fund’s 2024 report lists the award for renovating the Antietam Paper Building as approved, pending disbursement. Cline attended every 2024 Senator George C. Edwards Fund board meeting with posted minutes, including when Hager 5’s application was discussed.

One of Crampton’s companies also owns the apartment building where Cline lists his home, yet Cline’s 2025 financial disclosure reports no real property interest, including as a tenant.

At this point, maybe we need to stop expecting explanations from Jeff Cline and start demanding a serious, independent state investigation into his conduct. His campaign’s nonprofit contributions, his unexplained housing arrangement with his largest donor, and his involvement in public funding decisions benefiting campaign donors warrant investigators examining the records, following the money and determining whether laws were broken.

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As our earlier reporting explained, the county previously transferred roughly 63 acres of lakefront property at Fort Ritchie into the JG Group (often referred to as JGBLI) development structure and established a tax-increment financing mechanism through which future property-tax growth could support infrastructure financing. Cascade Town Centre Development is the JGBLI-related property-owning entity, a relationship the county’s own infrastructure agreement acknowledges. Washington Realty Management, Inc is also a subsidiary of the JG Group. This is relevant for clarity because Joe Lee is the Director of Operations for JG Group / JGBLI and also the President of Washington Realty Management and uses his email address from this domain to contact commissioners about the funding he expects to receive.

The sequence in the records matters.

On March 2, the developer paid Ellsworth $5,000. On March 17, commissioners held a closed session with Joe and Jung Lee listed as attendees. The public summary describes a business proposal without naming the business or explaining what was requested. Twenty-one days later, on April 7, the developer paid Ellsworth another $5,000.

On April 23, Greg Murray joined Barr, Cline, the Lees, and county officials to discuss redevelopment infrastructure. That was 28 days before commissioners voted to hire his firm as the county’s utility consultant. Barr, Murray, and the county owe residents answers: whom was Murray representing at that meeting, what did he disclose, and how did the county address any competing interests before approving his contract?

On May 21, Barr voted to hire Murray’s firm and to approve the amended JGBLI infrastructure agreement committing the county to improve the private sewer system before taking ownership.

The MPIA packet shows Andrew Serafini, a former state senator and voting member of the Edwards Fund board, writing on May 22 that “Hugh and I are advocating for support of the commercial end of the project if the infrastructure is covered from other sources.” Serafini also served as John Barr’s campaign finance chair in 2006.

Serafini and Breslin also attended the April 23 redevelopment meeting with Barr and the Lees, where the summary identified both men as assisting the Lee family’s forthcoming George C. Edwards Fund application.

In that same May 22 email, Serafini said the Edwards Board discussed Cascade Town Centre’s application and that Tri-County and ARC representatives had talked with county staff about infrastructure funding for that project. The advocacy language is explicit and comes from voting members of the funding board considering JGBLI’s submission, tying ARC infrastructure funding to the same redevelopment linked to Ellsworth in the payment timeline.

Cline also serves as vice-chair of the Tri-County Council for Western Maryland, which helps administer the George C. Edwards Fund, and previously served as a voting member of the board overseeing that fund.

On May 26, Serafini told Gordon and Murray that the George Edwards Board had reviewed JGBLI’s submission and that significant ARC funding might be available for the project. He said county commissioners were in talks with ARC. Gordon forwarded his message to all commissioners the following morning.

On June 9, Barr supported advancing the sewer funding proposal. The minutes identify an $809,820 project, with $404,910 sought from ARC and an equal county sewer-fund match. The minutes do not name JGBLI, but the MPIA emails connect that funding effort to the developer’s project. Lee’s July 16 email also connects the county’s ARC application to the sewer replacement preceding Cascade Town Centre’s road improvements.

Ten days after the June 9 vote, on June 19, the developer paid Ellsworth $43,947.

On September 15, Barr abstained from a separate $1.25 million funding application vote for the same redevelopment, saying the proposed work included an electrical system and electrical contracting was his business. Why did that business interest warrant abstention then, but not during the earlier infrastructure votes while the developer was paying his family’s company? Barr owes residents an explanation for that distinction.

Earlier this week, we reported that by February 2019, following his unsuccessful 2018 reelection bid, John Barr was identified in a county presentation as chair of the Cascade Town Centre Development Advisory Group. The presentation also identified him as Ellsworth Electric’s president. That places Barr in an advisory leadership role connected to the same development interests whose related company later reported paying Ellsworth $53,947. Barr owes residents an explanation of what that role involved and how he disclosed that relationship before participating in county decisions advancing infrastructure assistance for the development.

The same 2019 presentation identified Joe Lee as president of Washington Realty Management and Greg Murray as its CEO. Earlier reporting by Radio Free Hub City also identified Ellsworth permits for electrical work at two JGBLI residential properties in 2025.

Barr owes the public a direct explanation for voting on that infrastructure while his family’s company was being paid by the developer.

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We verified that Washington County Commissioner Jeff Cline lists his residence at an apartment in Funkstown, Maryland, in a building owned by a company belonging to his largest campaign donor, Paul Crampton Jr. Publicly available voter registration information places Cline at the property, and we independently verified the building’s ownership. We are withholding the exact address for privacy reasons, but his financial disclosures leave the housing arrangement unexplained.

Crampton has provided Cline’s reelection campaign with $4,000 this year alone, making him the single largest contributor. The developer helping finance Cline’s campaign also owns the company behind the apartment building where Cline lists his home.

For thirteen years, Cline’s financial disclosures have reported no earned income outside his county commissioner position and identified no conflicts of interest. His 2025 disclosure also denies having any real property interest, even though the question expressly asks about interests “as an owner or a tenant.” Cline checked “No” on Schedule A and again on the summary checklist on page 6. The section for explaining conflicts or potential conflicts is blank, and he checked “No” to reportable gifts from the sources covered by the form.

If Cline rented the apartment during 2025, not owning the building would not explain his answer. Tenants are expressly included, and the form provides separate spaces to identify whether the filer is an owner or tenant. His answers leave residents without an explanation of when he moved in, what his arrangement was during the reporting year or why he checked “No.”

The Same Day: $200,000 Forgiven, $250 Contributed

Cline and Crampton’s history of county dealings stretches back well before this year’s campaign contributions. On April 9, 2013, Cline made the motion to approve an agreement for the county to acquire 4.53 acres from Paul Crampton Jr. and Pamela Crampton for Southern Boulevard intersection improvements. The agreed purchase price was $135,690, and the motion passed unanimously.

Crampton also appeared before the commissioners as Funkstown’s mayor. In November 2016, he presented the town’s proposal to borrow money for the purchase of the Artz Farm and another property to expand its parkland. Cline joined the unanimous vote approving a loan of up to $1 million from county general fund reserves, repayable over ten years at 1% interest.

Six years later, Crampton returned to ask the county to forgive part of that debt. On August 16, 2022, Cline joined the unanimous vote approving $200,000 in Artz Farm loan forgiveness for Funkstown. That same day, Crampton made a $250 in-kind contribution to Cline’s reelection campaign, according to Maryland State Board of Elections campaign finance records.

The paperwork offers little help to residents trying to understand the decision. The agenda report identified the request as $200,000 in loan forgiveness but listed its fiscal impact as “N/A.” The approved minutes used the $200,000 figure in the heading, then left “$XX” where the amount should have appeared in the narrative. The motion approved the forgiveness “as presented.”

Forgiving $200,000 in public debt has a fiscal impact. Residents should not have to piece it together from a heading, an unfinished paragraph and an agenda report that says “N/A.”

Paul Crampton, John Barr, and Greg Snook’s Company Got Half a Million Dollars While Cline Served on the Funding Board

The county votes are only part of the history. Hager 5 LLC was also approved for a $500,000 award through the Senator George C. Edwards Fund while Cline served on the board overseeing the money.

The fund’s 2024 annual report identifies Cline as a voting member of the Western Maryland Economic Future Investment Board. It lists Hager 5’s award for renovation of the Antietam Paper Building in downtown Hagerstown as approved, pending disbursement.

Hagerstown’s meeting minutes identify Paul Crampton Jr., John Barr and Greg Snook as doing business as Hager 5 LLC. Barr is the current president of the Washington County Commissioners, and Snook is a former commissioners’ president. That puts Cline’s largest donor and two fellow current or former commissioners behind the company approved for the funding.

Cline is recorded as present at every 2024 meeting with posted minutes, including when Hager 5 was discussed as applying for the grant. What remains unexplained is his role in its approval: whether he participated in discussions or voted, whether he abstained, and whether he disclosed a relationship with any of the company’s principals.

The annual report documents his board membership and the award, but his financial disclosure offers no explanation of the housing relationship. Residents need to know whether he was living in the Crampton-owned building when Hager 5’s application was considered and, if so, how he handled that relationship.

Free or Discounted Rent Could Raise Three Separate Legal Issues

Renting from a campaign donor is not itself an ethics violation. Receiving free housing, waived payments or a personal rent discount could raise additional issues, depending on the terms and circumstances.

Even a rental at market rates can raise questions about participation in matters involving the landlord. Section 4(c)(2)(vi) restricts participation in matters involving a business that is a “creditor or obligee” positioned to directly and substantially affect the official’s interests. A landlord could occupy that position.

If Cline has received housing concessions, investigators should examine three additional issues:

1. Accepting a prohibited gift. Section 4(h)(3) of Washington County’s Ethics Ordinance restricts knowingly accepting gifts from specified sources, including people doing or seeking business with the relevant county body, regulated by it, or whose financial interests could be substantially and materially affected by the official’s duties. A rent concession from a covered source could violate that restriction unless an exception applies. A prohibited-gift violation does not require proof that a particular vote was purchased.

2. Failing to disclose the benefit. Section 5(f)(4) requires disclosure of covered gifts exceeding $20, or a series totaling at least $100, from a person doing business with or regulated by the county. If Cline received reportable rent concessions and omitted them from his disclosure, that could constitute a separate violation. Reporting a gift would not make an otherwise prohibited gift permissible.

3. Possible bribery under Maryland criminal law. If housing concessions were provided and knowingly accepted to influence Cline’s official duties, the arrangement could implicate Maryland Criminal Law §9-201. The statute covers county officers and prohibits both giving and receiving bribes connected to official duties. Investigators would need to establish the purpose of any housing benefit and any understanding connecting it to official action or inaction.

The first two issues fall under the county’s ethics ordinance; bribery is a separate state criminal matter. A housing benefit need not take the form of a cash payment to have value, and charging a token amount of rent would not, by itself, settle whether Cline received a gift.

The unanswered questions start with the lease: what does Cline pay, when did the arrangement begin, and has the company waived payments or given him a discount? If there were concessions, what were they worth and why were they offered? Has he obtained an Ethics Commission opinion or made separate disclosures or recusals concerning his landlord or related businesses?

We asked Cline about the property, whether he pays market-rate rent, whether he disclosed the arrangement and whether he recused himself from county business affecting Crampton’s interests. We also asked whether he sought an Ethics Commission opinion. More than a week later, he has not responded.

An independent investigation should obtain the lease, payment records, records of any waived or forgiven rent, written ethics advice and communications concerning the arrangement. Those records should be examined alongside Cline’s official actions to determine whether a developer has been subsidizing his housing and whether any benefit was lawfully accepted and properly disclosed.

The Commissioners Pick the Ethics Commission. Two Members Have Helped Fund Their Campaigns.

Any complaint would enter a system in which the commissioners appoint the people responsible for reviewing ethics complaints against them.

Section 3 of the county’s ethics ordinance establishes a five-member Ethics Commission appointed by the Board of County Commissioners. It handles complaints alleging violations of the ordinance and provides advisory opinions, with the County Attorney serving as its adviser.

Two current members have contributed to Cline’s campaigns: Marilee Kerns and commission chair Alan Levin. Between them, they have also supported Commissioners Randy Leatherman and Randall Wagner.

Cline received $2,175 across eleven contributions from Kerns and Levin. Kerns made nine contributions, while Levin made two. Their contributions to the three commissioners total $4,155.

Those relationships matter when considering who would review a complaint. Would Kerns and Levin participate in a case involving a commissioner they have financially supported? Would they disclose the contributions and step aside, and who would decide? The county should explain how it handles those circumstances before asking residents to trust the process.

How Residents Can Submit Complaints

Residents with relevant information or supporting records can request review through the county’s ethics process or report suspected criminal conduct to the Maryland State Prosecutor.

For possible violations of the county’s ethics ordinance: The Washington County Ethics Complaint Form asks for the official’s name, the specific ordinance provisions involved, supporting facts and witnesses with personal knowledge. Attach relevant records, then sign and date the affirmation under penalty of perjury. The county does not accept anonymous complaints. Use of the form is optional, but the requested information must be provided.

Send the signed complaint to Washington County Ethics Commission, c/o Office of the County Attorney, Washington County Administration Building, 100 W. Washington Street, Suite 1101, Hagerstown, MD 21740. Questions about submission procedures can be directed to 240-313-2776.

For suspected bribery or other criminal misconduct: Submit information through the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor’s online complaint form. The office investigates state bribery offenses involving public officials, misconduct in office and certain related offenses. Anonymous complaints are accepted, although providing contact information allows investigators to follow up.

The form accepts supporting attachments. People unable to complete it electronically can submit a complaint by telephone at 410-321-4067. A useful submission should include supporting records, identify what the person knows firsthand and explain what still needs investigation.

The Public Deserves an Independent Investigation

Residents should be able to find out whether a developer is subsidizing a commissioner’s housing, whether the arrangement was properly disclosed and whether it affected his handling of public business. Getting those answers should not depend on a complaint process overseen by people who have donated to the official under scrutiny.

Cline’s undisclosed housing arrangement with his largest campaign donor warrants an independent investigation conducted by people who haven’t helped finance his reelection.

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A February 26, 2019 Washington County presentation identifies Barr, then president of Ellsworth Electric, as chairman of the Cascade Town Centre Development Advisory Group, associated with JG Business Link International (JGBLI), the company behind the proposed redevelopment of the former Fort Ritchie property.

The county entered into a master developer agreement with JGBLI in 2016 and transferred approximately 63 acres to the company in 2017.

So what exactly was Barr doing as chairman of the developer’s advisory group? Was he paid? Did Ellsworth Electric receive any contracts or other business connected to the project? And did Barr disclose his involvement when county matters involving JGBLI came before the commissioners?

These are reasonable questions for someone who now serves as president of the Washington County Board of County Commissioners, particularly given the county’s history of doing business with the developer.

When the president of the Washington County Commissioners previously chaired an advisory group associated with a developer doing business with the county, residents deserve a full accounting of that relationship.

Barr Voted on a County Agreement Involving a Developer His Family’s Electrical Company Was Working For

Barr’s ties to JGBLI didn’t end with his role as chairman of the developer’s advisory group. As Radio Free Hub City reported on May 21, 2026, Ellsworth Electric filed permits in 2025 to install new 200-amp underground electrical services at two JGBLI-owned properties, 14235 and 14237 Cushman Avenue. Both contracts were reportedly still open when Barr voted on a county agreement involving the development.

Ellsworth Electric is still owned by the Barr family. According to the company’s website, Jonny Barr is its president and owner, while Beth Barr serves as human resources manager.

On May 21, 2026, Barr voted in favor of an amended agreement between Washington County and JGBLI involving sewer infrastructure improvements for the Cascade Town Centre development, including Lots 2-A through 2-V. Barr did not recuse himself, despite his family’s electrical company reportedly having two active contracts involving properties within that development.

Apparently, Barr had a different view of potential conflicts of interest four months later. On September 15, 2026, he abstained from a vote involving $1.25 million in state funding for Cascade Town Centre, specifically citing his electrical contracting business.

So why was his electrical contracting business a reason to abstain in September but not in May? And considering Barr previously chaired JGBLI’s development advisory group, how many other county decisions involving the developer has he participated in without disclosing those relationships?

Barr owes Washington County residents an explanation of his relationship with JGBLI, his family's business dealings with the developer, and why he apparently considered those relationships a conflict of interest in September but not in May.

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The City knows about the problem. In an October 12 email responding to a public records request, Communications Director Wes Decker acknowledged that the latest minutes posted online were from December 2024. He attributed the backlog to a transition between archive systems and wrote: “It is anticipated that minutes will be up to date within the next two weeks.”

That period ended October 26. Our October 27 check found seven meetings from early 2025 in the linked archive, but no Mayor and Council minutes after February 25. Meanwhile, the Planning Commission and Historic District Commission have 2026 minutes online.

The missing records matter tonight. The September 15 agenda packet scheduled “Burkholder Lane Pre-Development Exploration and Potential Uses,” but its supporting page left the discussion, financial impact and recommendation fields blank.

Tonight’s Council meeting includes approval of the September 15 minutes. That was already listed in the October 20 preliminary agenda packet. Yet the minutes approval attachment contains only the motion, without the minutes themselves. We couldn’t find those minutes through the City’s published minutes links or broader searches.

Residents keep having to piece together what their own government is doing, chasing missing minutes, filing public records requests and digging through agenda packets to understand decisions affecting their community. Public participation shouldn’t depend on whether someone has the time and persistence to uncover the information officials should be making easy to find.

As we previously reported, Hagerstown has a nondisclosure agreement with data center developer Diversified Capital and refuses to release it. If the developer presents new plans or details tonight, residents deserve time to review them before being expected to offer informed comments, especially while records of the City’s earlier meetings remain hard to find.

For more on what officials should explain before this annexation moves forward, read our 12 Reasons to Demand Answers at Hagerstown’s Data Center Annexation Hearing on Tuesday, October 27

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Both Washington County and Hagerstown officials met privately with Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin on December 9, 2025, in separate closed-door meetings. As we documented in our reporting, Hagerstown’s minutes place Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin with the Mayor, City Council, and senior City staff. The County’s minutes identify Rubin and other project representatives at its confidential presentation, which officials said was covered by an NDA.

Now, at the Tuesday, October 27 hearing, residents are being asked to weigh in while the City continues withholding its agreement with the developer, and officials cannot get their story straight about who is responsible for keeping it from the public. That meeting also includes approximately $30.6 million in proposed wastewater contracts that sewer customers would help fund. Residents should be able to examine the City’s commitments and understand the potential costs before officials make further decisions. We reviewed the 567-page agenda packet and identified ten things residents should know. Page numbers below refer to that packet.

1. The agenda leaves the final annexation vote date undetermined

The proposal would bring 171.88 acres at 12440 Burkholder Lane and 12660 McDade Road into Hagerstown with Industrial Mixed-Use zoning. The annexation plan anticipates extending City water to the Burkholder parcel. Staff scheduled a November 10 follow-up discussion, but the proposed resolution leaves its passage and effective dates “To be determined.”

Why it matters: Annexation would put the properties under City land-use rules and advance plans to provide City water. Residents need a clear voting schedule and answers about the data center’s demands before that decision is made. November 10 is listed as a discussion, not a confirmed final vote.

2. Data center development drives this annexation, but only one of 567 pages mentions data centers

On page 97, the packet reproduces the hearing ad placed through a local news outlet with a paywalled website. It describes the acreage and proposed zoning without mentioning the data center development or its anticipated use of City water. The only page we found mentioning data centers is page 247, a Fidelity Power Systems sales sheet advertising “Data Center Cleaning.” Someone searching for an explanation of the development would find a contractor’s marketing material.

Why it matters: Residents should not have to follow our reporting to understand why these properties are being brought into Hagerstown. Leaving the development out of the notice and annexation explanation makes it harder for people to recognize what is at stake and prepare informed comments.

3. The sewer spending could matter as much as the annexation

The hearing shares an agenda with major wastewater spending. A five-year, $52.9 million improvement program lists $49.5 million in planned borrowing and $3.4 million from the wastewater fund. Sewer customers’ payments would help repay the borrowing. The plan also notes $3 million in loan forgiveness within the state financing, so that portion would not need to be repaid.

Why it matters: Borrowing lets the City pay for work now and repay it over time through the sewer system’s revenues, including customers’ bills. Residents need to know what these upgrades would cost them and whether any work would accommodate data center development. The funding page provides no household bill estimate.

4. The wastewater funding plan lists no developer contribution

The five-year wastewater program lists $0 under “Grant or Devel”, the category for grant or developer funding. Its listed sources are borrowing and the wastewater fund, with $3 million in loan forgiveness noted separately within the state financing. No direct developer contribution is budgeted in that table.

Why it matters: If any upgrades are needed to serve data centers, existing sewer customers need protection from paying costs those developments create. Officials should identify the projects these investments would serve and explain what developers would contribute. Any developer payments through connection fees or separate agreements should also be disclosed.

5. Major wastewater contracts could pass together without separate discussion

The Council could authorize approximately $30.6 million through one consent agenda vote, which groups purchases together unless a councilmember requests separate discussion. Page 101.

The proposed authorizations include Carl Belt: $27.73 million, including a $3 million reserve for unexpected costs, and Black & Veatch: $2.84 million for construction engineering and oversight through an amendment to its existing treatment plant contract. The City proposes adding that work without a new competition, citing the firm’s knowledge of the plant. Pages 311–315 and 351.

As we previously reported, Black & Veatch’s January 22, 2026 master-plan proposal included additional “Data Center Owner’s Advisor” services for Hagerstown and Washington County, addressing water demand, cooling wastewater, electricity and siting. The March 24 agenda presented the $2,790,365 master-plan project with that proposal attached. By July, City paperwork said the project had begun.

Our reporting also documented Washington County consultant Greg Murray billing for a meeting with a Hagerstown representative and reviews of Black & Veatch materials. His invoice does not identify the documents or discussions. Black & Veatch also advertises private data center work, including two 300-megawatt substations, and campus services covering water and power.

Why it matters: The City moved forward with a master-plan project whose proposal explicitly included data center advice. It should identify which services it purchased, release the approved scope and explain whether the October plant work reflects data center demand. Those answers deserve public discussion before another multimillion-dollar commitment passes with a list of purchases.

6. The City claims enough water is available without showing the development’s demand

The proposed annexation covers 171.88 acres overall, but the annexation plan identifies the Burkholder parcel at issue for water service as 148.77 acres. For the 148.77 acre Burkholder parcel, the annexation plan states: “Sufficient capacity exists to serve the property.” But the annexation materials do not provide a project-specific estimate of water use, cooling assumptions, or calculations showing how the anticipated development fits within available capacity.

Why it matters: That assurance is hard to evaluate without knowing how many gallons per day the City assumed or how much water is already committed elsewhere. The City should publish the study behind its conclusion and explain whether it accounts for the scale and cooling design of the proposed data center.

7. A 172 acre data center could use more electricity than all Washington County households combined

The annexation plan identifies Potomac Edison, a FirstEnergy company, as the property’s electricity provider and the plan would not move the development onto Hagerstown’s electric system.

The Burkholder Lane property listing advertises a one-million-square-foot industrial building and identifies data centers as a potential use. That raises an obvious question: how much electricity would this development require? An October 19 Forbes article describes hyperscale data centers as having power ratings above 100 megawatts. The City’s annexation packet does not disclose this project’s expected demand.

If the development averaged 100 megawatts around the clock, it would consume approximately 876 million kilowatt-hours annually, equivalent to roughly 83,000 average American homes. Washington County has approximately 60,000 households, according to Census estimates. At 100 megawatts of continuous use, this development would add electricity demand equal to approximately 140% of the annual electricity used by all Washington County households combined, based on average U.S. household consumption.

This is an illustration of the potential scale, not a confirmed estimate for the development.

Why it matters: Adding a major electricity user increases demand on the same regional grid that serves our homes and businesses. When demand grows faster than supply, prices rise. Meeting that demand can also require expensive power lines and substations. Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel says data center demand is already driving up Maryland customers’ electricity costs. Even if the developer pays for its connection, the increase in demand for energy would drive up rates for residents. Officials should disclose the project’s power request and explain how other customers would be protected before moving the annexation forward.

8. The developer’s reported plans cover more than nine times the land being considered for annexation

The Herald-Mail reports that Diversified Capital is proposing to develop approximately 1,600 acres west of Hagerstown and is seriously considering a data center as a potential use. That is more than nine times the approximately 172 acres covered by this annexation request.

Why it matters: Residents need to know whether this annexation is one part of a much larger data center development plan. The public deserves to understand the full potential demand on electricity, water and sewer systems before decisions are made one parcel at a time.

9. Another developer could receive substantial sewer fee credits

A proposed agreement with Currwood DH, LLC at 1912 Day Road would provide sewer-charge credits worth up to 85 percent of qualifying improvement costs, plus up to 25 residential sewer unit credits for qualifying right-of-way acquisition costs. The development includes approximately 66 detached homes, 446 townhouses, 276 apartments and commercial sites. The developer would pay for construction first, then apply credits against sewer benefit charges for the primary residential development. Completed sewer improvements would transfer to the City after one year in service.

Why it matters: For example, $1 million in eligible costs could produce up to $850,000 in fee reductions. The sewer system would collect less from the developer while acquiring infrastructure. The City should explain whether the credits leave costs for other customers and how this approach compares with the terms it would offer a data center developer.

10. Hagerstown’s planning chair raised a data center moratorium in July. We found no recorded follow-up.

At the July 8 Planning Commission meeting, Chairperson Christina Davis raised the possibility of a City data center moratorium similar to Washington County’s. According to the approved minutes, Deputy Planning Director Stephen Bockmiller said the topic would need to be added to a future agenda. At that same meeting, the commission voted 4–0 to recommend the approximately 172-acre Burkholder-McDade annexation plan with Industrial Mixed-Use zoning. No formal motion or vote on a moratorium was recorded.

Why it matters: Washington County’s moratorium does not cover Hagerstown, so Davis was raising a question about protections the City would need to consider itself. The subsequent Planning Commission records we reviewed show no follow-up discussion, and the published October 28 agenda does not list a moratorium either. City officials should explain what happened to Davis’s inquiry, whether it reached the Mayor and City Council, and why residents have no recorded answer while the annexation continues moving forward.

11. Hagerstown City Administrator Scott Nicewarner opposed Governor Wes Moore’s statewide data center moratorium.

In a January 13 report from Tri-State Alert, Scott Nicewarner opposed legislation that would pause data center construction, saying, “I don’t think that’s a good bill.” He argued that Hagerstown should control its own resources and that a data center could generate tax revenue that otherwise might need to come from taxpayers. Speaking personally, Nicewarner said he had not yet discussed his position with the Mayor or Council. Confusingly, these comments came just over a month after he joined them in a private December 9 meeting with data center developer Diversified Capital.

Residents concerned about higher utility bills deserve more than a general argument about tax revenue. Nicewarner should explain what analysis supports those anticipated benefits, what infrastructure costs a data center could create, and how he would ensure those costs are paid by the developer rather than existing customers.

As we have since reported, Hagerstown officials are bound by a nondisclosure agreement with Diversified Capital. The City denied our Maryland Public Information Act request for the agreement, and we have taken that denial to the Maryland Public Information Act Ombudsman for mediation. Residents are being asked to assess the benefits of development while the City continues withholding the agreement governing its confidential dealings with the developer.

Why it matters: Governor Wes Moore later said he would sign a statewide data center moratorium if lawmakers sent him one. Nicewarner’s earlier opposition makes it fair to ask why he opposed a pause, what enforceable protections he supports, and what recourse or compensation residents would have if data center costs increase their utility bills.

12. The City has published conflicting instructions for speaking at the hearing

The hearing notice says people may sign in at City Hall beforehand and receive three minutes. The City’s online form instead requires registration 24 hours before a regular session or public hearing, making the deadline Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m. Register online by that deadline and arrive at 6:45 p.m. to sign in. The meeting begins Tuesday, October 27, at 7 p.m., City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. Pages 1, 7 and 97.

Why it matters: Nobody should lose the chance to speak because the City published two sets of instructions. This hearing is residents’ opportunity to question a development that could affect their neighborhoods and utility bills.

The City Owes Residents Answers Before Moving Forward

Before Hagerstown moves this annexation forward, officials need to explain what they have discussed with Diversified Capital, what commitments they have made, and what accommodating this data center development could cost the rest of us. They should release the NDA and related records we requested, publish the assumptions behind their water-capacity assurances, and explain whether the wastewater investments would support the development. Residents should be able to evaluate those answers before the Council makes decisions that could affect their utility bills for decades.

The Mayor and Council had their private meeting with the developer. Washington County officials had theirs. The public deserves a meaningful opportunity to examine what happened in those rooms and influence what happens next. Asking residents to decipher 567 pages while withholding records about the developer is an inadequate basis for public participation. If officials cannot provide the information people need to assess this proposal, they should postpone the decisions until they can.

Show up Tuesday, October 27, at Hagerstown City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. Arrive at 6:45 p.m. for the 7 p.m. meeting, and register to speak by Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m. Sign the petition at StopTheNDAs.org, share this information with your neighbors, and ask officials to explain what they know before they commit the public to paying for it.

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On October 14, Hagerstown Rapid Response asked Corderman whether he would return the contribution. We asked because Washington County Commissioner Jeff Cline had returned a $500 contribution from Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin and a $250 contribution from Chris Shank, who is part of Diversified Capital’s project team. In his October 15 response, Corderman said his records identified Neustadt as a “Self Employed CPA” and said he had never met or spoken with him. He did not answer our question about whether he would return the money.

We had already identified Neustadt as Diversified Capital’s tax director in our question. Corderman’s response repeated what his campaign records said without addressing that connection. Residents still deserve a direct answer: Will he return the $1,000, or keep it?

How We Got Here: Six Years of Data Center Recruitment, Secret Meetings, and Convenient Timing

Here’s what residents have had to piece together through public records requests, government documents, campaign finance disclosures, and archived websites:

• February 4, 2020: Washington County Business Development Director Jonathan Horowitz sent a letter to the Maryland Senate Budget and Taxation Committee supporting Senate Bill 397, legislation designed to attract data centers through tax exemptions.

• June 2024: The property at 12440 Burkholder Lane was advertised as “Ideal for Data Center.” A January 2025 listing subsequently described a proposed million-square-foot facility suitable for data centers and other industrial uses.

• May 2025: Washington County’s Department of Business and Economic Development included Diversified Capital’s $50 million Martin Farm project in its economic development presentation, projecting 300 jobs.

• August 25, 2025: Data center developer Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin donated $500 to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign. Member of project team for Diversified Capital data center development also donated $250 to Jeff Cline’s reelection campaign.

• October 12, 2025: An archived Diversified Capital profile described the company’s portfolio as including a “data center development project in Washington County, Maryland.” Diversified Capital was publicly identifying its project as a data center months before the county announced its moratorium.

• December 9, 2025: Washington County Commissioners met privately with Diversified Capital’s project team under an NDA. Participants included Rubin, former state senator Chris Shank, former lieutenant governor Boyd Rutherford, engineer Connor McManus, and Sage Policy Group’s Zack Fritz. County minutes acknowledged that public discussion would violate the NDA. That same day, Hagerstown’s Mayor and City Council held their own closed executive session to consider a business or industrial development proposal. The city has not publicly identified the project discussed.

• January 16, 2026: Washington County sent a letter supporting another tax exemption, this time for Mount Aetna Technology Park.

• February 2, 2026: Horowitz was announced as a member of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland Steering Committee, alongside representatives from Amazon, BGE, Constellation Energy, and other industry interests.

• February 3, 2026: Commissioners voted 4–0 to ratify their support for the Mount Aetna tax exemption.

• May 7, 2026: data center developer, Diversified Capital Barry Neustadt donated $1,000 to Maryland State Senator Paul Corderman’s re-election campaign.

• May 21, 2026: Commissioners approved a no-bid consulting contract with Greg Murray of GDMS LLC by a 3–2 vote, with Commissioner John Barr casting the deciding vote. Mayor Bill McIntire attended the meeting. Murray subsequently billed taxpayers for meeting with a Hagerstown representative and reviewing engineering materials that included documents from Black & Veatch, the firm working on Hagerstown’s water and wastewater planning.

• June 12, 2026: Cline returned Rubin’s $500 campaign contribution, nearly ten months after receiving it and six months after the confidential presentation. On the same day he also returned Chris Shank’s $250 campaign contribution which he received on the same day as Moshe Rubin’s. This is relevant because Chris Shank is a member of project team for the Diversified Capital data center development.

• June 16, 2026: Washington County quietly posted its draft data center moratorium.

• June 30, 2026: Commissioners adopted their dog-and-pony-show moratorium. That same day, the owners of the Martin Farm property filed for annexation into Hagerstown, where the moratorium does not apply.

• August 25, 2026: Hagerstown introduced and approved Annexation Resolution A-2026-2 involving Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC and McDade Road Acquisitions LLC.

• September 2, 2026: We exposed the commissioners’ NDA meeting and its connection to Diversified Capital’s Martin Farm data center development.

• September 30, 2026: Washington County established criteria for data center development, after years of industry recruitment and months of undisclosed discussions with developers.

• October 8, 2026: We reported on a quietly held county data center workshop where FirstEnergy provided information about Diversified Capital’s plans.

• October 14, 2026: We met with Mayor McIntire and asked why Hagerstown refused to release its NDA records involving Diversified Capital. He told us the city’s legal department handled those decisions and that he didn’t know why its attorneys had withheld the records. But Communications Director Wes Decker had already told us that he was the records custodian and made the final disclosure decision.

• October 20, 2026: Hagerstown is scheduled to consider another amendment to the annexation plan. The agenda doesn’t identify Diversified Capital or mention the data center.

• October 27, 2026: Data center hearing at Hagerstown City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. The hearing begins at 7 PM.

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Sign the petition at StopTheNDAs.org to demand meaningful public participation before major development decisions are made. Then show up Tuesday, October 27, at 6:45 PM at Hagerstown City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. The hearing begins at 7 PM. Bring your neighbors and your questions, and come even if you do not plan to speak. Our utility bills, water supply and neighborhoods deserve a room full of residents demanding answers.

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Data centers can bring consequences that residents live with long after construction ends:

• Higher electricity bills. Enormous power demand can increase electricity prices and require expensive generation and transmission projects. Maryland’s consumer advocate has warned that households could be left paying data center costs.

• Higher water and sewage bills. If new pipes, pumps or treatment capacity are needed and developers do not cover the full costs, existing customers could pay through higher rates. Residents deserve to see the infrastructure plans and financing assumptions before commitments are made.

• Additional pressure on water supplies. Cooling systems can consume water through evaporation, including during hot weather. Recycling water does not eliminate that consumption. The cooling design determines how much water a facility needs.

• Loud equipment and a constant industrial hum. Cooling equipment can operate around the clock. Virginia’s legislative review documented residents’ complaints about persistent low-frequency noise, which conventional noise ordinances can struggle to address.

• Air pollution and climate impacts. Fuel-burning generators produce exhaust, while supplying additional electricity can increase emissions when fossil-fuel generation serves that demand. EPA identifies data center power equipment as a source requiring air-pollution oversight.

• Land clearing, polluted runoff and neighborhood disruption. Large industrial development can replace farmland and vegetation, disturb habitat, and bring construction traffic, dust and noise. EPA explains how construction runoff and additional paved surfaces can threaten water quality. Residents also deserve answers about lighting, buffers and changes to surrounding neighborhoods.

• Public costs that outlast developers’ promises. Tax exemptions reduce potential public revenue, and infrastructure built for speculative projects can leave customers exposed if anticipated demand never materializes. Maryland’s consumer advocate has explicitly warned about that risk.

• Relatively few permanent jobs for the footprint. Construction jobs are temporary. Virginia’s legislative review reported that industry representatives described approximately 50 full-time workers at a typical 250,000-square-foot data center, roughly half contractors. That is a comparison, not a verified employment estimate for this project. Residents deserve verified permanent-job numbers before officials use employment promises to justify public commitments.

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Both Washington County and Hagerstown have been deceptive about their dealings with Diversified Capital. We see a pattern of both governments going out of their way to keep residents out of the process while giving the developer private access to elected officials and senior staff. On December 9, 2025, Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin and members of his development team met privately with both governments on the same day. Officials involved included:

• John Barr, President of the Washington County Commissioners

• Jeff Cline, Washington County Commissioner

• Randal Leatherman, Washington County Commissioner

• Randy Wagner, Washington County Commissioner

• Michelle Gordon, Washington County Administrator

• Jonathan Horowitz, Washington County Director of Business Development and member of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland Steering Committee

• Bill McIntire, Mayor of Hagerstown

• Kristin Aleshire, Hagerstown City Council

• Caroline Anderson, Hagerstown City Council

• Erika Bell, Hagerstown City Council

• Tiara Burnett, Hagerstown City Council

• Sean Flaherty, Hagerstown City Council

• Scott Nicewarner, Hagerstown City Administrator

• Jill Thompson, Hagerstown Director of Planning and Economic Development

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County officials signed confidentiality agreements. Hagerstown refuses to release its NDA or identify who signed it. The city’s approved meeting summary remained missing from its online archive for nearly nine months until we obtained it through an October records request. Then the October 20 annexation agenda omitted both Diversified Capital and the data center, identifying the matter simply as “Burkholder-McDade.” Residents had to know the story already to recognize what officials were discussing.

Meanwhile, commissioners point to a data center moratorium that does not apply inside Hagerstown, the very jurisdiction this developer is seeking to enter. Residents trying to follow their own government have had to uncover the meetings, obtain the missing records and decode the agenda themselves. The developer gets direct access to decision-makers. The public gets confidentiality agreements, incomplete information and a bill for obtaining its own government’s records.

This record gives us no reason to trust either government to negotiate these projects without meaningful, enforceable public participation. Residents should know what developers are requesting, what officials are considering and who could pay before commitments are made. Our opportunity to participate should not depend on whether we discover what is happening in time to object.

Washington County invited residents to help shape its 2040 Comprehensive Plan because decisions about land use, infrastructure, natural resources and public services affect all of us. That principle should apply before consequential commitments involving data centers or the proposed ICE detention center, too. A private developer’s demand for secrecy should never take priority over officials’ responsibility to the public.

Sign the petition at StopTheNDAs.org to demand meaningful public participation before major development decisions are made. Then show up Tuesday, October 27, at 6:45 PM at Hagerstown City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. The hearing begins at 7 PM. Bring your neighbors and your questions, and come even if you do not plan to speak. Our utility bills, water supply and neighborhoods deserve a room full of residents demanding answers.

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On September 2nd, we broke the story that a secret data center was in the works. Read what we uncovered in that investigation:

We asked Senator Paul Corderman whether he would support requiring data center developers to pay the full cost of the electricity, water, sewer, and other infrastructure their projects require. We also asked what specific protections he would put into law to keep those costs off household bills. His entire response: “Yes, Data Centers should be self-sufficient.” He named no specific protections and offered no explanation of how he would require developers to cover those costs. His legislative record gives residents more to evaluate than that brief assurance, including votes for data center tax breaks and easier approvals, followed by a vote against legislation containing protections for other electricity customers. He has been specific about the benefits he supports for developers. The households being asked to accommodate them deserve more than a sentence.

Senator Corderman voted to make it cheaper and easier for data centers to operate in Washington and Frederick Counties at the cost of residents and the environment

Corderman’s support for data center tax breaks goes back to 2020, when he was still a state delegate. On March 17, he voted for Senate Bill 397, a law specifically giving data centers tax advantages. The bill gives tax breaks for data center developers, especially in Washington County and a few other “tier 1” counties.

The law exempts qualifying data center equipment from state sales and use taxes. That covers servers, software, cooling systems, generators, transformers and electrical infrastructure. Companies can receive years of relief on equipment essential to running their facilities, including qualifying replacement purchases. The exemption requires annual renewal, generally for up to ten years, with up to twenty years available for companies investing at least $250 million. The law also lets counties and municipalities reduce or eliminate the taxable assessment of qualifying equipment, opening the door to additional local property tax breaks. Those local reductions require local action.

Washington County received a particularly attractive deal. The 2020 fiscal analysis lists it among the Tier I jurisdictions, where companies could qualify with $2 million in eligible equipment investment instead of the $5 million required outside Tier I areas. That is a 60 percent lower investment threshold for the same state tax exemption. Both require just five qualifying new, permanent full-time jobs, paying at least 150 percent of the state minimum wage, with the investment and job requirements met within three years of applying. One hundred and fifty percent of the state minimum wage would be just $22.50 an hour.

The state’s own analysts warned of potentially significant revenue losses and estimated that $150 million in qualifying purchases would mean $9 million in forgone state revenue. Corderman voted for the incentive anyway. Years before the latest development pitches, he had already helped offer data center companies years of tax relief with a lower investment requirement here and only five qualifying jobs required paying a minimum of $22.50 an hour in return. Residents deserve to know why the public’s concessions are so specific while the promised economic payoff remains so vague.

In Frederick County, Corderman also helped remove an approval requirement that stood in the way of a specific data center development. In 2024, he co-sponsored Senate Bill 474, the Critical Infrastructure Streamlining Act, and voted for its final passage. The law allows qualifying emergency backup generators at data centers and other critical infrastructure facilities to bypass the Maryland Public Service Commission’s approval process. Environmental permits and applicable noise and testing requirements remained, but developers no longer needed the commission’s approval for generators meeting the law’s conditions.

The legislature’s own analysis explains the Frederick County connection. Aligned Data Centers wanted to install 168 diesel generators, each rated at three megawatts, at its proposed Frederick County campus. Those generators would provide 504 megawatts of backup capacity to keep the company’s facilities running during power outages. The commission raised environmental concerns and granted only a provisional exemption for 70 megawatts. Aligned announced it would abandon the project, then urged lawmakers to pass SB 474, explicitly telling them the change would allow it to revisit its Frederick County plans. After the bill became law, the company announced it would move forward again. When a developer objected to the state’s regulatory decision, Corderman helped change the law governing the approval it had failed to obtain.

Ten years of tax relief at Mount Aetna

Corderman first pursued the Mount Aetna exemption in 2025 as SB 698. That bill failed, so he brought it back in 2026 as SB 193, which became law. It grants a ten-year state sales and use tax exemption which, as Senator Corderman says will “enhance the region’s ability to attract high-tech industries.”

The exemption is presented as relief for construction expressly including computer systems and equipment. Residents could be forgiven for wondering why a bill promoted around warehousing offers such a convenient benefit for a site being evaluated for data centers and why the county has spent over $18 million in infrastructure upgrades to the property.

As we previously reported, Hagerstown Washington County Industrial Foundation chief executive Greg Snook - a Corderman campaign contributor himself - acknowledged that brokers representing potential data centers had asked about Mount Aetna’s land, zoning, and utilities, which appears to have been the plan for quite some time. Just two years ago, Snook commissioned a power study to identify what upgrades the technology park would need for a data center. And just one year later, in Snook’s September 2025 Monthly Meeting presentation at the Greater Hagerstown Committee, he highlights high-tech business, light manufacturing, and computer and data processing as potential uses for the property.

Many older zoning codes lack a specific category for data centers, creating a loophole that allows developers and local planners to classify them under broader terms such as data processing, information processing, light industrial, or light manufacturing. These classifications can make a data center look on paper like an ordinary, quiet warehouse with little traffic. This language often functions as a wink to data center buyers: the zoning allows it, but the sales pitch avoids saying “data center” where residents might notice.

Corderman’s written testimony sold the exemption as a way to make the site more attractive to investors and bring in high-tech industries, research centers, and manufacturing operations. Those are broad promises for a very specific tax break. If officials hoped to attract data centers, residents deserved to hear that while the incentive was being pushed, along with an honest accounting of the costs.

Cheaper for developers but more expensive for Frederick and Washington County residents?

The tax breaks and easier approvals Corderman supported help make Washington and Frederick counties more attractive to data center developers. But the costs of accommodating those projects can reach people who never agreed to help finance them. A Harvard Electricity Law Initiative study found that utilities can shift the costs of serving data centers onto households and other businesses, leaving ordinary customers to subsidize the infrastructure supporting Big Tech’s expansion.

Those costs can hit household budgets hard. An analysis published in Utility Dive cited projected utility bill increases of $40 to $50 a month in several states from grid investments driven by data center demand. That amounts to another $480 to $600 a year. Those projections are not estimates for Washington or Frederick County, but they show why residents should demand enforceable protections before developers’ promises become everyone else’s bills.

In April 2026, Maryland lawmakers passed legislation containing protections against that kind of cost shifting. The Utility RELIEF Act required the Maryland Public Service Commission to consider whether data centers would pay enough to cover the additional costs of serving them. The final bill extended those rules to more projects by lowering the power-demand threshold from 100 to 25 megawatts. The commission would determine the actual rates, but the purpose was straightforward: make data centers cover the costs they create rather than pass those costs on to other customers. Corderman voted against final passage on April 13.

The law also required large electricity customers to register and disclose information about their electricity supply, estimated water use, backup generators and competing requests to connect projects to the grid. A registration fee of at least $1,000 per megawatt of peak demand would support household electricity assistance and energy efficiency programs for low-income residents. Corderman’s vote does not tell us which provisions he opposed. It does mean he owes residents an explanation for rejecting a bill containing those protections while supporting measures that lower developers’ costs.

His work on the bill raises another question about who should pay for new infrastructure. Before voting against the final legislation, Corderman introduced an amendment that would block the commission’s effort to end subsidies for new gas connections. He pointed to a housing development in his district that he said was being held back. But preserving those subsidies would allow utilities to keep charging existing customers for part of the cost of connecting new ones.

In June 2025, the commission ordered an end to that practice, deciding that new customers should pay the full cost of extending gas service to them. The Office of People’s Counsel estimated that the change would spare BGE and Washington Gas customers $952 million in cumulative gas-bill increases through 2035. Customers of smaller utilities, including Columbia Gas of Maryland, would also benefit from lower future rates.

Corderman’s campaign received $2,750 from NiSource, Columbia Gas of Maryland’s parent company. His donor’s subsidiary operates one of the gas systems affected by the reform he sought to block. NiSource is also pursuing opportunities to serve the growing data center industry, which is increasingly turning to natural gas to power AI and cloud computing facilities as electricity supplies struggle to keep pace with demand.

Corderman justified his amendment by citing housing, and that does not establish that he proposed it for data centers. It does, however, show his willingness to preserve a system that makes existing customers help pay for expansion. Residents in Washington and Frederick counties deserve to know why he fought to preserve those gas subsidies, why he voted against the final electricity protections, and what he would actually put into law to keep developers’ infrastructure costs off their monthly bills.

The data center interests helping finance Corderman’s campaign

Corderman received $1,000 from FirstEnergy, which owns Potomac Edison, the electric utility serving much of Western Maryland. His donors also include Amazon, which has a four-building data center project in Frederick County. One donor is developing data centers, and another owns the utility that supplies electricity in the region. Residents deserve to know how Corderman will protect their electric bills as those businesses expand.

Manno & Associates, a lobbying and law firm led by former Maryland state senator Roger Manno, contributed at least $750 to Corderman’s campaign. Manno testified against HB 120, a proposed statewide pause on certain new data centers, and described data center campus development as part of his legal practice. His firm also promotes a Sage Policy Group white paper touting the benefits of data centers in Maryland. Corderman’s donors include a firm that works on data center development and has directly urged lawmakers to reject a pause on new projects.

In his February 24 letter, Manno also pushed to let data centers connect to the grid before fully meeting a proposed electricity supply requirement. The proposal would require large electricity users to secure capacity covering 25 percent of their demand before connecting. Manno wanted companies to meet that requirement in stages, emphasizing investment and construction jobs. But Maryland’s legislative analysts identified the requirement as a possible way to help hold down electricity prices. They warned that allowing more projects to connect, or letting them connect sooner, could increase demand, require grid upgrades and contribute to higher bills. Manno’s proposal could reduce developers’ upfront costs while increasing the risk that households face higher electricity bills.

Corderman’s campaign donors also include the following people and firms with documented connections to data center development, lobbying, and tax exemptions:

• Amazon: Corderman’s campaign retained $1,000 in contributions from Amazon, whose AWS subsidiary operates multiple large data centers in neighboring Frederick County. Amazon is now pushing to build “data center towns.”

• Sushant Sidh contributed $500 in January 2024, and Frederick County’s official ethics disclosures show him seeking special treatment for a proposed data center the following year. On March 10, 2025, Sidh, representing Capitol Strategies, participated in calls requesting an exemption from current and potential future data center legislation for property at 2518 Ballenger Creek Pike. A separate disclosure describes his proposal for a data center near the Doubs substation and identifies conflicts involving the property’s planning designation, zoning and pending legislation.

• Evans & Associates: Corderman’s campaign received $1,500 from the lobbying firm across two contributions in 2020 and 2024. Maryland’s current lobbying registrations list the firm’s Gerard Evans and Hayley Evans as representatives of Quantum Maryland LLC, identified by MDE as Quantum Loophole, and Atmosphere’s Dickerson property entity, associated with another proposed data center project. His contributors include a firm whose current clients have direct interests in Maryland data center development.

• Gordon Feinblatt PAC contributed $250 in October 2021, and the state’s 2025–2026 registration identifies the firm’s attorney Michael Powell as a lobbyist for Aligned Data Centers on energy and environmental matters. Aligned is developing a parcel within the Quantum Maryland campus in Frederick County.

• Richard Tabuteau contributed $300 across donations in 2023 and 2026, after helping advocate for the tax incentives used to attract the data center industry. Tabuteau co-signed Maryland Tech Council testimony supporting SB 397 in 2020, which provided a sales and use tax exemption for qualifying data center equipment. The testimony explicitly argued that Maryland needed the exemption to compete for data center investment. Corderman voted for that same legislation.

• Cornerstone Government Affairs contributed $500 on August 5, 2026, just two weeks after publishing an article describing its work helping clients win approval for data center projects. In its July 22 article, a Cornerstone principal explains that approvals often depend on a handful of elected officials and discusses providing political “cover” for them to vote yes. The firm describes helping clients promote favorable examples from other communities and structure projects to improve their chances of approval. Cornerstone also recommends that developers pay their infrastructure costs and provide tangible community benefits, but its commercial role is clear: helping data center clients navigate local opposition and secure approval from elected officials.

• Holcim and Holcim (US) Inc contributed $1,250 across donations in 2020 and 2021. Holcim actively markets its building materials to the data center industry, offering concrete, cement and roofing systems for projects from foundation to rooftop. The company says its order book includes numerous large data center projects through 2028 and highlights collaborations with Meta and Amazon, including supplying its special concrete for AWS data centers. Its commercial interest is straightforward: more data centers mean more opportunities to sell the materials used to build them. This is just one of Corderman’s campaign donors positioning itself to profit from the same construction boom his policies help encourage.

• John Favazza: Corderman received $1,750 across six contributions from Favazza between 2021 and 2026. The state’s current lobbying list identifies Favazza as a representative of both the Washington County Community Coalition and Amrize North America, formerly Holcim Participations (US). Corderman’s campaign also received $1,250 directly from contributors recorded as Holcim and Holcim (US) Inc., adding a lobbyist connection to the building-materials company already discussed above.

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Corderman’s donor NiSource wants a piece of the data center business too

NiSource has contributed $2,750 to Corderman’s campaign, and its Maryland subsidiary, Columbia Gas of Maryland, has been lobbying for legislation that could help it capture more data center business. Columbia Gas, which serves Washington, Allegany, and Garrett counties, submitted testimony supporting SB 26 on February 19 and testimony supporting HB 1190 on March 3. Both proposals would exempt qualifying off-grid electricity providers from much of Maryland’s utility regulation, and both submissions explicitly cited data center electricity demand.

NiSource already has energy agreements supporting Amazon and Alphabet data centers in Indiana to power them with natural gas. In its February 2026 earnings call, management said its Virginia team handled more than 40 data center inquiries during 2025 and was working on approximately two dozen active projects involving gas infrastructure. Its Maryland subsidiary was asking lawmakers to loosen oversight of a potential market for that growing business under the guise that the proposal would benefit customers.

Sierra Club and its partners warned that HB 1190 would remove safeguards designed to keep ordinary utility customers from paying expenses belonging to businesses generating electricity for data centers. A company contributing to Corderman’s campaign stands to gain from supplying the data center industry, while consumer advocates are warning about the costs which residents would absorb. Washington County households deserve protections that keep a campaign donor’s next business opportunity from becoming another expense on their utility bills.

Senator Corderman has helped data center developers. What did Washington and Frederick county residents get in return?

Corderman has spent years helping make these developments more attractive to the companies behind them. He voted for data center tax exemptions in 2020, with a lower investment requirement in Washington County, supported removing an approval requirement for backup generators, and pursued another decade of tax relief at Mount Aetna. The people he represents deserve an accounting of what they get in return: how many permanent jobs, at what wages, how much tax revenue after the exemptions, and what protections keep the costs off their utility bills. Calling something economic development does not explain why the public should help pay for it.

Before residents are asked to accept more promises, they need to see the numbers for electricity demand, water use, sewer capacity, backup generators and infrastructure upgrades. They need to know how much tax revenue is being surrendered, who will pay to expand public systems, and whether those commitments can actually be enforced. Corderman should explain why he voted against the final Utility RELIEF Act and name the protections he would support instead. “Data Centers should be self-sufficient” is an easy sentence to send us. Putting that obligation into law would give residents something they could rely on.

Corderman has shown he is willing to keep working on a tax break until it becomes law. Washington and Frederick county residents deserve the same effort when their household budgets are at stake. They should not have to give up public revenue, accommodate enormous new demands on their utilities, and then hope the promised benefits are worth the expense. For someone with plenty to say on Facebook, Corderman should be able to explain why he keeps supporting concessions for developers and exactly what he has secured for the people expected to live with the bill.

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Why We’re Covering This:

We recognize that data centers probably is not what you expected Hagerstown Rapid Response to be writing about. That’s not what we expected to be writing about either. But while researching the ICE detention center, we stumbled onto another story: a data center project that had been moving behind the scenes while our county commissioners knew about it, met with the developer, were involved in discussions surrounding it, and even signed NDAs about the project. We could not just ignore that. And as we began putting the pieces together, what disturbed us even more was seeing how taxpayer money, public infrastructure, tax breaks, and government decisions appeared to benefit current and former elected officials, their associates, friends, family members, and donors. Every time we take a closer look at another corner of Washington County government, we seem to uncover more questions about secrecy, conflicts, favoritism, and what increasingly looks like grift and pay-to-play.

What we have published so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We have uncovered far more than we have had time to write about yet, and at this point the hardest part has been deciding where to even start. There is much more coming very soon. We love this community and this state, and we cannot stay quiet and simply hope someone else comes along and does the work. Because one thing has become painfully clear: we cannot count on our hometown newspaper to do it for us. So when we find something the public deserves to know, we feel a responsibility to raise the alarm.

Hagerstown’s mayor and City Council met privately with data center developer Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin on December 9, 2025, according to approved meeting minutes obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request. The city’s utilities director, chief financial officer, and planning and economic development officials were there, too. Residents looking through the city’s online minutes archive would have had a difficult time finding any of this. The city has now acknowledged that the last minutes posted there were from December 2024.

That is a remarkable arrangement for a government whose decisions affect public infrastructure, development, and residents’ bills. The developer gets a meeting with elected officials and the people responsible for utilities and finances. The public gets an archive that is nearly two years behind, a vague agenda item called “Business Proposal,” and the opportunity to file a records request to learn who showed up. And when Hagerstown Rapid Response separately asked for the city’s nondisclosure agreement with this developer, the city refused to provide it or identify who signed it.

Approved in January. Obtained in October.

We filed a records request on October 5, 2026, after discovering that the December 9 meeting minutes had come before the council for approval on January 20, 2026, yet were nowhere to be found in the city’s public agenda or minutes archive. This actually led to a much larger gap: the online minutes archive contained nothing after December 17, 2024.

In an October 12 response, Decker supplied the approved minutes and confirmed the archive problem. He attributed it to the city clerk’s transition between archiving products, which had taken longer than expected, and said the minutes were anticipated to be current within two weeks. It has currently been eight days since Decker’s response, so we hope to see this corrected by next week.

The December 9 minutes had been approved for nearly nine months when we filed our request. Whatever the explanation for the backlog, residents should not have to discover that a record exists, trace its approval through another meeting, and submit an MPIA request to obtain the city’s approved account of its own proceedings. The explanation does not change the practical result: information documenting a private meeting with a developer was missing from the online minutes archive where residents would reasonably look for it.

Decker also stated that the underlying executive session minutes were exempt from public production, citing Maryland General Provisions §3-306(c)(3)(ii). The released document therefore gives us the city’s summary of the closed session, while the more detailed account remains withheld.

The same developer. The same “Project Team.” The same day.

On December 9, 2025, Diversified Capital’s CFO and three members of its development team met behind closed doors with both Washington County’s commissioners and Hagerstown’s mayor and City Council. The county meeting was the confidential presentation involving the “Project Team” that we previously documented, along with the NDAs signed by commissioners and senior officials. The newly obtained city minutes establish that the same four representatives also met privately with Hagerstown’s elected leadership and senior staff that day.

Hagerstown’s executive session ran from 2:03 p.m. to 3:37 p.m. The minutes list Mayor McIntire and all five councilmembers, Aleshire, Anderson, Bell, Burnett and Flaherty, as participating. Joining them were City Administrator Scott Nicewarner, Utilities Director Nancy Hausrath, Chief Financial Officer Michelle Hepburn, Planning and Economic Development Director Jill Thompson, and Economic Development Manager Doug Reaser. The developer had access to the entire elected city government and the officials responsible for the utilities, finances and development approvals a major project would depend on.

Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin was joined by Connor McManus of Dynamic Engineering, Zack Fritz of Sage Policy Group and Boyd Rutherford of Davis, Agnor, Rapaport and Skalny. All four also appear in the county’s record of its confidential development presentation. The same developer and the same representatives were meeting privately with both governments months before county commissioners adopted their dog-and-pony-show data center moratorium.

We also now know that Hagerstown is under an NDA with Diversified Capital. Both governments held private meetings with the developer’s representatives, and both entered confidentiality arrangements involving the company. Washington County provided a redacted copy of its NDA through an MPIA request. Hagerstown has refused to release its agreement or identify who signed it. Residents are left trying to piece together dealings that their own governments agreed to keep confidential.

The city’s minutes describe the purpose of the meeting this way:

The meeting was held to consult with counsel to obtain legal advice regarding a contract termination, to consult with staff, consultants or other individuals regarding a contract review and to consider a business proposal for a business or industrial organization to locate, expand or remain in the state.

That description supplies no project name, property address or mention of a data center. Residents reading the agenda would not have known that Diversified Capital’s CFO and members of the county’s “Project Team” were coming to City Hall. The approved minutes identifying them were then missing from the city’s online minutes archive for nearly nine months after their approval.

Officials spent a closed session with a developer and its representatives, with the city’s utilities, finance, and development leadership participating. Residents deserve to know what the developer presented, what it requested and whether those requests involved water, sewer capacity, infrastructure spending or financial assistance. The city should disclose that information and identify the proposal, rather than leave residents reconstructing its dealings with Diversified Capital ten months after the meeting.

Six weeks later, the city received a proposal to help plan for data centers

The December 9 meeting adds to questions raised in our October 16 investigation into city and county infrastructure planning. On January 22, 2026, roughly six weeks after Rubin and his team met privately with both governments, engineering firm Black & Veatch submitted a water and wastewater master plan proposal to Hagerstown. Among its proposed additional services was a task called “Data Center Owner’s Advisor,” covering assistance with developer negotiations, drinking water demand, cooling system wastewater and electrical requirements. The proposal explicitly described a role helping both Hagerstown and Washington County evaluate data center placement and long-term water and wastewater needs.

The timing gives officials another question to answer: did anything presented by Diversified Capital influence the work the city asked its engineering consultant to consider? Hagerstown’s utilities director, chief financial officer and senior development officials were all listed as attending the private meeting. Six weeks later, the city received an engineering proposal offering advice on the infrastructure demands of precisely this industry.

The county’s infrastructure work deserves scrutiny for the same reason. A September invoice from Greg Murray, whom commissioners hired through a no-bid contract in May, includes reviews of Black & Veatch engineering materials and a meeting with a Hagerstown representative. The invoice establishes that county taxpayers were paying a consultant to review the firm’s materials and meet with someone from the city while Diversified Capital pursued annexation of land tied to its data center development.

City and county officials should coordinate on water and sewer planning and residents should also be able to find out whose development plans are driving that work and who would pay for any resulting improvements. Did Diversified Capital ask either government for utility capacity, infrastructure extensions or financial assistance? Were those requests passed along to Black & Veatch or Murray? Annexation would put the property beyond the reach of the county’s data center moratorium. Before that happens, residents deserve to know what the developer has asked of their government and what serving the project could cost them. The city has had months to make that information available. Instead, residents are still chasing meeting records and asking to see an agreement their own government signed.

October 27: Millions for the Same Firm That Proposed Helping Hagerstown Plan for Data Centers

Black & Veatch, the same engineering firm that proposed helping Hagerstown and Washington County plan for data centers in January, is now listed for a $2,841,509 wastewater engineering contract on the city’s October 27 consent agenda. That is the same meeting scheduled for the Burkholder-McDade annexation hearing.

County consultant Greg Murray’s September invoice also shows taxpayers paying him to review Black & Veatch engineering materials and meet with a Hagerstown representative. The company’s work is already part of the county’s infrastructure review, and now the city is considering another multimillion-dollar contract with it while residents are still chasing records of private meetings with Diversified Capital. Before approving that spending, officials should release the development assumptions and demand projections behind the improvements and Murray’s work, including any projected data center demand and who would pay to accommodate it.

Is Hagerstown complying with Maryland’s Open Meetings Act?

Hagerstown says a change in archive software explains why its posted minutes stop in December 2024. But does that explanation satisfy Maryland’s Open Meetings Act? The law generally requires minutes to be prepared “as soon as practicable” and minutes or recordings to be posted online “to the extent practicable.” The December 9 minutes were approved in January. The city should explain why a software transition prevented it from posting an already approved document for nearly nine months, including why it could not simply upload the PDF somewhere residents could find it.

Maryland does allow live and archived audio or video streaming to serve as open session minutes, so the missing written minutes alone do not prove a violation. If the city is relying on that provision, it should point residents to the recording that served as the official minutes and identify where it disclosed who attended the private meeting, what was discussed and what happened. Residents should not have to search through hours of footage hoping to find information the city has already put in an approved document.

The city’s response also leaves a question about the closed session. Decker cited the provision allowing the detailed executive session minutes to remain sealed. But §3-306(c)(2) separately requires the next open session’s minutes to disclose the closed meeting’s time, place and purpose, the votes to close it, the legal authority, the topics discussed, the people present and any actions taken. Keeping the detailed account sealed does not excuse withholding the required public summary.

The city eventually provided a summary when a resident requested it. Where could the public find that information before October? Was it included in the next open session’s record, as the law requires? And why do the approved minutes give different grounds for closing the meeting than the agenda does? Those are questions the city should answer and the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board can examine.

This backlog covers almost two years in which residents have been trying to understand what local officials are doing to accommodate data center development. Water, sewer capacity, infrastructure spending and residents’ bills are all at issue. Diversified Capital’s representatives got a private meeting with the mayor, the entire council and the officials responsible for utilities, finances and development. Residents could not even find the approved summary in the city’s minutes archive. By the time someone obtained it through a records request, the meeting was ten months old. How are residents supposed to weigh in while decisions are still being made if they cannot find out who met with their government until months afterward?

Hagerstown Director of Communications Wes Decker previously told HRR we could not have the NDA

This meeting record follows our earlier communications with Wes Decker and the city over an NDA involving Diversified Capital. Multiple city employees had told us a city representative signed an NDA with the developer. We requested the agreement and records identifying who signed, approved, reviewed, negotiated, or was subject to it.

The response conveyed through Decker refused to provide the agreement or the related records. The city cited confidential commercial information, deliberative process protections, and confidentiality of client communications. It did not identify the signer or say that no agreement existed. We reported that refusal on October 1.

Now the approved minutes establish that Rubin and other members of the development team met privately with the mayor, five councilmembers, and senior staff. That does not establish who signed a city NDA or whether it was signed at this meeting. It gives the city even more reason to answer our original questions about its confidentiality arrangements with the developer.

Apparently, residents can learn who attended after someone files a separate request for missing minutes. Learning who agreed to keep the developer’s business confidential is still asking too much.

Hagerstown owes residents answers

The city should identify the proposal discussed with Rubin, explain whether it involved the Martin Farm development or a data center, and disclose what was presented about water, sewer, infrastructure costs, and any assistance sought from the city. It should explain the conflicting grounds in the agenda and minutes, provide the completed closing statement used at the meeting, and answer our request for the NDA and the identity of whoever signed it.

We should not have to guess what brought the same development representatives into private meetings with two governments on December 9. County officials signed confidentiality agreements associated with their presentation. City employees told us a city representative signed an NDA, but Hagerstown has refused to give us the agreement. Meanwhile, the approved minutes documenting the city meeting sat outside an online archive that had stopped at December 2024.

This is why we are publishing Missing Minutes. The people developing these projects know what they are asking government to do. The officials meeting with them know what they are being asked. Residents deserve enough information to judge those decisions before they are expected to live with the consequences.

Be at City Hall on Tuesday, October 27 at 6:45 PM

The public hearing on the Burkholder-McDade annexation is Tuesday, October 27, at 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers at Hagerstown City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. This is the hearing everyone needs to show up for. Annexation would move land tied to Diversified Capital’s data center development into a city where the county’s moratorium does not apply, and residents are still fighting to obtain basic records about the city’s dealings with the developer. Bring your neighbors, bring your questions and make sure the people making these decisions have to face the people who will live with them. If you want to speak at the public hearing, arrive early and sign in at City Hall before it begins.

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Why We’re Covering This:

We recognize that data centers probably is not what you expected Hagerstown Rapid Response to be writing about. That’s not what we expected to be writing about either. But while researching the ICE detention center, we stumbled onto another story: a data center project that had been moving behind the scenes while our county commissioners knew about it, met with the developer, were involved in discussions surrounding it, and even signed NDAs about the project. We could not just ignore that. And as we began putting the pieces together, what disturbed us even more was seeing how taxpayer money, public infrastructure, tax breaks, and government decisions appeared to benefit current and former elected officials, their associates, friends, family members, and donors. Every time we take a closer look at another corner of Washington County government, we seem to uncover more questions about secrecy, conflicts, favoritism, and what increasingly looks like grift and pay-to-play.

What we have published so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We have uncovered far more than we have had time to write about yet, and at this point the hardest part has been deciding where to even start. There is much more coming very soon. We love this community and this state, and we cannot stay quiet and simply hope someone else comes along and does the work. Because one thing has become painfully clear: we cannot count on our hometown newspaper to do it for us. So when we find something the public deserves to know, we feel a responsibility to raise the alarm.

The city identifies the item simply as “Amendment to Annexation Plan A-2026-02 (Burkholder-McDade).” No mention of Diversified Capital. No mention of a data center. No explanation that annexing this property into Hagerstown would put it outside Washington County’s one-year data center moratorium. It’s almost as though someone went out of their way to make sure residents wouldn’t recognize what was being discussed.

This would be less concerning if both Hagerstown and Washington County hadn’t already spent months making it extraordinarily difficult for residents to find out what they’ve been doing with this developer.

How We Got Here: Six Years of Data Center Recruitment, Secret Meetings, and Convenient Timing

Here’s what residents have had to piece together through public records requests, government documents, campaign finance disclosures, and archived websites:

• February 4, 2020: Washington County Business Development Director Jonathan Horowitz sent a letter to the Maryland Senate Budget and Taxation Committee supporting Senate Bill 397, legislation designed to attract data centers through tax exemptions.

• June 2024: The property at 12440 Burkholder Lane was advertised as “Ideal for Data Center.” A January 2025 listing subsequently described a proposed million-square-foot facility suitable for data centers and other industrial uses.

• May 2025: Washington County’s Department of Business and Economic Development included Diversified Capital’s $50 million Martin Farm project in its economic development presentation, projecting 300 jobs.

• August 25, 2025: Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin donated $500 to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign.

• October 12, 2025: An archived Diversified Capital profile described the company’s portfolio as including a “data center development project in Washington County, Maryland.” Diversified Capital was publicly identifying its project as a data center months before the county announced its moratorium.

• December 9, 2025: Washington County Commissioners met privately with Diversified Capital’s project team under an NDA. Participants included Rubin, former state senator Chris Shank, former lieutenant governor Boyd Rutherford, engineer Connor McManus, and Sage Policy Group’s Zack Fritz. County minutes acknowledged that public discussion would violate the NDA. That same day, Hagerstown’s Mayor and City Council held their own closed executive session to consider a business or industrial development proposal. The city has not publicly identified the project discussed.

• January 16, 2026: Washington County sent a letter supporting another tax exemption, this time for Mount Aetna Technology Park.

• February 2, 2026: Horowitz was announced as a member of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland Steering Committee, alongside representatives from Amazon, BGE, Constellation Energy, and other industry interests.

• February 3, 2026: Commissioners voted 4–0 to ratify their support for the Mount Aetna tax exemption.

• May 21, 2026: Commissioners approved a no-bid consulting contract with Greg Murray of GDMS LLC by a 3–2 vote, with Commissioner John Barr casting the deciding vote. Mayor Bill McIntire attended the meeting. Murray subsequently billed taxpayers for meeting with a Hagerstown representative and reviewing engineering materials that included documents from Black & Veatch, the firm working on Hagerstown’s water and wastewater planning.

• June 12, 2026: Cline returned Rubin’s $500 campaign contribution, nearly ten months after receiving it and six months after the confidential presentation.

• June 16, 2026: Washington County quietly posted its draft data center moratorium.

• June 30, 2026: Commissioners adopted their dog-and-pony-show moratorium. That same day, the owners of the Martin Farm property filed for annexation into Hagerstown, where the moratorium does not apply.

• August 25, 2026: Hagerstown introduced and approved Annexation Resolution A-2026-2 involving Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC and McDade Road Acquisitions LLC.

• September 2, 2026: We exposed the commissioners’ NDA meeting and its connection to Diversified Capital’s Martin Farm data center development.

• September 30, 2026: Washington County established criteria for data center development, after years of industry recruitment and months of undisclosed discussions with developers.

• October 8, 2026: We reported on a quietly held county data center workshop where FirstEnergy provided information about Diversified Capital’s plans.

• October 14, 2026: We met with Mayor McIntire and asked why Hagerstown refused to release its NDA records involving Diversified Capital. He told us the city’s legal department handled those decisions and that he didn’t know why its attorneys had withheld the records. But Communications Director Wes Decker had already told us that he was the records custodian and made the final disclosure decision.

• October 20, 2026: Hagerstown is scheduled to consider another amendment to the annexation plan. The agenda doesn’t identify Diversified Capital or mention the data center.

Good Luck Figuring Out What’s Actually on the Agenda

Unless residents already know that “Burkholder-McDade” refers to Diversified Capital’s property, they have little reason to pay attention to Tuesday’s discussion. Searching the agenda for “Diversified Capital” or “data center” produces nothing.

The supporting documents aren’t much better. One document labeled “Required Motion” includes sections for the action required, discussion, financial impact, recommendation, motion, and action dates. Every section is blank.

A separate memorandum explains that Hagerstown wants to correct the annexation plan adopted August 25 because the properties were incorrectly identified as being outside Maryland’s Priority Funding Area. That designation can affect eligibility for certain state infrastructure investments, but the city doesn’t explain whether this correction has any financial implications.

The memorandum also says city attorneys advised adopting the amended annexation plan before conducting the required public hearing. That isn’t final approval of the annexation, but it’s another reason residents should be paying attention to what officials are approving.

Two Governments, Two Closed Meetings, and an NDA Hagerstown Won’t Release

Washington County provided us with a redacted NDA involving Diversified Capital through a Maryland Public Information Act request. The county’s December 9 meeting minutes also identify the people who attended the confidential development presentation.

Hagerstown, meanwhile, refuses to release its NDA records concerning the same developer. And on the very day county commissioners met privately with Diversified Capital’s team, Hagerstown’s Mayor and City Council held their own closed session to consider a business or industrial development proposal.

We haven’t established whether both governments discussed Diversified Capital that day. But the coincidence is worth investigating, particularly when Hagerstown won’t release the records that could help answer questions about its dealings with the company.

Then there’s Mayor McIntire’s explanation for the city’s refusal. When we asked him about it on October 14, he said the city’s attorneys handled those decisions and that he didn’t know why they withheld the documents.

Except Wes Decker, Hagerstown’s own Director of Communications, had already told us that he made the final decision. The mayor’s explanation was inconsistent with what his own administration had told us just two weeks earlier. Whether McIntire was uninformed or attempting to deflect responsibility, neither explanation inspires much confidence.

And as we documented in our October 16 investigation, Hagerstown’s engineering consultant proposed helping both governments evaluate data center locations and infrastructure requirements. Washington County’s consultant subsequently reviewed engineering documents and met with a Hagerstown representative.

Both governments have plenty of explaining to do about their dealings with Diversified Capital. Instead, residents are still fighting to obtain records, identify who made decisions, and figure out what their elected officials are discussing behind closed doors.

Now Hagerstown is taking another step in the annexation process, and the developer’s name isn’t even on the agenda.

Could Data Center Infrastructure Upgrades Also Clear the Way for ICE?

The infrastructure planning also raises a question about the ICE detention center. In April, Maryland restricted Washington County from authorizing additional sewage flow from the facility beyond its existing allocation until the state approves a revised water and sewer plan. Meanwhile, county consultant Greg Murray has reviewed Black & Veatch engineering materials and met with a Hagerstown representative. Could upgrades presented as serving data centers or general development also build capacity for the ICE detention center, creating a route around the infrastructure obstacles central to Maryland’s legal fight? Residents deserve to see which projects these upgrades would serve, what capacity they would add, and whether the detention center’s needs are included.

October 27 Is the Meeting Everyone Needs to Attend

Tuesday’s October 20 work session matters, but October 27 is the much more important date. That’s when Hagerstown is scheduled to hold the public hearing on the Burkholder-McDade annexation. This is the opportunity for residents to show up, speak out, and make it clear that they are paying attention to what city officials are doing with Diversified Capital’s property.

After years of data center recruitment, confidential meetings, NDAs, and a county moratorium that conveniently doesn’t apply within Hagerstown, there is absolutely no reason residents should sit this one out. We need everyone who can possibly attend to be there on October 27, whether you live in Hagerstown or elsewhere in Washington County. Decisions about a development of this scale can affect far more people than those living within city limits, and officials need to hear from the community before the annexation proceeds any further.

The October 20 work session begins at 4 p.m. at City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. Also, mark October 27 on your calendar now. If you can attend only one meeting, make it that one.

Leave a comment

Why We’re Covering This:

We recognize that data centers probably is not what you expected Hagerstown Rapid Response to be writing about. That’s not what we expected to be writing about either. But while researching the ICE detention center, we stumbled onto another story: a data center project that had been moving behind the scenes while our county commissioners knew about it, met with the developer, were involved in discussions surrounding it, and even signed NDAs about the project. We could not just ignore that. And as we began putting the pieces together, what disturbed us even more was seeing how taxpayer money, public infrastructure, tax breaks, and government decisions appeared to benefit current and former elected officials, their associates, friends, family members, and donors. Every time we take a closer look at another corner of Washington County government, we seem to uncover more questions about secrecy, conflicts, favoritism, and what increasingly looks like grift and pay-to-play.

What we have published so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We have uncovered far more than we have had time to write about yet, and at this point the hardest part has been deciding where to even start. There is much more coming very soon. We love this community and this state, and we cannot stay quiet and simply hope someone else comes along and does the work. Because one thing has become painfully clear: we cannot count on our hometown newspaper to do it for us. So when we find something the public deserves to know, we feel a responsibility to raise the alarm.

A September 18, 2026 invoice shows Murray billing the county $6,826.25 for 63.5 hours of work, including eight water progress meetings, a meeting with a City of Hagerstown representative, discussions with the Maryland Department of the Environment and environmental law firm AquaLaw, and reviews of engineering materials from HDR and Black & Veatch. Those are the kinds of activities involved in determining where water and sewer capacity exists, where it falls short, and what improvements would be needed to support additional development.

The contract approved by the commissioners deserves closer attention because Murray’s responsibilities extend beyond documenting existing water and sewer deficiencies. His assignment includes evaluating future infrastructure needs, identifying opportunities for regional improvements, considering agreements with neighboring municipalities, and balancing water and sewer availability against Washington County’s economic development objectives.

That last responsibility is especially important. A data center developer cannot simply purchase industrial land and assume the required infrastructure will materialize. Large developments need adequate electricity, reliable water service where required by the cooling design, and sufficient wastewater capacity. Identifying existing limitations and recommending improvements is part of determining whether those developments can proceed and what they would cost.

Greg Murray’s Contract Specifically Includes Infrastructure for Economic Development

The commissioners approved Murray’s contract on May 21 by a 3–2 vote, with Commissioner John Barr casting the deciding vote. As Tri-State Alert reported, the decision raised concerns about the lack of competitive bidding and the relationship between Murray and Commissioner Jeff Cline.

The commissioners also agreed to pay Murray considerably more than his stated $70 hourly rate. His September 18 invoice reveals that taxpayers were billed $107.50 per hour, including an additional $37.50 hourly charge described as a “Social Security offset.” That represents a 53.6% increase over his standard rate. The supplement was authorized in the contract, subject to an annual payment threshold of $72,000. On this single invoice, the additional charge cost taxpayers $2,381.25. Why did commissioners agree to pay their handpicked, no-bid consultant an additional 53.6% on top of his standard rate?

The contract approved by the commissioners deserves closer attention because Murray’s responsibilities extend beyond documenting existing water and sewer deficiencies. His assignment includes evaluating future infrastructure needs, identifying opportunities for regional improvements, considering agreements with neighboring municipalities, and balancing water and sewer availability against Washington County’s economic development objectives.

That last responsibility is especially important. A data center developer cannot simply purchase industrial land and assume the required infrastructure will materialize. Large developments need adequate electricity, reliable water service where required by the cooling design, and sufficient wastewater capacity. Identifying existing limitations and recommending improvements is part of determining whether those developments can proceed and what they would cost.

Murray’s contract authorizes exactly the kind of infrastructure evaluation that could help determine where data centers can be accommodated and what changes would be necessary to serve them. Washington County has legitimate infrastructure problems affecting existing residents and businesses, but that makes the development assumptions underlying Murray’s work critically important. If county officials are paying him to evaluate future economic development needs, residents should know which developments are being considered and whether any proposed improvements would primarily benefit private developers.

Hagerstown’s Engineering Consultant Explicitly Proposed Preparing Both Governments for Data Centers

The most revealing document is Black & Veatch’s Water and Wastewater Master Plan proposal, submitted to Hagerstown on January 22, 2026.

Under Additional Services, the engineering firm proposed Task 10: Data Center Owner’s Advisor, describing work that would help municipalities negotiate with prospective data centers, evaluate drinking-water needs, assess contaminants from cooling-system wastewater, and understand electricity requirements and site design.

The proposal then explicitly states:

“This will support the City and Washington County in making informed decisions on data center placement and impacts on long term water and wastewater sustainability.”

This is an important statement about the type of planning being contemplated. The proposal wasn’t simply about maintaining aging pipes or replacing pumps. Black & Veatch was offering to help Hagerstown and Washington County evaluate where data centers should be located and how their infrastructure demands could be managed.

Black & Veatch even identified proposed personnel for the task, including senior electrical engineer Roland Kamdem, distribution system specialists Ali Nakhli, Kaneel Shah and Kevin Laptos, project manager Betsy Baldwin, and other engineering and modeling personnel.

The advisory task was proposed as an additional service, and we have not confirmed that Hagerstown authorized or purchased it. We also have not established who requested Washington County’s inclusion. But its presence in the proposal is particularly relevant because Black & Veatch was already contemplating a data center planning role involving both governments months before Washington County adopted its data center moratorium.

The company also has substantial experience serving private data center developers. Its own project portfolio describes engineering two 300-megawatt substations for a confidential hyperscale data center developer, and its data center services cover electrical infrastructure, water treatment, permitting, and campus development.

Why Was Murray Reviewing Black & Veatch’s Engineering Materials?

Murray’s September invoice lists 25 hours reviewing documents that include materials from Black & Veatch and HDR, a fracture trace analysis, water and sewer plans, and county planning documents. The invoice does not identify the titles or dates of the specific engineering reports he reviewed.

That omission matters. Black & Veatch has been working on Hagerstown’s water and wastewater infrastructure planning, and its January proposal included hydraulic modeling, facility evaluations, capital improvements planning, and proposed investigations into an additional drinking-water intake or treatment plant.

If Murray was reviewing Black & Veatch’s Hagerstown infrastructure assessments, we need to know what information was being shared, whether it included projected industrial demand, and whether any recommendations concerned locations being considered for data centers.

His invoice also lists a one-hour meeting with a Hagerstown representative. We do not know who attended or what was discussed, but Murray billed Washington County taxpayers for that meeting while working on the county’s Utility Adequacy Report.

That is particularly interesting because Mayor Bill McIntire attended the May 21 county commissioners’ meeting when Murray’s contract was approved. The mayor was paying attention to the county’s infrastructure planning, and the county subsequently paid its consultant to meet with someone from the city.

Mayor McIntire told us on October 14 that Hagerstown and Washington County do not communicate much. That may describe the relationship between their elected officials, but the public records show that utility coordination exists. More importantly, they show why the substance of that coordination matters much more than how frequently the two governments talk.

Diversified Capital’s Burkholder Lane Project Makes This Particularly Important

Consider what has been happening with Diversified Capital.

The developer is pursuing the annexation of approximately 171.88 acres along Burkholder Lane and McDade Road into Hagerstown. The property includes land associated with the Martin Farm development, previously marketed for data center use. In a September 19 statement reported by Tri-State Alert, Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin acknowledged that a data center was among the possible uses, although he said no final development decisions had been made.

The timing is important. On June 30, Washington County commissioners adopted a one-year moratorium on new data center applications. That same day, an annexation petition was filed involving the Burkholder Lane and McDade Road properties. The county subsequently confirmed that its moratorium does not apply inside Hagerstown or the other incorporated municipalities.

That means a property being considered for data center development is pursuing annexation into a jurisdiction where the county’s moratorium would not apply. But changing jurisdiction does not eliminate the need for sufficient water, sewer, or electrical infrastructure.

During Hagerstown’s August 18 work session, officials discussed the Burkholder Lane and McDade Road annexation and the city’s ability to provide infrastructure for future development. According to LocalNews1’s reporting, city staff acknowledged that the area had previously been the subject of negotiations between Hagerstown and Washington County concerning services for areas designated for economic development.

So we have a development area that has already been the subject of city-county utility negotiations, a developer considering a data center there, a city engineering consultant that proposed advising both governments about data center placement, and a county consultant who is reviewing engineering materials and meeting with Hagerstown representatives.

The unanswered question is whether Murray’s work is identifying infrastructure improvements that could help make properties such as Martin Farm viable for data center development. If the answer is yes, the next questions are how much those improvements would cost, who would pay for them, and whether ordinary utility customers would be expected to absorb any of the expense.

Before Murray Was Hired, Developer Money, Data Center Marketing, and a Secret Meeting Were Already Part of the Story

The concerns about Murray’s assignment become more significant when we examine what county officials were doing before he was hired. The timeline connecting Diversified Capital, Commissioner Jeff Cline, Washington County’s confidential development discussions, and the state’s data center industry began months before Murray received his contract.

On August 25, 2025, Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin contributed $500 to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign. Former Maryland State Senator Chris Shank contributed another $250 that same day. As we previously documented, both men would appear before Cline and the other commissioners just over three months later as members of a confidential development team.

By October 12, 2025, Diversified Capital was publicly advertising its involvement in a Washington County data center development project. An archived version of the company’s Maryland Tech Council profile described its investment portfolio as including a data center development project in Washington County, Maryland. We reported on this October 11, 2026.

The company’s intentions were not particularly difficult to uncover. Diversified Capital had already appeared in Washington County Planning Commission proceedings concerning Martin Farm in 2023. By June 2024, the property at 12440 Burkholder Lane was being marketed as “Ideal for Data Center”, and the county’s economic development materials were promoting industrial development opportunities in the same area.

Then came December 9, 2025.

On that date, all five Washington County Commissioners participated in a closed session involving a confidential development presentation. County Administrator Michelle Gordon and Business Development Director Jonathan Horowitz were also among the participants listed in the county’s official meeting minutes.

The outside development team included Moshe Rubin of Diversified Capital and Chris Shank, the same two men who had donated to Jeff Cline’s campaign on August 25. Also participating were former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Boyd Rutherford, identified as the project’s land-use attorney; Connor McManus of Dynamic Engineering, which had already worked on Diversified Capital’s Martin Farm project; and Zack Fritz of Sage Policy Group, an economic consulting firm that had been promoting data center development in Maryland.

The county’s minutes explicitly state that public discussion of the presentation would violate an NDA and reveal confidential business information. The public was excluded from the meeting, and the specific project presented has still not been publicly identified.

We subsequently obtained a redacted copy of Washington County’s NDA through a Maryland Public Information Act request, confirming the existence of the county’s confidentiality arrangement. The county’s own records identify the commissioners and senior officials involved, along with the development representatives who participated in the closed session.

The campaign contributions were still sitting in Cline’s campaign account when the December meeting occurred. He did not return Rubin’s $500 and Shank’s $250 until June 12, 2026, more than nine months after receiving them and approximately six months after meeting privately with both men. His campaign reported the same explanation for each refund: “Candidate decided to decline contribution.”

The contributions and meeting do not establish that Cline took an official action in exchange for campaign money. But the timing, the developer’s publicly advertised data center involvement, and the confidential presentation warrant answers about what the commissioners knew and when they knew it.

Then Washington County’s Business Development Director Joined Maryland’s Data Center Alliance Leadership

The next development came on February 2, 2026, less than two months after the confidential meeting.

The Maryland Tech Council announced that Washington County Business Development Director Jonathan Horowitz had joined the Steering Committee of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland.

Horowitz was not simply attending a conference about data centers. He was named to the leadership committee of an organization created to advance Maryland’s data center industry, shape public policy, and promote the industry’s economic benefits.

The committee includes representatives from Amazon, BGE, Constellation Energy, Rowan Digital Infrastructure, Turner Construction, Catellus Development Corporation, the Maryland Department of Commerce, and the Maryland Economic Development Corporation, among others.

This is the same Jonathan Horowitz who was present during Washington County’s December 9 confidential meeting involving Diversified Capital’s executive and development team. It is also the same county official who had supported Senate Bill 397 in 2020, legislation offering substantial tax exemptions intended to attract data centers to Maryland.

As we previously reported, Horowitz’s appointment placed Washington County’s economic development leadership inside an organization actively promoting the industry that county commissioners would later claim needed to be paused for further study.

The chronology is difficult to overlook. Rubin and Shank donated to Cline in August. By October, Diversified Capital was publicly identifying a Washington County data center development project. In December, the commissioners and senior officials participated in a confidential presentation with those same individuals. In January, Black & Veatch proposed helping both governments make decisions about data center placement. In February, Horowitz’s statewide industry leadership role was announced. In May, the commissioners hired Murray to evaluate infrastructure and economic development needs. In June, they adopted a data center moratorium that does not apply to Hagerstown.

The commissioners should explain what they knew about Diversified Capital’s data center plans during that period, whether those plans influenced the county’s infrastructure priorities, and whether Murray has been evaluating the utility requirements of developments already under consideration.

Hagerstown Is Withholding Records About Its Dealings With Diversified Capital

While these infrastructure studies and annexation proceedings move forward, Hagerstown is refusing to provide records that could help residents understand its relationship with Diversified Capital.

As we previously reported, multiple city employees told us that a Hagerstown representative signed a nondisclosure agreement with Diversified Capital. We filed a Maryland Public Information Act request seeking the agreement and related records, including the identities of city officials involved in negotiating, approving, or signing it.

Hagerstown refused to provide the requested records. The city cited exemptions involving confidential commercial information, deliberative-process privilege, and attorney-client communications. We have since escalated the dispute to Maryland’s Public Information Act Ombudsman for mediation.

What makes Hagerstown’s refusal particularly troubling is that Washington County already provided us with a redacted NDA involving Diversified Capital through a separate MPIA request. County officials participated in a confidential development presentation involving people connected to the company, and the county’s meeting minutes identify the attendees. Hagerstown, meanwhile, will not release the NDA records we requested concerning the same developer.

On October 14, we met with Hagerstown Mayor Bill McIntire and specifically asked why the city refused to provide the records. McIntire told us that the city’s legal department handles those matters and that he did not know why its attorneys had decided not to release them.

The mayor may not personally review every MPIA determination, but this request concerns a developer seeking annexation of nearly 172 acres into his city, potentially opening the door to a data center project beyond the reach of Washington County’s moratorium. We would expect the city’s elected leadership to understand why information about such a consequential development matter is being withheld from residents.

Even more confusing is that Mayor McIntire blamed the attorneys for the NDA being withheld from us. But we know that just is not true because just two weeks ago, Hagerstown Director of Communications, Wes Decker, explained to us that the decision to allow us to access this nondisclosure between the city and Diversified Capital was his.

There is another detail worth investigating. On December 9, 2025, the same day Washington County’s commissioners participated in the confidential development presentation, Hagerstown’s Mayor and City Council also held a closed executive session to consider a proposal involving a business or industrial organization locating, expanding, or remaining in Maryland.

That brings us back to Murray’s work. Hagerstown’s engineering consultant proposed helping both governments evaluate data center placement. Washington County’s consultant is reviewing engineering documents and meeting with Hagerstown officials. Diversified Capital is pursuing annexation into a city where the county’s moratorium does not apply. And both governments have questions to answer about their confidential dealings with the developer.

If officials have been discussing infrastructure needed to accommodate a potential data center at Martin Farm, residents should be able to examine those discussions before decisions are made that could affect public utilities, development patterns, and future costs.

The Commissioners Should Explain Exactly What Murray Is Preparing the County For

The county’s water and sewer problems are not imaginary. Existing infrastructure needs maintenance and expansion, and officials have a responsibility to plan for future demand. But that responsibility also requires being transparent about whose demand is driving expensive infrastructure decisions.

Hagerstown City Council member Kristin Aleshire has previously warned about the county’s history of building wastewater infrastructure in anticipation of development that failed to materialize. As Tri-State Alert reported in May, the earlier I-81 corridor sewer project ultimately left the county covering approximately $54 million in debt over two decades.

Now Washington County has hired another consultant to evaluate infrastructure and future economic development needs, while major industrial developers are pursuing projects that could require substantial utility capacity.

Residents deserve to know whether Murray’s evaluations include projected data center demand, whether his recommendations identify infrastructure improvements that would accommodate those projects, and whether his discussions with Hagerstown concern developments that could move forward despite the county’s moratorium. They also deserve to know what confidentiality agreements exist between Hagerstown and Diversified Capital, who authorized those agreements, and whether discussions with the developer concerned infrastructure that Murray and Black & Veatch have been studying.

We intend to pursue the engineering reports Murray reviewed, his communications with Hagerstown, his meeting records, and the underlying assumptions used in his Utility Adequacy Report. We are also pursuing mediation over Hagerstown’s refusal to release the requested NDA records.

Washington County commissioners have told residents they need time to study data centers. They should explain whether, during that supposed pause, their own consultant is helping determine what infrastructure would be needed to build them. Hagerstown officials, meanwhile, should explain what they have discussed or agreed to with the developer seeking to move land into their jurisdiction.

Residents have already uncovered campaign donations, confidential development meetings, engineering proposals explicitly addressing data centers, and a county business development director serving on a statewide data center industry committee. Now they are paying for another consultant to study the infrastructure that could determine where those projects can be built.

The commissioners owe taxpayers a clear explanation of what they are paying Greg Murray to do, which development projects are being considered in his work, and whether public infrastructure planning is helping prepare Washington County and Hagerstown for data centers while residents are being told the county has put them on hold.

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We asked that question four times between October 8 and October 12. We sent it to the personal email address he had already used to respond, then added his official Senate address in case our follow-ups had somehow escaped his attention. We requested an answer by October 13. As of publication on October 14, Corderman has not answered.

Twelve Questions Got Answers. Diversified Capital Got Silence.

Our original inquiry went out October 6. Corderman asked for our deadline the following day and supplied his answers October 8. Later that day, we thanked him and asked:

Have you ever had any communications, meetings, or other contact with Moshe Rubin, Diversified Capital, any of its subsidiaries or affiliated entities, or anyone representing them, whether in your official, campaign, business, or personal capacity?

We did not ask him to produce years of records or reconstruct every conversation of his political career. We asked whether contact had occurred. That includes contact through his office, campaign, business, or personal dealings, because residents deserve an answer that does not depend on which email account or phone someone happened to use.

After receiving no response, we repeated the question October 9 and October 11. On October 12, we sent it again to both email addresses and included an unanswered follow-up asking him to clarify his position on the ICE detention center. He had been able to promptly respond to our original list of twelve questions, but this very simple follow-up remains unanswered

Former State Senator and Lobbyist Chris Shank Connects Corderman’s Campaign to the Developer’s Project Team

This question matters because Corderman has received campaign contributions from former Maryland State Senator Chris Shank and his consulting company. Shank has also appeared directly alongside Diversified Capital representatives in the development activity we have been investigating.

The campaign contribution records we reviewed, reported through the Maryland State Board of Elections’ campaign finance system, list $100 from Christopher Shank on January 4, 2021; $250 from Christopher Shank on October 9, 2024; and $250 from C Shank Consulting LLC on May 14, 2026. That is $600 from Shank and his consulting company to Corderman’s campaign.

Shank previously represented Washington County in the Maryland Senate and held senior positions in Governor Larry Hogan’s administration. As we reported from Washington County’s closed-session records, the county identified Shank as part of the “Project Team” that appeared at the confidential December 9, 2025 presentation alongside Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin. Shank is therefore someone with a documented connection to both Corderman’s campaign and the developer’s dealings with local government. As we reported yesterday, Shank also signed paperwork as a witness to Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin’s execution of annexation paperwork for a Diversified Capital subsidiary on August 20, 2026.

These examples give us a concrete reason to ask what Corderman knows about Diversified Capital or whether he has spoken with its representatives. Has Shank discussed the company or its proposed development with him? Has Corderman met Rubin? Has anyone approached his office about legislation, infrastructure, or other government action affecting the developer? His silence leaves those questions open.

Diversified Capital is behind the Martin Farm development at 12440 Burkholder Lane, a property marketed for data center use and now seeking annexation into Hagerstown. We have also reported on Hagerstown’s refusal to release records concerning an NDA with the company. With private presentations, confidentiality agreements, and politically connected people involved, asking a state senator whether he has had contact with the developer should hardly require four emails.

The Original Questions We Sent Corderman

We will publish Corderman’s responses to our original questions in a follow-up post soon, along with our examination of those answers. For now, readers should see the questions he was willing to answer before we mentioned Diversified Capital:

1. Will you release all communications between your office and DHS concerning the ICE detention center, including the talking points they provided you, and your responses?

2. Did you request the DHS talking points about the proposed Williamsport detention center, or did DHS approach you? Who contacted you, when, and what did they ask you to do?

3. Did you use those talking points in public statements, constituent responses, or conversations with other elected officials? What did you independently verify before passing along DHS’s claims?

4. Do you support opening the Williamsport detention center? If your support is conditional, what specific requirements must DHS meet, and what would cause you to oppose it?

5. When did you first learn that DHS was considering this property, and when did you inform your constituents? Did you discuss the project with county officials, the property owner, or prospective contractors before the purchase became public?

6. Who asked you to introduce SB 193’s tax exemptions for Mount Aetna Technology Park? Which property owners, developers, lobbyists, or organizations helped draft it or met with you about it? Will you release those communications?

7. How was Gordon’s selected as one of the few approved vendors at Meritus Park?

8. Were data centers discussed as a potential use of Mount Aetna Technology Park while you were developing SB 193? If so, why weren’t those plans clearly explained to the public when you promoted the tax breaks?

9. Will you support requiring data center developers to pay the full cost of the electricity, water, sewer, and other infrastructure their projects require? What specific protections would you put in law to keep those costs off household bills?

10. Who requested the stadium property tax exemption enacted through SB 596? What role did Greg Snook or the Hagerstown Multi-Use Sports and Events Facility, Inc. have in developing the legislation?

11. Why did you support giving Hagerstown Multi-Use Sports and Events Facility, Inc. a permanent property tax exemption without requiring payments that fully replace the lost revenue, and who do you expect to make up the difference?

12. How much revenue will Hagerstown and Washington County lose from the stadium exemption, and how much will a payment in lieu of taxes actually replace? If there is a shortfall, who pays for it?

    Our elected officials have developers to keep them informed. You have us. Share this post to help us get these investigations in front of more residents, especially while Washington County makes us pay to get public records. As of last Thursday, Assistant County Attorney Victor Scarpelli was demanding $580 for a simple MPIA request for emails. Feel free to ask him why getting answers about our elected officials comes with that price tag: vscarpelli@washco-md.net.

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We Are Still Waiting for an Answer

Corderman’s decision to stop responding raises further questions about his contact with Diversified Capital and the people working on its development projects. We are still asking him to explain that contact, if any, and we will report his answer if he provides one.

He found time to answer twelve questions and lecture us about honesty. After four follow-ups, residents still cannot get an answer about whether their state senator has spoken with a developer whose project team includes one of his campaign donors. Corderman wanted us to report fairly and accurately. The unanswered emails are part of that record, too.

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The Burkholder-McDade annexation petition gives us another piece of this story. Diversified Capital is pursuing annexation through two subsidiaries: Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC and McDade Road Acquisitions LLC. They are asking Hagerstown to bring approximately 171.885 acres on Burkholder Lane and McDade Road into the City’s boundaries and give the land Industrial Mixed Use zoning. Both parcels are currently outside Hagerstown’s incorporated city limits. This is the developer’s formal application to bring them into the City, where Hagerstown would control their zoning and Washington County’s data center moratorium would no longer apply.

Hagerstown has already taken a step toward that outcome. On August 25, 2026, the Mayor and City Council approved the annexation plan, but final approval of the annexation itself is still pending. The approved plan describes the proposed zoning, conditions for water service, responsibility for infrastructure costs, and municipal services the properties would receive if annexed. The August 25 passage and effective dates printed on that document refer to approval of the plan. They do not mean the land has already become part of Hagerstown.

The City’s public notice schedules the annexation hearing for Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 7 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, 1 East Franklin Street. It says the annexation resolution was introduced on August 25 and that annexation and the proposed zoning changes would become effective 45 days after approval of the annexation. Residents still have an opportunity to question this proposal before the City makes its final decision.

On June 30, 2026, Patrick and Denise Moler sold approximately 23.12 acres at 12660 McDade Road to McDade Road Acquisitions LLC, a subsidiary of Diversified Capital. That was the same day the Commissioners passed their sham data center moratorium. The petition expressly identifies McDade Road Acquisitions LLC as an affiliate of Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC, another Diversified Capital subsidiary, and includes the newly acquired Moler property in the annexation request. The original petition was dated June 24, with its legal description prepared earlier in June. By the time the Commissioners announced their pause, the annexation paperwork was already being assembled and Diversified Capital was acquiring adjoining land through its subsidiary.

On the petition’s last page, Diversified Capital CFO Moshe Rubin signed for the company’s subsidiary, McDade Road Acquisitions LLC, on August 20, 2026, with Chris Shank signing as his witness. Rubin was joining and adopting the petition’s terms, conditions, and exhibits on behalf of the subsidiary that had purchased the Molers’ property. The former state senator, Chris Shank, who donated to Cline alongside Rubin and appeared with him on the confidential County project team in which everyone part of the meeting is bound by an NDA, was now witnessing Rubin’s execution of annexation paperwork for a Diversified Capital subsidiary. Commisioner Cline had returned their money, but both men were still involved in advancing the development effort.

City officials were also meeting privately with Diversified Capital months before this annexation request. On December 9, 2025, the same day Rubin and the project team appeared before the County Commissioners, Hagerstown’s own minutes place Rubin in a closed meeting with the Mayor, City Council, and senior City staff. Connor McManus, Zack Fritz, and Boyd Rutherford also attended. As we previously reported, the City subsequently refused to provide the NDA and related records we requested concerning Diversified Capital. Residents are being asked to evaluate this annexation while the City continues withholding records about its dealings with the developer.

The County’s sham data center moratorium does not apply inside Hagerstown or any other incorporated municipality in Washington County. That gives the Commissioners a convenient talking point before the November election: they paused data centers. Meanwhile, a data center developer they met with behind closed doors, and with whom they signed a nondisclosure agreement, is pursuing annexation into a jurisdiction outside that pause. Apparently, residents are supposed to be reassured by the moratorium without looking too closely at where it applies.

Water and sewer extensions were already part of Diversified Capital’s Burkholder development plans in 2023. The June 5, 2023 Washington County Planning Commission minutes and a proposed one-million-square-foot warehouse at 12440 Burkholder Lane, with Connor McManus of Dynamic Engineering present. The minutes state: “Existing water and sewer services are currently available and will be extended to the site.” Plans to extend utilities to this property were in the County’s own records more than two years before the campaign contributions and confidential meetings, and three years before the Commissioners announced their sham data center moratorium.

The water provision in the annexation paperwork requires a distinction the City should make clear to residents. The Burkholder parcel is outside Hagerstown’s city limits but inside its Medium Range Growth Area. The McDade parcel is outside both. The growth area is a separate planning boundary used to guide future development and utility service; being inside it does not make a property part of the incorporated City. The approved annexation plan says City water lines would be extended to the Burkholder parcel as part of development following annexation. McDade would not receive City water until it is included in the growth area.

Condition 4 of the petition says the petitioner is not requesting City water for McDade “unless and until” that parcel is added to the growth area. That leaves a future water request open for the land Diversified Capital’s subsidiary bought from the Molers. LocalNews1 reported that City staff anticipated including annexed properties in the growth area through a future comprehensive-plan update. What development and water demand were officials anticipating when they discussed changing that boundary?

The survey exhibits show streams, wetland buffers, a 100-year floodplain and an existing forest conservation easement. They also identify 92.877 acres of remaining Burkholder land outside this annexation. The current request therefore covers only part of the larger Burkholder holding, together with the McDade property and a small road right-of-way. Any development proposal will need to account for those environmental constraints, and officials should explain whether additional development or annexation of the remaining land has been discussed.

Former Maryland State Senator and lobbyist Chris Shank should explain what work he is doing for Diversified Capital or its subsidiaries, whom he represents and whether he is being paid. Cline should explain why he accepted both campaign contributions on the same day and then returned both on the same day, nearly ten months after accepting the money and six months after signing an NDA and meeting privately with the donors. We keep hearing that the Commissioners have not approved a data center. Meanwhile, Diversified Capital’s subsidiaries are applying to move their land into Hagerstown and arguing that the Commissioners’ approval of the proposed City zoning is unnecessary. That makes the Commissioners’ role in everything leading up to a final development proposal more relevant, and their insistence that they have never approved one a remarkably incomplete answer.

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In a June follow-up, tenants described leaking roofs, broken doors, limited heating, and overflowing septic tanks while paying more than $1,000 a month in cash without leases. Honorio and Celia Moreno lived there with their seven- and three-year-old sons. Celia told the reporter: “I felt bad for the kids, they did not have anywhere to be that did not smell bad.” Children were living with overflowing sewage while someone came around to collect the rent. When the reporter called the number tenants supplied for that collector, the man who answered refused to identify himself and directed questions to Diversified Capital. Collecting rent under those conditions is precisely the kind of conduct that earns a landlord the name “slumlord.”

The May investigation reported that numerous requests for comment from President Joseph Rosenbaum and CFO Moshe Rubin went unanswered. Neither responded to the reporter’s questions about the illegal apartments. The rent collector directed questions to the company, and its leadership left those questions unanswered. Residents deserve to know that history when the same company asks another community to trust its development promises.

On the very day the May investigation appeared, Washington County Director of Business and Economic Development Jonathan Horowitz was promoting Diversified Capital’s Martin Farm project in his May 7 presentation: $50 million, one million square feet, and 300 estimated jobs. The property had already been marketed as “Ideal for Data Center”. In New Jersey, reporters were asking about unsafe apartments and displaced families. In Washington County, the company was getting the economic development sales treatment. Apparently, a $50 million investment figure makes for a much nicer presentation than children living beside an overflowing septic tank.

Tenants said they had received unexplained text messages ordering them to leave before the fire. By June, tenant Natividad Flores and the Moreno family had found temporary rentals but were still seeking permanent housing and said they had no opportunity to seek restitution from their former landlords. Meanwhile, Diversified Capital told the Asbury Park Press in July that the fire had not delayed its plans to replace the structures with nine new homes. Its spokesperson said the company believed the apartments were legal when it bought the property, a claim township officials disputed. The families were still trying to find somewhere decent to live. The developer was moving on to its next project.

Here in Washington County, former state senator and former lobbyist Chris Shank’s role deserves a closer look. As our earlier reporting details, Shank now advises clients on workforce development, technology, and economic development. On August 25, 2025, Shank and Rubin both contributed to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign. By December 9, both were appearing before county officials as members of a confidential development “Project Team.” The county’s minutes name them and explain that public discussion would violate an NDA. Two donations on the same date might ordinarily mean little. Those donors subsequently turning up together to pitch a confidential development project to the recipient and his fellow commissioners makes the relationship worth investigating. Residents deserve to know who hired Shank, who is paying him now, what he was hired to do, and which officials he has contacted about Diversified Capital’s Burkholder Lane plans.

Then, on June 12, 2026, Cline’s campaign returned Rubin’s $500 and Shank’s $250 on the same day, nearly ten months after accepting them. Both refunds carried the same explanation: “Candidate decided to decline contribution.” Cline had retained their money through the December meeting and for approximately six months afterward. As we previously reported, those refunds came just six days before we published the county’s proposed data center moratorium. The simultaneous refunds deserve considerably more explanation than a campaign filing saying Cline changed his mind, especially as the county was preparing its moratorium performance and acting as though data centers were something it needed time to learn about.

It is hard to believe that Horowitz, Shank, and the commissioners were promoting a $50 million project, meeting privately with its representatives, and signing NDAs without investigating Diversified Capital. Cline and the other Washington County leaders are putting the community at risk by helping advance a developer whose record includes collecting rent from families living in five unsafe, illegal apartments. If this company could not operate above board when children were living with overflowing sewage, residents have every reason to distrust its promises about a $50 million development.

Somehow, we are supposed to believe Diversified Capital will suddenly operate ethically and legally when the stakes include our water supply, environmental conditions, public infrastructure, and household utility bills. A bigger project means bigger consequences for the people who have to live with it. Cline and the other county leaders are asking residents to trust a developer whose record gives us every reason to demand scrutiny. Promises of investment and jobs do not excuse that record, and they will not protect us if the company cuts corners on environmental safeguards or leaves the public paying for its infrastructure demands.

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Why We’re Covering This:

We recognize that data centers probably is not what you expected Hagerstown Rapid Response to be writing about. That’s not what we expected to be writing about either. But while researching the ICE detention center, we stumbled onto another story: a data center project that had been moving behind the scenes while our county commissioners knew about it, met with the developer, were involved in discussions surrounding it, and even signed NDAs about the project. We could not just ignore that. And as we began putting the pieces together, what disturbed us even more was seeing how taxpayer money, public infrastructure, tax breaks, and government decisions appeared to benefit current and former elected officials, their associates, friends, family members, and donors. Every time we take a closer look at another corner of Washington County government, we seem to uncover more questions about secrecy, conflicts, favoritism, and what increasingly looks like grift and pay-to-play.

What we have published so far is only the tip of the iceberg. We have uncovered far more than we have had time to write about yet, and at this point the hardest part has been deciding where to even start. There is much more coming very soon. We love this community and this state, and we cannot stay quiet and simply hope someone else comes along and does the work. Because one thing has become painfully clear: we cannot count on our hometown newspaper to do it for us. So when we find something the public deserves to know, we feel a responsibility to raise the alarm.

In his May 7, 2025 business development presentation, Washington County Business Development Director Jonathan Horowitz boasted that Diversified Capital’s Martin Farm development would bring $50 million in investment and 300 jobs. The presentation discussed the million-square-foot project but did not identify a tenant, explain who would employ those 300 people, or say when the jobs would materialize. Meanwhile, the property was being marketed as “Ideal for Data Center.“ Apparently, the county knew enough to advertise the investment and jobs, but residents were left to figure out what might actually be built there.

What makes this particularly hard to swallow is that Horowitz’s own contact information appeared in marketing materials for the property, including his office and cell numbers, as we documented in our original investigation. The Maryland property listing identifies him as the Washington County business development contact. This was the same official giving the presentation about the project’s economic benefits. Are we really supposed to believe the property’s data center marketing escaped the attention of the person prospective developers were being told to call?

The county had already been reviewing Diversified Capital’s plans for two years. Its June 5, 2023 Planning Commission minutes describe a proposed million-square-foot warehouse at 12440 Burkholder Lane and plans to extend water and sewer service to the site. The March 2023 concept plan identifies the City of Hagerstown as the utility provider. Even the industrial zoning was established long before that: county records from 2015 identify the property as Planned Industrial.

On August 25, 2025, Moshe Rubin, CFO of Diversified Capital, contributed $500 to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign. Chris Shank contributed $250 that same day. By October, Diversified Capital was publicly promoting its data center development project in Washington County, Maryland. Then, on December 9, 2025, Rubin and Shank were together again, this time as members of the “Project Team” in a closed-door county meeting covered by an NDA. Horowitz, all five commissioners, County Administrator Michelle Gordon, and county attorneys were listed among the closed-session attendees, along with former Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, Dynamic Engineering’s Connor McManus, and Sage Policy Group’s Zack Fritz. The county said a public discussion of the business presentation would violate the NDA. Residents still have not been told exactly what was presented.

Former state Senator Chris Shank’s involvement deserves considerably more attention.

Chris Shank is a former lobbyist and is currently “advising clients in workforce development, technology, and economic development.” And Shank increasingly appears to be working with Rubin to help make the Burkholder Lane data center a reality. Two people contributing to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s Campaign on the same day could ordinarily be a coincidence. But those same two people later appearing before the county as members of a confidential development “Project Team” in which the county officials all had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, gives us a reason to ask more questions. Who was and still is paying Shank, what was he hired to do, and which officials had he spoken with about Diversified Capital’s plans?

Then, on June 12, 2026, nearly ten months after accepting the money, Commissioner Jeff Cline returned both contributions on the same day. His campaign gave the same explanation for Rubin’s $500 and Shank’s $250: “Candidate decided to decline contribution.” Cline had kept their money through the December meeting and for roughly six months afterward. As we previously reported, the refunds came just six days before we published the county’s proposed data center moratorium. What changed? Why did both donations suddenly become unwelcome just as the county was preparing its dog-and-pony-show moratorium and acting as though data centers were something it needed time to learn about? Cline owes residents an explanation beyond a campaign filing saying he changed his mind.

Horowitz, meanwhile, had already secured a seat at another data center table. On February 2, 2026, less than two months after the confidential meeting, the Maryland Tech Council announced him as a member of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland Steering Committee. The alliance is an industry initiative, not a state government commission, and its work includes advancing data center development and shaping public policy. Horowitz joined representatives from Amazon, Rowan Digital Infrastructure, Constellation Energy, BGE, and Turner Construction. He apparently knew enough to help guide a statewide data center effort. We would like him to share what he knew about the development his own department was promoting in Washington County.

And we still want to know where those 300 jobs came from. Horowitz’s presentation also advertised up to 15 years of property tax abatement, with the highest tier requiring at least 200 full-time jobs, $20 million in investment, and wages for 80% of employees at twice Maryland’s minimum wage. Martin Farm’s advertised numbers exceeded the first two thresholds, although that does not establish that the project qualified for or received an abatement. Were those estimates used to discuss tax breaks? Was there an actual employer behind them? An employment projection for a warehouse cannot simply be recycled into a data center pitch because the number looks good.

We are supposed to believe county officials somehow missed what residents found in public listings, even though their own business development director was named in the property’s marketing and later sat in a confidential meeting with the developer. The county had years to review the project, discuss utility extensions, and ask what would actually be built. Horowitz should release the basis for the $50 million and 300-job claims, and the commissioners should explain when they learned about Diversified Capital’s data center plans. If they want us to believe they were unaware, they need to explain how they managed to be involved in so much of this development effort while knowing so little about it.

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By October 2025, Diversified Capital was publicly advertising that it was developing a data center in Washington County, Maryland. Its land had already been marketed as suitable for data centers, its Martin Farm development had appeared in county planning records, and Washington County was promoting the project with an estimate of 300 jobs. We find it difficult to believe the commissioners did not know about the company’s data center plans roughly a year ago. If they somehow missed all of that, they should explain how the public managed to discover what apparently escaped the people running the county.

On August 25, 2025, Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin donated $500 to Commissioner Jeff Cline’s campaign. Less than two months later, an October 12 archived version of Diversified Capital’s Maryland Tech Council profile described its portfolio as including a “data center development project in Washington County, Maryland.” That archive establishes that the description was public by October 12. The company could have been advertising it earlier.

Less than two months after that, on December 9, 2025, the commissioners met privately with the Diversified Capital project team under an NDA. The room included Rubin, former state senator Chris Shank, former lieutenant governor Boyd Rutherford, engineer Connor McManus, and Sage Policy Group’s Zack Fritz. McManus’s firm has data center experience; Sage had been producing studies promoting the industry. The county’s own minutes explain that public discussion would violate the NDA. Residents were excluded while officials received the presentation.

The county still has not publicly identified exactly what that team pitched. But a developer publicly advertising a Washington County data center project then appearing before every commissioner with that particular team deserves considerably more explanation than “we haven’t approved a data center.”

They Had Been Recruiting This Industry for Years

Washington County’s involvement goes back well before Rubin’s donation. In 2020, Jonathan Horowitz submitted the county’s support for SB 397, legislation offering tax incentives specifically to attract data centers. The county was helping make Maryland more attractive to the industry years before officials began presenting themselves as people still learning what data centers might mean for residents.

On June 5, 2023, Diversified Capital appeared in Washington County Planning Commission records concerning the Martin property. By June 27, 2024, a listing for 12440 Burkholder Lane advertised it as “Ideal for Data Center”. The marketing offered several possible uses, including cold storage, automated warehousing, and distribution. Data centers were already part of the sales pitch.

The county’s involvement also extended beyond supporting tax incentives. We have found economic development materials promoting local industrial property for data center development and directing prospective developers to Horowitz. A state property listing for the Martin property identifies Washington County’s business development department and gives Horowitz’s office and cell numbers. County government was making itself available to help sell the property.

Private Meetings, More Tax Breaks, and an Industry Leadership Role

The recruitment continued into 2026. On January 16, the county sent a letter supporting another tax exemption, this time for Mount Aetna Technology Park. On February 2, Horowitz was announced as a member of the Data Center Alliance of Maryland Steering Committee, alongside representatives from Amazon, BGE, Constellation Energy, Rowan Digital Infrastructure, Turner Construction, and others involved in the industry.

The very next day, February 3, the commissioners voted 4–0 to ratify their support for the Mount Aetna exemption. Data center brokers had already been asking about the property’s land, zoning, utilities, and power availability. The resulting legislation expressly includes “computer systems and equipment” among eligible equipment, while the property’s ORI zoning permits “Computer and data processing services.” Officials were helping recruit development at another site with known data center interest while their business development director helped guide a statewide organization advancing the industry.

Then Came the Moratorium Performance

On June 12, 2026, Cline returned Rubin’s $500 donation, almost ten months after receiving it and approximately six months after the confidential presentation. Four days later, on June 16, the county quietly posted its draft data center moratorium. Why did the contribution suddenly become unacceptable at that particular moment?

On June 30, the commissioners adopted their dog-and-pony-show moratorium. That same day, the owners of the Martin Farm property sought annexation into Hagerstown. The annexation proposal covers roughly 172 acres, where the county’s moratorium would not apply. We find that timing difficult to dismiss as coincidence. It does not prove coordination, but it absolutely warrants releasing communications about the moratorium and annexation.

By September 30, Washington County set criteria for data center development. Residents were watching the rules take shape after years of recruitment and months of undisclosed developer discussions and being deceived.

The commissioners should explain when each of them first learned of Diversified Capital’s data center plans, what was presented on December 9, and whether officials discussed annexation as a way to move the property outside the moratorium. The broader record makes their supposed ignorance increasingly implausible. Either they knew far more than they told residents, or they failed to understand a development effort their own county government was helping promote. Neither explanation is much of a campaign platform.

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On October 8, the Washington County Planning Commission held a two-hour workshop titled “Data Center Information Gathering and Discussion,” featuring presentations from FirstEnergy, the City of Hagerstown Utilities Department, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Considering the enormous public controversy surrounding data centers, you might expect county officials to make a serious effort to encourage residents to attend. Instead, the meeting received little apparent promotion, with the agenda tucked away in the county website’s Planning Commission Meeting Agendas & Minutes section. The county’s September 30 press release about its data center moratorium mentioned upcoming workshops but conveniently neglected to provide the date or time of the October 8 meeting, just eight days away.

And wouldn’t you know it, something rather interesting came out of that workshop.

According to an account of the meeting, a FirstEnergy representative indicated that the Burkholder Lane property had already been evaluated from an electrical infrastructure standpoint and was a prime candidate for a data center.

The FirstEnergy representative also reportedly explained that electrical load studies for prospective data centers can take up to a year and cost approximately $500,000. The discussion left the impression that such an evaluation had already been completed for the Burkholder property, although that detail has not yet been independently confirmed.

That’s quite a development considering what we already know:

• June 2023: Diversified Capital appeared before Washington County’s Planning Commission in connection with the Martin property.

• June 2024: The 12440 Burkholder Lane property was being advertised as “ideal” for data centers.

• May 2025: Washington County’s Department of Business and Economic Development included the $50 million Diversified Capital Martin Farm project in its economic development presentation, projecting 300 jobs.

• December 2025: County commissioners and senior officials met behind closed doors under nondisclosure agreements with a development team that included Diversified Capital executive Moshe Rubin.

And let’s not forget who was involved in that secrecy. Four current Washington County Commissioners, John Barr, Jeff Cline, Randy Leatherman, and Randy Wagner, along with County Administrator Michelle Gordon, participated in the December 9, 2025 confidential meeting with the development team connected to Diversified Capital. The commissioners and Gordon signed nondisclosure agreements related to the presentation, as we’ve previously documented.

Yet county officials have repeatedly assured residents that they haven’t approved a data center, while failing to provide a full public explanation of their private dealings with the developer. Of course, there’s a rather enormous difference between saying you haven’t approved a data center and saying you haven’t been involved with a potential data center development. Apparently, we’re supposed to be satisfied with the first answer and stop asking about the second.

And three of those commissioners, Jeff Cline, John Barr, and Randy Leatherman, are running for reelection this November. These are the same men who participated in the confidential developer meeting and signed a nondisclosure agreement with Diversity Capital and now have to answer for the enormous gap between what residents were told publicly and what county records reveal was happening behind closed doors. They are asking residents to trust their public statements while important questions about their involvement remain unanswered.

Now we’re learning that the Burkholder Lane property may have already undergone an extensive electrical evaluation, potentially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Who commissioned that evaluation? When was it conducted? Who paid for it? And how long have Washington County officials known the property was being prepared for a data center?

These are exactly the kinds of questions residents deserve answers to. Too bad the county didn’t put nearly as much effort into publicizing the workshop as it has put into courting data center development.

The next Planning Commission data center workshop is scheduled for November 13 at 1 p.m.

We’re telling you now, since apparently finding these meetings is supposed to be a scavenger hunt.

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Washington County already knows what a prison looks like. We have MCI-Hagerstown, the Maryland Correctional Training Center, Roxbury Correctional Institution and our county detention center. We have people who work inside them, families who travel here to visit loved ones, and thousands of people living behind their walls. Before we add another enormous institution of confinement, we ought to spend some time looking at the ones already here and the people inside them.

In July 2025, the three state prisons held 4,577 people, including 3,138 Black people. That is 69% of their combined population. Washington County’s population is about 14% Black. These prisons hold people from across Maryland, so nobody should expect their populations to mirror the county’s. But the contrast tells us something about this place: a predominantly white county has become home to institutions that confine thousands of Black people from communities across the state.

Now DHS wants to put up to 1,500 immigration detention beds in a former warehouse near Williamsport. Different laws govern who would be held there, and the circumstances of their detention would be different. But we would again be hosting a system that brings people here to be confined, separated from their communities and moved according to decisions made elsewhere. Our commissioners have already pledged their support to the federal agencies behind it. We think they owe this community a much better explanation than the promise of jobs.

We have gotten used to the prisons

The state’s figures are stark. MCI-Hagerstown’s population was 70% Black. At MCTC, it was 64.2% Black. At Roxbury, it was 74.2% Black. That disparity is already here, whether the ICE facility opens or never holds a single person.

For people with family inside, these institutions are anything but background scenery. For everyone else, it is easy to get used to them. We drive past the fences. We know someone who works there. We hear about staffing and budgets. After a while, the existence of several large prisons can seem as ordinary as any other feature of the county.

But getting used to something is not the same as having reckoned with it. Thousands of people are confined here, and their families live with the consequences. When another government comes along wanting another facility, we should have enough experience to ask harder questions. Instead, DHS bought a warehouse, announced its plans, and our commissioners pledged not to stand in its way.

Four toilets. A $102.4 million purchase.

DHS and ICE bought the Wright Road property on January 16, 2026, for $102.4 million. The warehouse covers 825,620 square feet on nearly 54 acres. At 1,500 beds, the proposed facility would have roughly three times the capacity of the Washington County Detention Center, whose listed maximum is 495.

The warehouse had four toilets and two water fountains, according to the record discussed in Judge Brendan Hurson’s April opinion. It was designed to store cargo and move it through loading docks. DHS wants to turn it into a place where people eat, sleep, receive medical care and remain in custody.

Obviously, renovation would add bathrooms and other facilities. The point is what the federal government purchased and how it approached that conversion. DHS tried to proceed using environmental exclusions rather than conduct the fuller review Maryland sought. Hurson granted a preliminary injunction after finding that Maryland was likely to succeed in challenging that approach.

The federal government found more than $100 million to buy the building. It then fought over whether converting it into a detention facility required a fuller examination of the consequences. That tells us plenty about how urgently it wanted the beds and how little patience it had for the questions.

Who would actually be held here?

Supporters of the immigration crackdown keep talking about criminals. That word does a lot of work for them. It allows people to picture a detention center full of convicted offenders without asking whether that is who ICE is actually arresting.

Reuters reported that ICE arrests reached nearly 51,000 in August 2026, setting a monthly record for the third month in a row. Its analysis of Deportation Data Project figures found that fewer than a quarter of July arrests involved people with criminal convictions. Some others may have had pending criminal charges. But the figures do not support treating everyone swept into this system as a convicted criminal.

Immigration detention is civil detention. People can be held while their immigration cases are being decided, without serving a sentence for a criminal conviction. That distinction matters when the government proposes building a place to confine 1,500 of them in our community.

The Government Accountability Office examined ICE detention data for 2019 through 2022 and found that Mexican citizens accounted for 22% of detentions, Guatemalan citizens 14%, and Honduran citizens 11%. Other leading countries included Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador.

Those are citizenship figures, not racial categories, and they cannot tell us exactly who would end up at Wright Road. They do show how heavily the detention system draws from Latin American and Caribbean communities. Our existing prisons disproportionately confine Black people. This proposed facility would serve an immigration enforcement system that reaches deeply into a different set of communities, many far from Washington County.

We should talk about those people as people. Someone arriving here may have children waiting at home, a job they can no longer show up for, medication they need, or an immigration case they are trying to pursue. Calling them “detainees” is accurate. Letting that become the only thing we know or care about them is a choice.

Apparently, it is only “processing”

The county’s March 18 update repeated DHS’s insistence that Wright Road would be a processing facility rather than a detention center. In the same paragraph, it explained that people would be held for an average of three to seven days before being transferred to an out-of-state detention center. DHS anticipated about 500 occupied beds on a given day, with space for 1,500.

That is quite a distinction to offer someone who cannot leave. County officials can call the building a processing facility, but the people inside would still be in custody. Their families would still be separated from them. And a transfer after several days would mean another move, not necessarily a release.

The short stays also make the daily bed count an incomplete picture. Five hundred people on Monday may be a substantially different group from the five hundred there the following week. As beds empty and fill, the number of people passing through over a year can be much larger than the number held at once. DHS’s projected occupancy does not tell us the facility’s annual reach.

Wright Road would be a stop in a larger detention network. People would arrive here, be held and processed, then be sent somewhere else. The county would become part of that routine, day after day, long after the announcement and the arguments over construction had faded from the news.

Our commissioners made a choice

DHS made the purchase. Federal officials are responsible for the detention policy and the proposed conversion. But our commissioners are responsible for their response, and they put it in writing.

On February 10, the board adopted a resolution supporting DHS and ICE enforcement efforts and pledging not to impede their operations within Washington County. They chose that position while major questions about the facility remained unresolved. Federal ownership did not require them to make that pledge.

The commissioners pledged not to get in DHS’s way. Apparently, finding out what the project would actually do to the county could wait. If they believe their support was justified, they should be able to explain what information persuaded them and what, if anything, would cause them to withdraw it.

The jobs pitch needs answers too. The county’s March update relayed DHS’s claim that the facility could create 1,125 jobs and identified KVG, LLC as responsible for renovation, engineering and construction work. There is paid work attached to this project. There are also people whose confinement would make that work necessary.

We can care about local employment without treating every project that promises jobs as a good idea. The people who work in prisons and detention facilities do not set federal immigration policy. But elected officials do decide whether to endorse a project, promote its promised benefits and help make it part of the community’s future. A jobs estimate does not relieve them of having to defend those decisions.

We already have enough experience to ask

Washington County has lived alongside large prisons for decades. We can see who is disproportionately confined in them. We know that a facility becomes an employer, a budget item and a familiar landmark, while the people behind its walls become easier for everyone outside to overlook. That experience should make us pay closer attention to what DHS is proposing.

The Wright Road warehouse was built to store and move cargo. Now the federal government wants to use it to confine and transfer human beings, and our commissioners have pledged support to the agencies pursuing that plan. Before another set of fences becomes something we simply drive past, they need to explain why they endorsed it, whose interests they believe it serves, and how much consideration they gave to the people who would be locked inside.

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