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.