Reporting like this only happens with your financial support. Donate to WKAR today!
Months of tensions at Mason City Council meetings boiled over Monday as one City Council member expressed concerns that opposition to a possible data center development could be an astroturfing campaign.
For weeks, audience members opposing data centers have interrupted City Council proceedings with shouting, laughter and groans.
That continued to be the case as Councilmember John Vercher spoke Monday evening, leading Mayor Pro Tem Jon Droscha to shout for order.
Droscha apologized for the outburst shortly after.
“I’m awfully tired of people interrupting us when we speak,” Droscha said. “I don’t interrupt you when you’re speaking. I’m really on edge about that.”
Droscha is one of ten candidates who will appear on the August primary ballot. Eight of them will advance to the November general election to fill four seats on the City Council.
Mayor Russell Whipple urged Droscha to remain calm. But Whipple also said the outbursts from audience members need to stop.
“The laughing, the name calling, the accusations that are unfounded… You want to talk about destroying trust, that’s at least 50% of it,” Whipple said. “I’ll take my 50% as an elected official who has had to tell people that I can’t tell them certain things. I understand the challenges of that. But I said when we could tell you, we would, and we did. Everything we know, you know.”
The sequence played out as Vercher shared information about the groups leading much of the opposition to a potential hyperscale data center development near Mason that could more than double the city’s tax revenue.
The groups No Data Centers in Michigan and No Data Centers in Mason each list the other as its primary financial backer.
Campaign finance records show No Data Centers in Michigan, formed in February of this year, is run by at least two Republican strategists.
The committee’s treasurer, attorney Dan Wholihan of Brighton, is a former three-term chair of the Livingston County Republican Party and former chair of the Michigan Seventh Congressional District Republican Committee.
Another organizer, Paula Caltrider of Haslett, previously served as the secretary of the Michigan Seventh Congressional District Republican Committee.
“Democracy works best when voters understand not only the message but also who is paying for it and who is delivering it,” Vercher said.
The groups are behind billboards promoting certain City Council candidates based on their position on data centers. Local elections in Mason are non-partisan.
They have also organized petitions to recall Whipple and Councilmember Elaine Ferris, and coordinated actions at City Council meetings, including wearing custom red hats.
“When a political campaign presents itself as a local grassroots movement, shouldn't voters know when it is being led by experienced political operatives who have held senior leadership positions within the local Republican Party,” Vercher said.
Wholihan said in a statement to WKAR News that opposition to data centers is bipartisan and that he has not been an officer of a Republican committee since 2024.
"Mr. Vercher cannot win on the merits of the issue, so he wants to make my past an issue when he needs to listen to the voters," Wholihan said.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum determined that the effort to recall Whipple was not sufficient due to the language at the top of the petitions not matching the language approved by the county election commission. Byrum is continuing to review whether the effort to recall Ferris garnered enough valid signatures to be placed on the ballot.
Whipple has said many of the attendees speaking at, and later interrupting, City Council meetings are not residents of the city.
But he said pointing out that the City Council does not represent nearby township residents was a mistake.
“I know that pissed a ton of you guys off, and I don’t blame you. But it’s just a fact,” Whipple said. “And that doesn’t mean we don’t listen to you. I think that anybody who’s objective would look at the evidence, we’ve listened a ton, we have changed a ton of stuff in what we’ve been trying to do to address the concerns.”
Whipple plans to introduce an alternative ordinance regulating noise emissions in the city after City Council members adopted a citizen-initiated ordinance last month, keeping it off the ballot, with plans to later amend or repeal it, citing concerns from the city attorney that sections are not enforceable.
