Like most Americans, I’ve long been familiar with the phrase, “kicking the can down the road.” I was surprised to learn that it’s a relatively new addition to the voluminous list of idioms that became ubiquitous through repetition.

According to several analog sources digitized on the internet, the expression gained wide usage in the late 1980s, primarily as shorthand for the inaction of elected officials who choose to ignore urgent problems in the vain hope that they’ll go away or become the responsibility of their successors.

No “action plan” to address the “can” is ever advanced, but time speeds down the road on a collision course with the consequences. Urgent problems never grow easier – or less expensive – to solve.

This inconvenient truth has been ignored by generations of Lackawanna County commissioners who put off property tax reassessment, necessary incremental tax increases and mitigation of ballooning deficits until they reached critical mass and forced painful, belated countermeasures.

Repeated experience with the bitter fruits of kicking the can down the road should result in more proactive governance, but as long as the governed accept the appearance of action as a substitute, we will forever pay crippling interest on the same old institutional inertia.

This week, Commissioners Thom Welby and Chris Chermak issued a request for proposals (RFP) on a countywide baseline study on the health impacts of invasive hyperscale data center development. Such a study is urgently necessary, but will be delayed indefinitely by placing process ahead of progress.

Commissioner Bill Gaughan secured a solid proposal from an eminently qualified firm that has already proven itself with a study commissioned by Stop Archbald Data Centers, a crowd-funded grassroots group of everyday citizens who stepped up while most of their elected representatives sat on their hands.

Co-founded by Harvard University environmental health scientist and biostatistician Michael Cork, Ph.D., EmPower Analytics Group assessed the health and economic impacts of the proposed Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, the most objectionable of as many as seven such projects targeting Archbald.

Cork presented the study at a July hearing. Among EmPower’s many grim observations, the experts estimated that Wildcat Ridge’s 588 “backup” diesel generators would cause between $3.3 million to $124 million in annual health damages across the county. The study, which the developers denounced as inaccurate, naturally alarmed anyone paying attention and led to calls for a countywide study. With his colleagues’ stated blessing, Gaughan reached out to EmPower, which submitted a proposal to do the study for $165,000 – about 0.0912% of the county’s $181 million budget.

A standing-room-only crowd packed the Aug. 5 commissioners meeting to demand Welby and Chermak join Gaughan in approving the EmPower proposal. Instead, the committed bystanders expressed support for a study, but felt a more leisurely, bureaucratic approach was more appropriate. Gaughan and the crowd loudly disagreed.

“I went out, I got a detailed proposal from a nationally qualified team of scientists that were willing to do the work, then I met with the (county chief financial officer), I found the funding for it within the budget and then they (Welby and Chermak) balked, which made no sense to me because they wasted an awful lot of time,” Gaughan told Times-Tribune Staff Writer Jeff Horvath.

Frustrated by their glacial response, Gaughan nonetheless praised his can-kicking colleagues for at least appearing to act in the public interest.

“So they took the scenic route of getting here but I’m glad that they finally arrived to the fact that we need to do something,” he said.

“The bottom line is something is going to get done, which is a good thing, and I just want it to move as quickly as possible because there’s such a need for it.”

Welby and Chermak said they see the need just as clearly as Gaughan, but want to “take the time to get it right” and at a good price. To some, this sounds reasonable and responsible. To anyone paying attention, it’s stalling.

This is not a paving or garbage disposal contract; it’s an emergency necessity we can’t afford to delay. This is highly specialized work performed by an extremely small pool of experts. The idea that an RFP will turn up multiple firms as or more qualified than EmPower at a competitive price is wishful thinking at best, governmental malpractice at worst.

If EmPower started a study today, it would take an estimated three or four months to complete. It could be January 2027 by the time residents receive the evidence they need to defend themselves against what’s happening RIGHT NOW.

Archbald is Lackawanna County’s ground zero, but hyperscale data centers have also been proposed in Clifton Twp., Covington Twp., Dickson City, Jessup, Olyphant, Newton Twp. and Ransom Twp. Multiple natural gas power plants are proposed in Archbald and Dickson City. This is no time for kicking the can.

Any proposals the RFP might attract are due by 3 p.m. on Sept. 11, a fitting deadline considering the federal government’s failure to heed clear warnings in the 2001 run-up to America’s darkest day.

Chermak told Horvath that officials are looking for a “quick turnaround” on the proposals. Welby said he doesn’t expect the RFP process to substantially extend the wait for a study that should have begun the moment the county was carpet-bombed with data center proposals.

The belated RFP ensures there will be no “quick turnaround.” Any extension of the wait is inherently substantial.

Understand this: The very last thing data center developers want is a comprehensive, scientific study on the health impacts of their toxic, resource-gorging industry. The resistance to the invasion is already widespread and growing daily, but a huge number of humans who would be negatively affected remain bystanders who still aren’t paying the necessary attention.

A detailed, data-driven illustration of the impacts would present a “Big Picture” impossible for even the most jaded bystander to ignore. The wheezing genie would be out of the bottle. The resistance would explode overnight. The more humans learn about the health, economic and environmental costs of invasive data center development, the more determined they become to keep it out of targeted communities.

Lackawanna County’s study would serve as a model for other counties across the state and the nation. No hyperscale data center developer wants the resistance to have hard evidence to use against them, or for such evidence to spread outside local boundaries.

It’s long been clear that the developers’ best weapon is widespread public ignorance of the negative impacts of their ruinous, cartoonishly speculative industry. The RFP put forward by Welby and Chermak serves the interest of developers, not the people Welby and Chermak swore oaths to serve.

Time is the best weapon of the resistance. The longer it takes for developers to clear the meager hurdles set by existing state and local laws, the closer we get to the collapse of the house of cards built by billionaire tech “broligarchs” and the bottom-feeders lining up to sell out their neighbors and the basic freedoms that make life worth living.

The “AI Revolution” is just the latest iteration of Wall Street kicking the can down the road while waiting for a payday with no hard evidence it will ever come.

Welby and Chermak’s can-kicking muzzles the resistance’s best weapon and preserves the paper-thin veil developers use to hide the worst impacts of their sickening industry.

The appearance of action is no substitute. In this historically dire instance, institutional inertia ensures catastrophic consequences.

But hey, be sure to get your proposals submitted by 3 p.m. on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

CHRIS KELLY, The Times-Tribune columnist, will see you at Wednesday’s commissioners meeting. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.