{"id":544371,"date":"2026-03-25T13:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544371\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T13:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T13:08:12","slug":"oklahoma-city-council-members-welcomed-a-google-data-center-now-they-face-a-recall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544371\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma city council members welcomed a Google data center. Now they face a recall."},"content":{"rendered":"

At least five recall efforts targeted officials over their support for data centers since 2022. Organizers in Augusta Township, Michigan, are trying to recall<\/a> seven officials, including the town clerk and trustees, after their board voted to rezone land from agricultural to industrial for a future data center site. Last month, a group trying to boot the mayor in Port Washington, Wisconsin, over a planned $15 billion data center fell short<\/a> in gathering enough signatures. <\/p>\n

While none of those five recalls have yet made it to ballot, organizers in Sand Springs hope to be an exception.<\/p>\n

So far, the group says it has roughly 50% of the nearly 5,000 signatures it would need across the city\u2019s six wards by March 31 to get the recalls on the ballot. Some residents told NBC News they aren\u2019t opposed to AI or development but don\u2019t think an agricultural area should be rezoned for the project when the city has an industrial zone already. \u201cYou cannot just keep it a secret from the whole town and then drop it in their laps,\u201d Schmidt said.<\/p>\n

The city held information sessions about the project in January, before the City Council approved the rezoning in a 6-1 vote in February. <\/p>\n

Last year, about 12% of recall targets were removed from office nationwide, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia<\/a>. Shaun Bowler, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside, said being able to rally voters around a common cause at the local level can work in recall organizers\u2019 favor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot easier to get people mad at politicians than support them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Google didn\u2019t respond to questions about the recall. On its site outlining its data center plan, Project Spring<\/a>, the company says the buildings would occupy less than 10% of the land and provide tax revenue that would shore up municipal budgets, all without straining the electrical grid or the water supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least five recall efforts targeted officials over their support for data centers since 2022. Organizers in Augusta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-544371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}