Heath Haussamen
It’s the night before the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners’ scheduled votes to approve or reject tax incentives for Project Jupiter. As far as I can tell, the five elected officials who are supposed to make that decision haven’t seen final versions of the proposed agreements.
The public hasn’t seen them either.
That’s ridiculous, to put it mildly. If commissioners value processes that help them make sound decisions and earn the public’s trust, their only choice is to delay Friday’s votes.
This isn’t the column I wanted to write. There’s lots I like about the proposal to build a massive campus of data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities in Santa Teresa. We’ve been investing untold public dollars there for decades to attract industry that brings money and jobs into our economy — in other words, a project just like this.
But I am a fierce believer in the importance of open processes that involve public engagement and accountability. Most of us hate when Congress votes on a massive bill its members haven’t read, because they’re letting special interests and big corporations decide what becomes law.
That’s exactly what our commissioners are being asked to do here. They were given draft agreements totaling several hundred pages on Monday at the same time the public saw them. Those agreements were clearly not finalized. Some still have a “draft” watermark in the background. Others have blank pages.
It’s too late
As of my publishing this column, for example, page 231 out of 531 in the packet for Friday’s meeting on the county’s website is blank, except for the header that indicates what should be there: “COUNTY AND SCHOOL DISTRICT PILOT ALLOCATION.”
That should be a page that puts in a legally binding document how much money the developers of Project Jupiter would give to local governments over 30 years instead of paying property taxes (PILOT means payments in lieu of taxes).
Page 514 in the commission packet states that those payments will total $360 million — but that’s in a non-binding memorandum of understanding that has no legal force.
I emailed county staff members twice on Thursday to ask when updated documents would be coming. I’ve received no response. I can’t tell you what the plan is. I don’t know if final versions will be on commissioners’ desks when they arrive for the meeting on Friday, of it they’ll get them later tonight.
I also don’t think it matters at this hour. It’s too late for commissioners to thoroughly consider the agreements before they are scheduled to vote. It’s certainly too late for their constituents to have time read and understand the documents and give feedback.
Our commissioners should listen to all the folks and organizations, including the City of Sunland Park, who have been calling for a delay to give the public time to understand what’s in the agreements.
A threat to go elsewhere
County staff have resisted calls for a delay. The Albuquerque Journal quoted county spokesperson Ariana Parra as saying, in the Journal’s words, “the measure would move forward as scheduled Friday.”
“The scheduled vote follows public engagement to ensure the project reflects community input,” Parra was quoted as saying.
And county Attorney Cari Neill told me on Tuesday that a delay would effectively kill the project.
“In essence, a delay is the same as voting ‘no’ because the companies will go elsewhere,” Neill said.
I asked BorderPlex Digital, one of the developers, if that’s true. A company official referred me to a news release issued this week by another corporation involved in the project, Stack Infrastructure.
“Project Jupiter remains under active site selection and is contingent on the approval of key incentives and permits. If approved, the project would move forward as one of the most significant private infrastructure and job-creation investments in the history of Doña Ana County,” that release states.
They’ve invested a lot
I doubt a delay of a few days, or even a week or two, to ensure a better process would cause the developers to give up on Santa Teresa.
But if it did, I don’t think these are the businesses we want to be stuck with for a 30-year partnership.
BorderPlex Digital and Stack have invested too much in our county and state to walk away so easily. BorderPlex Digital signed an agreement in early January giving it the option to purchase 400 acres of land in Santa Teresa. Then in early June, the company signed a new agreement giving it the option to buy 1,400 acres.
The developers have forged agreements with state officials, other companies and local governments to put the pieces in place to make this project work. Back in February, BorderPlex Digital entered into agreements with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and New Mexico State University and hired lobbyists.
And I was reminded by the news organization El Paso Matters, in an article published Tuesday, that the governor’s February news release said El Paso Electric had been working with BorderPlex Digital “over the last two years to design the infrastructure required to support the region’s growth and development.”
Two years of work to think through the massive power generation a project like this would require before the developers settled on building their own microgrid and successfully lobbied for a new state law that lets them do that.
Earlier this month, Stack posted several high-paying Doña Ana county jobs on its website. On Thursday I counted 11 job postings it says are based in Las Cruces.
They have a high-dollar client
They’re doing all of this because they have a customer who wants one of the most extensive campuses of data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities ever built. While that end-user hasn’t been named publicly, as El Paso Matters reported this week, Oracle is “the most likely tenant of the massive facility.” Here’s why:
OpenAI signed a contract with Oracle earlier this month “to purchase $300 billion in computing power over roughly five years,” The Wall Street Journal reported last week. The article mentions New Mexico as one of five states where they are looking to build data centers.
Oracle’s deal with OpenAI is “one of the largest cloud contracts ever signed,” the Journal reported. That matches with the gigantic price tag for Project Jupiter, $165 billion over 30 years.
Oracle’s chairman said in an earnings call on Sept. 9 that the company “will build and operate more cloud infrastructure data than all of our cloud infrastructure competitors combined,” El Paso Matters reported.
Too much secrecy, too little accountability
That’s a lot of work and a massive investment. I don’t believe the developers will bail if commissioners take the time to read the legal agreements they’re being asked to approve.
Government needs to become more efficient than it has been. It must be able to get things done. But what commissioners are being asked to tolerate now in the interest of speed is too much secrecy and too little accountability.
To ensure our community gets the certainty it needs to feel good about these agreements, commissioners should delay Friday’s votes.
DISCLOSURE: My spouse, state Rep. Sarah Silva,participated in negotiations related to Project Jupiter and co-authoreda column about the project. To preserve my ability to report on Project Jupiter and my spouse’s ability to do her job, I will not use anonymous sources in my articles about this topic. I will continue to report using documents and named sources only.
This article has been updated to clarify that the June land agreement covers 1,400 acres. County assessor records identify that land as five parcels totaling 1,675 acres, and this article originally used that number, but the agreement states that it provides BorderPlex Digital the option to buy 1,400 acres.
As a person who has been affiliated with DAC in one way or another since 2008, I can say with authority our county government is not up to the challenge of protecting the people’s interest in this massive project. We can’t provide for basic infrastructure needs. We have trailer parks with none or inadequate septic systems not to mention yellow water flowing through the taps in south county. We can’t or won’t enforce simple zoning codes. We can’t keep our roads up to standards or pave any of the over 700 miles of dirt roads here. We have a county attorney who has no government experience other than the last few months with DAC. We have few written policies or protocols in nearly every department, so every day is a new day in terms of important decisions. We barely know the extent of our tangible assets because few departments maintain current inventories. Given this, we are going to oversee this massive undertaking? We are not up to it.
I appreciate you weighing in on this here, sheriff.
You are on the mark. “Project Jupiter” continues to sound like an embarrassingly amateur, extremely arrogant private “project” proposal that cries out for much more accountability at all levels and a complete redefining of what transparency and responsibility need to mean in the proper consumation of the public’s business.
Thank you.
Very good article. I wish we had some faith that it would land and be heard.
I have read the 223 pages of fine print. I am good at that, I have lots of experience at it, and can scan and find stuff.
It’s a mess. There are 10 corporate entities involved, now, not one of them more than a month or so old, not one of them with any employees or office space or assets of any kind. Note that this does not count BorderPlex Digital – they are out of it. Their place at the head of the list is Yucca, Inc which was incorporated on 27 AUgust, this year, and isn’t yet set up to do business in NM.
Those 10 companies are set up to create complete shielding and lack of transparency, so the whole deal is too complex to figure out, or to take anyone to task when things start to go wrong. And they will.
In the depths of the pages are typos, blank pages – as you note – things left out, things misstated. And it is so obscure it is not possible to tell if it makes sense and might work, in the best of times. I am sure that no one in the County has read it – staff or Commissioners. I talked with Shannon and Manny for quite a while after we were together on Peter Goodman’s radio show the other day. They agreed that the County was very weak in the “negotiations” with the company. Finally they said it was Steven Lopez who led the County team – he not well known for skill in this area, up against the $$$$Lawyers of the other side. It is clear that we just took what they offered and went with it.
One simple thing I asked them for, as we discussed the lack of time issue – take the PILOT and promised minimum starting salaries and any other fixed dollar amounts and index them to inflation. As it stands they are constants – and this arrangement gives the company no taxes for 30 years. In the last 30 years a dollar has dropped to 43 cents – that is giving the company a heck of a deal. There is no time nor process to even bring these things to the attention of the County folks.
Here we go – what’s next?
I appreciate your thoughts, Bob. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next.
I do not oppose the concept of an AI data center in southern New Mexico; however, I have reservations about this particular data center proposal, these applicants, and the process involved.
If the public’s first chance to provide input is framed as “take it or leave it,” it may hinder productive engagement. Presenting the project with endorsements from most elected officials can reinforce public perceptions that political power remains in the hands of very few, and we, THE CITIZENS, HAVE TO “TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT”. This is a concern.
Commissioner Chaparro, Ms. Cadena as well as many concerned county residents have expressed concern regarding the Dona Ana County Manager’s signing of a confidentiality agreement and his authority to do so without informing local elected officials. This situation raises questions about compliance with the Open Meetings Act. The county attorney appears to support the applicant’s approach, which some view as limiting public input.
According to most recent thorough article by Heath Hausserman…The Commission was “given draft agreements totaling several hundred pages on Monday, 9/15/25, at the same time the public saw them. Those agreements were clearly not finalized. Some still have a “draft” watermark in the background. Others have blank pages.
“We understand and appreciate the request for delay,” County Attorney Cari Neill told me Tuesday. “If we delay the vote, we will lose the option to be a part of this project. In essence, a delay is the same as voting ‘no’ because the companies will go elsewhere.”
Not true. A Concerned Citizens did a deep dive into any applications submitted on behalf of “Borderplex Digital and/or Stacks” to the state of Wyoming and Minnesota unless they have organized under different LLC’s in those states. NO applications for any data centers have been submitted by Project Jupiter, Borderplex Digital or Stack Infrastructure or their affiliated LLCs listed on the NM SOS website in the supposed other locations.
The companies that are listed in the Borderplex Digital and Stack Infrastructure agreement with the NM State SOS are:
· (Yucca Growth Infrastructure (not registered on the NM SOS website), LLC, lead co.;
· Red Chiles A, LLC; Red Chiles B, LLC; Red Chile C, LLC; Red Chiles D, LLC; Green Chile Ventures LLC–all recently incorporated in Delaware. Filing date on the NM SOS website is 8/27/25)
Who is acting as the agent for the identified companies listed above? Yucca and Green Chile Ventures LLC(s) are Delaware registered LLCs but not listed on the NM SOS website.
Given these circumstances, we recommend a postponement of your vote for at least 60 days as well as a more open and transparent process which engages your constituencies when considering support for this project. Alternative proposals and processes may better serve the interests of the community and ensure broader input from all stakeholders.
The proposal so far has all the earmarks of a scam – too good to be true, glorifying returns, holes you can drive s semi-truck through, obvious misdirection, ‘if you don’t sign up today, the deal goes away’ threats, out of state, brand new corporations, zero transparency, etc. This is a bad deal as presented. And, whoever is behind it has had plenty of time to put together a real proposal that could be studied on its merits.
What you report in detail seems to be the standard operating system of proposals before governmental organizations. Many elected officials believe a “manager” or “chairperson” is responsible for checking the details and that those things have been done before the proposal comes to them for approval. I hope these people read your presentation and spend the time getting the details. Well done Heath.
Thank you!
In this instance, maybe means no.
Time is money. Buyers set the pace of a deal. If we can’t trust our elected officials, who can we trust?
A delay in yesterday’s vote would have meant an end to the project.
We weren’t building a library or passing a law, where we only negotiate with ourselves.
We were dealing with investors whose profit depends in part on how quickly they can build. The investors care more about how quickly they build than where they build.
The Governor on down, including elected officials Nathan Small and Sarah Silva, who have solid environmental and unquestioned integrity when it comes to standing up to the monied class, as well as the state and the county economic development professionals tell us it’s a good deal and we ought to take it while we can, than we ought to take it while we can.