SpaceX Sues Texas AG, Grimes County Over Terafab Project Information
Yahoo Finance ·
Elon Musk -led SpaceX is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Grimes County over a request for information on its Terafab megadevelopment. Filed Tuesday in Travis County, the lawsuit comes a month after SpaceX and Tesla announced they would invest $16.8B in the first phase of construction on the chip factory. Terafab is planned to span more than 100M SF in predominantly rural Grimes County, between Houston and College Station. The lawsuit stems from two public records requests made by Grimes County residents on behalf of Grimes County Citizens for Responsible Development, the Houston Business Journal reported . They sought information on the process that led to the approval of the Terafab project, including the application for tax incentives and the negotiations surrounding those incentives, the organization said in a statement. The first public records request was filed May 7, days after SpaceX revealed in public filings that it planned to build the project in Grimes County with an investment of up to $119B if it expands to additional phases. Grimes County filed the second request on June 3. Grimes County sought a ruling regarding the requests from the Office of the Attorney General, a standard procedure under the Texas Public Information Act. The AG’s Office responded to Grimes County on July 28, saying most of the communications between the county and SpaceX were protected by attorney-client privilege, but the rest should be released, the HBJ reported. SpaceX said in the lawsuit that it wasn't notified of the records requests until July 2, despite the TPIA saying a government agency seeking an AG opinion on releasing proprietary third-party information should make a “good faith” effort to notify the third party within 10 business days. The lawsuit also argues that the AG opinion didn’t consider the company’s objections to the release, including that disclosing negotiation information could open a window into how it receives tax incentives and selects sites. The lawsuit asks the district court judge to permanently block Grimes County and Paxton from releasing SpaceX’s confidential information, arguing the release would cause SpaceX immeasurable damage. Neither defendant had filed a response to the lawsuit as of Thursday afternoon. Paxton, Texas’ Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has stood behind Gov. Greg Abbott in toeing the line of addressing concerns about rapid data center development in the state while largely allowing projects to move forward. Paxton’s four-point data center plan includes authoring legislation to hold data centers criminally liable if they undermine children’s safety and to prohibit the use of Chinese technology to power American data centers — along with supporting Abbott’s initiatives, such as repealing sales tax exemptions for data centers.
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