Janesville’s City Manager Takes to the Airwaves
On January 7th, 2026, Janesville City Manager Kevin Lahner went on a radio program to talk about the coming year. Not surprisingly, much of the discussion centered around the data center proposal. For those not up to date on what’s happening, the city’s negotiations with the developer (Viridian) continue and results of them are expected in as little as a few days unless they extend the deadline. You can read more fact-checking of the city’s November 2025 fact-checking here. Probably the most suspicious thing about Mr. Lahner’s discussions in both Nov and on the radio program is the absence of any downside to the deal. There are no rewards without risks. Ever. If someone tries to tell you nothing can go wrong, that the city is protected from every possible bad situation, you should instantly distrust that person. Mr. Lahner has yet to articulate a single downside to the deal.
Taxes
One topic in particular that Mr. Lahner focused on was the impact on taxes (start listening at about 20:30). His claim: “Your taxes will go down. It’s simple math.” However, he adds a very important caveat that makes the whole assertion crumble:
“All things being equal.”
First, what is he trying to say:
If you add a giant a** data center to Janesville’s tax rolls,
and the assessed value of that property is 7% of the city’s total valuation
then everyone’s taxes will go down 7%
“all things being equal”
But what does he mean by “all things being equal?” What “things?”
He did toss in a cavalier comment hinting at what he meant, something about assuming the city council doesn’t embark on some billion dollar project.
But that cavalier comment is disingenuous. What he’s really trying to say is “If the city council doesn’t raise the tax levy when those buildings go on to the tax rolls, then your taxes will drop. The real question will be: will the city administration and city council have the fortitude to permanently forgo the tax increase from those buildings?
Let’s walk through the process:
Let’s say it’s 8 buildings, and we’ll round up to 1% of total city valuation for each one.
Building 1 is finished in Year 2. City drafts a budget for year 3. State law says if you want to raise the levy you have to have new construction to do it. Yippee, we got us one of dem dere data centers and it’s a pricey mutha. But pricey as it might be, it’s still only 1% of city valuation and those pesky firefighters are bitchin’ for a raise again, and man that equipment is expensive. It’s just 1%. Nobody’ll notice. And if we don’t take it now, we lose the ability to do so forever.
I’ll take $1 bets on the city taking the increase. When you lose, you can just donate the money to your favorite charity.
Then building 2 goes on the rolls the next year, same thing. Then building 3, ….
And keep in mind there is other new construction that will increase your taxes as well.
The big giant rebuttal to the Mr. Lahner’s assertion is:
“All things are never equal.”
A straight answer is that the city will use the data center construction as a way to increase the tax levy without raising individual taxes. He should also say that taxes will indeed continue to rise because city budgets need to increase. If they didn’t need to increase, why would you want to do the data center deal? Never trust someone who says a deal is all reward and no risk, and never trust someone who says “all things being equal.”
Clean up
Mr. Lahner spends time from 30:00 - 36:00 talking about the challenge of cleaning up the existing site and the golden opportunity that Viridian represents. Viridian, after all, is offering to do so on their own dime, a once-in-a-lifetime offer it seems.
Throughout that discussion, though, it sounded like words that he could put in a time capsule and take out in 20 years or so when the data center is no longer viable. What’s too good to be true often is, and hyperscale data centers are without long-term lifespan data. However, the historical average age of a data center is 15-25 years. Even if the site’s buildings are slightly beyond the higher end of that for lifespan, there is significant risk of having a GM redux problem on the site within a reasonable planning horizon for the city. Maybe this time you won’t have a contaminated site, but you will have large purpose-built buildings difficult to reuse and expensive to tear down.
Reward always comes with risk, and usually in equal measure.
Frustrated with government
Mr. Lahner nails one thing that seems to explain the state and region-wide public outcry over data centers: people don’t trust government.
Unfortunately, Mr. Lahner claims government has done everything it can and it’s the people’s fault.
C’est la vie.
If Mr. Lahner had any interest in restoring trust in government, he’d at least start admitting that the project isn’t all reward and no risk. Start talking about the problems that can happen, how the city is protected, and why he feels like the risk is worth the reward. Engage the public you serve.