Service or Sleaze?

Dear Editor:

A core principle of public service is that officials should not personally profit from the decisions they make in office.

In the early 2000s, the then head of Loudoun’s Planning Commission voted to approve development applications submitted by a firm from which he received substantial personal business.

In 2004, a former County supervisor helped recruit a strongly pro-growth Board of Supervisors. That Board promptly re-zoned one of her private properties to make it much more valuable for potential developers. She sold the property for $12 million—four times its previously assessed value.

These activities caught the attention of the Washington Post’s editorial board, which in January 2007 described the transactions as “sleaze.”

Things do not seem to have changed much since then.

A recent series of reports in the Fauquier Times describes how Loudoun’s habit of mixing public and private business has recently infected our neighboring county.

In February 2025, two Loudoun County Planning Commissioners purchased a property in Fauquier from an elderly landowner. On August 4, 2024, one of them sent the following text to the elderly property-owner: “Believe me, if I thought for a second the land could be approved for more houses or a data center, I’d offer you a lot more money.” However, he has not denied that, at the time he sent this text, he was in fact aware of a plan to build a data center on the same property.

The mastermind behind the same data center project is a former Loudoun County supervisor. When he was in office, he met frequently with data center representatives to hear their pitches for new projects. Now, the industry is paying him to pitch more projects on their behalf in both Loudoun and Fauquier. And Loudoun’s Planning Commissioners seem to be well-informed about his plans.

Developers are also cozy with current and former Loudoun County staff. Less than a year after resigning his position as Deputy County Administrator, one former staffer began appearing before both the County Board of Supervisors and the Leesburg Town Council on behalf of his new employer—a data center developer.

This revolving door works both ways. Just last year, the former County supervisor who earned the unfortunate attention of the Washington Post editorial board 20 years ago was appointed to lead our Planning Commission.

Do all these connections between developers and Loudoun County officials affect the County’s policies regarding the data centers?

The Planning Commission recently considered whether the County should tighten its zoning restrictions on data center development. Not surprisingly, the two Commissioners who were involved in the data center land deal in Fauquier expressed grave concerns about any efforts to rein in the industry.

Neither Commissioner mentioned or seemed concerned that Loudoun’s data centers are already using nearly a billion gallons of fresh water a year or that citizens’ electricity bills will have to double in order to pay for the new power generation and transmission infrastructure the data centers demand.

It may be that these individuals would have taken a principled stand against stricter zoning standards even if they didn’t have the prospect of personally profiting from the development. We can’t know for sure.

But we should not be left to wonder. Loudoun has a long history of inviting the fox to guard the hen house. Even if our foxes were the most honest and impartial guards in the world, that needs to change. Public service must prevail over even the appearance of sleaze.

John Ellis
Hillsboro