OpenAI pledges to pay full power costs and drop NDAs with officials after voters reject data centers

Voters said no to data centers. OpenAI answered with a rulebook. On Nov. 5, 2026, OpenAI published a National Community Compact and a Compute Campus Policy Blueprint, promising that every future compute campus it owns and operates will come with a local compact, public reporting and no non-disclosure agreements with public officials.

The timing is not subtle. In the Nov. 3 midterms, voters backed restrictions or rejected pro-development measures in all but one of 41 local ballot measures across 10 states, according to an analysis by Ballotpedia and results gathered by CNBC. We covered the Ohio data center bans on Nov. 4.

What OpenAI is promising

• Power: "We'll pay the full cost of the electricity we use and the infrastructure needed to serve us," OpenAI writes, with financial assurances "so other customers are protected if a project is delayed, reduced, or canceled."
• Transparency: a water plan per campus, published site-level water and electricity use, construction plans and independent noise studies before operations and annually afterward.
• NDAs: no NDAs with public officials, apart from narrow protections for security information, trade secrets or competitively sensitive data.
• Jobs: published hiring expectations and annual reporting on hiring and apprenticeships.

From promises to proposed laws

The blueprint goes further than voluntary pledges. It asks state utility commissions to require large electricity customers to cover the grid costs they add, and calls for public terms on tax incentives with a way to recover benefits if a developer falls short. OpenAI cites its planned Effingham County, Georgia campus, where Georgia Power can cut delivered power by up to 1,000 megawatts during peak demand.

"What we're doing with this blueprint is really laying out the best lessons that we have learned and committing to applying them as they go forward," Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane told reporters, according to CNBC. CNBC also notes that OpenAI told investors in February it is targeting $600 billion in total compute spend by 2030, and that Meta, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic have outlined similar commitments.