TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – The Compass Data Centers meeting at 7 p.m. on July 28 is raising concerns about conversations had without public input or awareness.<\/p>\n
The City of Topeka confirmed that more than half of the City Council was part of a private meeting yesterday with Compass Data Centers.<\/p>\n
Several local school board members were also there.<\/p>\n
Compass Data Centers invited those leaders to Washburn Rural High\u2019s Innovation Center at 2 p.m.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe met with local officials earlier today to tell that story and be transparent about what is a Class-A, community-first developer look like.\u201d Brett Collard, Senior Vice President of Land Development for Compass Data Centers, said.<\/p>\n
Seven of the nine Topeka City Council members were among those in attendance, a majority of the city\u2019s governing body.<\/p>\n
That has people questioning if this violates the Kansas Open Meetings Act<\/a> (KOMA).<\/p>\n \u201cUnder KOMA, there is basically a standard that requires half plus one. There\u2019s also a requirement that requires there be an interactive discussion,\u201d Shawn Leisinger, Associate Dean Centers and External Programs at Washburn University School of Law, said.<\/p>\n A statement provided by the city of Topeka described the meeting as an informal gathering with no possibility of action or deliberations. Contending that it did not fall under KOMA because it wasn\u2019t for the purpose of discussing public business.<\/p>\n The full statement is below:<\/p>\n Tuesday afternoon, Compass Datacenters invited several community members to an informational, open house style event located at Washburn Rural Hight School. The event was organized by a private entity and attended by a variety of invited community members, including business leaders, school board members, county and city officials and some members of the Topeka City Council. The open house was not conducted as a meeting of the Topeka Governing Body. Informational stations were set up around the room, and attendees circulated individually to receive information and ask questions. The purpose of the meeting was to provide local government officials and business leaders the opportunity to have their questions answered regarding the proposed data center. The councilmembers were not seated or assembled together as a body, no Governing Body deliberation or vote occurred, and no one had authority to take action on behalf of the City.<\/p>\n Because Kansas law does not require a general media advisory or website posting for every gathering attended by public officials and understanding that the City did not call or organize the open house as a Governing Body meeting, the City did not issue a meeting notice or media advisory.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The City of Topeka shared the following councilmembers were at that meeting:<\/p>\n This brings in a gray area.<\/p>\n \u201cA concern like this is that there was that interactive discussion that, in essence, a majority of the board, or the entity, had that discussion,\u201d Leisinger said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to take any formal action. It can be just that discussion that may or may not lead to formal action later on, but you have to have that formal interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Their presence alone doesn\u2019t fully constitute a violation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou may meet that particular piece of the law, but you\u2019re not having an interactive discussion about that particular topic or that particular area, so there, and you don\u2019t take that next step that\u2019s required to actually have a formal KOMA violation,\u201d Leisinger said.<\/p>\n 13 NEWS reached out to Compass Data Centers inquiring about the contents of the meeting, but has not received a response.<\/p>\n More about KOMA can be found here<\/a>. You can also find information on the Kansas Attorney General\u2019s website<\/a>. <\/p>\n Copyright 2026 WIBW. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – The Compass Data Centers meeting at 7 p.m. on July 28 is raising concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":969432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[35],"tags":[378658,389253,12854,49772,389247,2451,338679,62785,389239,3059,5880,834,210,1141,1142,17353,26251,19785,389251,389248,389250,143995,389249,11645,75942,341492,389241,75941,389240,67,132,68,389243,389244,389246,389242,389245,389252,104453],"class_list":["post-969431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-13-news","tag-13-wibw","tag-attorney","tag-attorney-general","tag-brett-collard","tag-city","tag-city-of-topeka","tag-compass","tag-compass-data-center","tag-county","tag-data-center","tag-general","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-high","tag-high-school","tag-kansas","tag-kansas-attorney-general","tag-kansas-open-meetings-act","tag-koma","tag-kris-kobach","tag-open-meetings-act","tag-school","tag-shawnee","tag-shawnee-county","tag-shawnee-county-commission","tag-topeka","tag-topeka-city-council","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washburn","tag-washburn-law","tag-washburn-rural","tag-washburn-rural-high-school","tag-washburn-university","tag-washburn-university-school-of-law","tag-wibw"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/969432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n