About 25,000 phones beeped and buzzed across southeast Georgia last Monday, texting folks a link to a website publicizing Project Camellia, OpenAI’s planned massive data center in Effingham County. It’s part of a charm offensive from an Alabama PR firm and the county agency that took the lead in ushering OpenAI to Rincon.
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The Effingham County Industrial Development Authority and their public relations firm, Direct Communications, are trying to catch up with the public anger and questions that started as soon as the news of OpenAI’s arrival broke across Effingham County.
Officials in the county have been quiet about public costs of the data center, notably air pollution from an expansion of Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh under review by the state, as well that from other new fossil fuel units across the state that would be needed to power data centers. The OpenAI data center would need as much power as 2.3 million homes. As The Current GA has reported, staff at the state’s regulatory agency have prepared to raise objections over OpenAI’s draft contract with Georgia Power; the utility has won more time to negotiate.
The IDA has argued that OpenAI means public money: Even at the 15-year, 50% property tax discount the agency granted to the data center, Effingham County and its schools expect substantial tax revenue from the data center that could drive down property taxes for homeowners. The company has also said it will grant $80 million to the community, but no details have been forthcoming.
“We’re a small staff and none of our expertise is in public relations,” said Brandt Herndon, executive director of the ECIDA, whose board approved the tax break for OpenAI’s data center at a mostly unpublicized meeting July 21.
“We’re all in economic development, so we thought it was important to have somebody, without having to hire additional staff, to hire a PR firm to help us with our messaging, because it’s important,” Herndon said, speaking to The Current GA Thursday. “I think people don’t really understand what we do and why we do it.”
Direct Communications’ job broadly includes “issue management,” according to its April 17 work agreement with the IDA, in addition to specifics like planning and creating slides for public presentations, digital ads, a website, texts and other communications. Herndon said the hire wasn’t just for OpenAI but also for other development authority projects.
The Alabama company’s retainer started at $18,000 per full month plus expenses; the retainer is set to decline to $9,500 per month by November. Website development alone ran to $5,000 in June, according to the company’s invoices, which total $77,000 from mid-April through July.
Direct Communications is also watching public sentiment. Using the Claude chatbot, the company prepared a “social sentiment briefing” for officials ahead of the OpenAI Open House on July 23.
“Expect tonight’s room to be skeptical,” the software printed, drawing on sources publicly available on the internet. It also output the names of several individuals expected to be opponents — area environmentalists plus Democratic Public Service Commissioner Peter Hubbard.
The unnamed human user of the Claude chatbot also directed the software to monitor an unnamed private Facebook group. The chatbot could not do that because it was not logged into Facebook, but it gave directions on how to connect it with the social media site.
The document is silent on whether any human followed through and logged the bot onto Facebook.
The public website touting the data center is officially signed by the IDA, Effingham County and the county school system.
The county did not respond to a request about its role in promoting the project since July, though a defense of it has lately been made the top item on the county’s homepage. County Commissioners have announced a rare Saturday work session on the data center Aug. 29 starting at 10 a.m.
The school system said it has not hired any public relations firm.
The Tide brings regular notes and observations on news and events by The Current staff.
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