Judge gives Independence residents more time to get signatures for data center vote
Independence residents are still waiting to see whether their petition seeking a public vote on tax breaks for a proposed $150 billion data center will be able to move forward. But in the meantime, a Jackson County judge has extended residents’ deadline to collect signatures.
Nebius, a Dutch company specializing in artificial intelligence services, plans to make Independence its U.S. flagship location with a 400-acre data center breaking ground in the city this year. The $150 billion project, fueled by its own power plant, will benefit from more than $6 billion in tax breaks under an incentive plan passed by the Independence City Council last week.
Organizers of a grassroots anti-data center group, Stop the Data Center in Independence, hope to reverse the tax breaks through a public vote. They sued the city to allow the referendum process to proceed. Now, the court has filed an order temporarily extending the deadline for the petition while their lawsuit makes its way through the legal process.
The morning after the Independence City Council voted 5-2 in favor of the sweeping tax breaks, organizers submitted more than 20 pages of signatures to Independence City Clerk Suzanne Holland, signaling their intent to gather enough resident signatures to force a referendum on the tax breaks. Putting the breaks on a city ballot would give residents a chance to walk back the city’s approval of the incentive package, which Nebius has said could motivate them to pull out of Independence entirely.
However, city officials have argued that the charter does not leave room for a referendum effort in this situation because a contract has already been implemented, and Independence City Clerk Suzanne Holland declined to certify the first batch of signatures.
Three organizers — Rachel Gonzalez, Misty Vaughn and Karma Magers — responded by suing the city and Holland on March 9.
Their lawsuit argues that the city charter requires Holland to certify their petition regardless of the city’s perspective on its legal strength. It also argues that under the charter, the collection of the first 100 signatures would trigger a monthlong waiting period before the tax breaks could go into effect.
A Jackson County judge wrote in the March 18 order that Gonzalez and her fellow plaintiffs “have a reasonable probability of success on the merits of [their] claim,” and that their petition effort would “suffer immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage” without an extension. A city spokesperson said Thursday that the extension does not impact the overall status of the legal case or change the language of the ordinance on which the city’s argument is based.
“The temporary order issued by the Court simply pauses the timeline set out in the City Charter while the judge reviews the legal arguments in full,” the city spokesperson said in a statement shared with The Star. “The underlying questions are still before the Court.”
Meanwhile, Gonzalez and other organizers have been running daily petition drives all over Independence, coordinated through a Facebook group which has exploded to include more than 100,000 followers. A core group of dedicated data center opponents — including residents of Bly Road, whose homes overlook the proposed data center site — have been popping up each evening outside of restaurants, libraries and municipal buildings. The group has gathered more than 800 signatures as of last week and would need 3,700 to trigger a public vote, Gonzalez previously told The Star.
If the lawsuit or referendum ultimately fail, Nebius will remain eligible for between 90% and 98% tax breaks on the materials and property associated with the data center, totaling more than $6 billion in dollars saved. Instead, the company will pay about $650 million to city taxing jurisdictions in the form of PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) fees, with the Independence School District as the largest beneficiary.
A hearing on the pending case will take place Monday, March 23 at 3 p.m. in the Jackson County courthouse in Independence.
This story was originally published March 19, 2026 at 1:22 PM.
