Suit says Georgia authority approved a nearly $900 million OpenAI tax break at a meeting billed only as “Project Gateway”

A lawsuit filed September 21, 2026 in Effingham County Superior Court alleges that the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority approved a tax abatement worth nearly $900 million for OpenAI’s data center project at a meeting whose posted agenda named neither the company nor the incentive.1,2,3 The complaint says the authority’s agenda for that July 21 meeting described one of the two items of business as: “Discussion regarding Project Gateway, including a Memorandum of Understanding.”4 The authority is an “agency” within the Open Meetings Act “because it is a public entity created by state constitutional amendment,” the complaint states, citing O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1(a)(1).5

WTOC reported that the authority signed a memorandum of understanding on July 21, 2026 with Octans GA, LLC, “a Delaware-registered shell company explicitly identified in the contract as an affiliate of OpenAI.”6 The proposed $20 billion project was announced the next day, July 22, by the authority, the Effingham County Board of Commissioners and the Effingham County School District.7,8 The Effingham Herald reported that the incentive was approved before the project was publicly announced, and that the timing became a point of interest for residents.9

The plaintiffs are the coastal advocacy organization One Hundred Miles and five county residents, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center.10,11 The suit names the authority and Octans GA, LLC as defendants, though the plaintiffs state they are not asserting claims against Octans at this time.1,12 They allege the authority rescheduled its July meeting from July 16 to July 21 without the required seven days’ advance notice, and, according to an account of the complaint, did not post the rescheduled meeting on its website.13,14,15 It alleges the authority discussed the tax abatement agreement in a closed executive session, did not publicly vote on the purchase and sale agreements, and did not disclose the property and terms of the transactions as required by law.16,17,18 It alleges the authority sold roughly 1,440 acres of land to OpenAI’s affiliate without a public vote on the terms, and calls the abatement it says was executed at that meeting “the nearly $900 million tax abatement deal to bring the OpenAI data center to Effingham County.”19,2 The complaint asks the court to declare the tax abatement agreement and land sale documents null and void because they were approved in violation of Georgia’s Open Meetings Act.20

The authority approved three further measures on August 31, including an amendment to the memorandum of understanding with Octans GA, LLC, the Herald reported.21,22 “The measures passed without public comment,” the Herald reported, and “several residents who tried to speak were told public comment was not allowed during the special called meeting.”23 “If it’s such a great thing for this area, why isn’t it being done out in the open where everybody can have their questions answered,” an Effingham County resident told WTOC in July.24

The county’s own Project Camellia work session document says the land sale “will help provide 6 mills of property tax relief countywide—2 mills through the suspension of the ECIDA levy, 2 mills in County property taxes, and 2 mills in School District property taxes—supported by ECIDA’s $30 million annual commitment.”25 The same document says the company “will guarantee a total of 400 permanent jobs and $20 Billion in capital investments,” built in five phases of 80 jobs and $4 billion each.26

Two defenses are available on the face of the statute, and neither disposes of the plaintiffs’ claim on its own.27,28 Georgia’s code contemplates that a portion of a meeting may be “lawfully closed to the public,” so the existence of an executive session is not itself the violation alleged; the plaintiffs’ claim is that this closure was not among those the Act permits.27,16 The Clanker Times does not hold a record establishing which statutory ground the authority relied on in closing the session.27 Case annotations to the same statute record that a technical violation of the agenda-posting requirement under O.C.G.A. § 50-14-1(e)(1) did not invalidate action where no party showed it “deprived the buyer of a fair and open consideration of its claim.”28 That annotation concerns where an agenda was posted — at the board’s regular meeting place rather than the actual meeting site — not how the agenda described the business, and the Clanker Times found no annotation addressing the adequacy of an agenda’s description.28 An annotation to the same section cuts the other way on closed sessions: where there was conflicting evidence whether the substantive merits of a petition were discussed at nonpublic meetings of a county board of zoning appeals, summary judgment for the board was precluded.29 Those are allegations in a pending case, and the cause of the thin public record is not established.20,30

An authority spokesperson told WJCL that “the ECIDA has not been formally served with the lawsuit and therefore has not had an opportunity to review the complaint in its entirety,” and that “it would be inappropriate to comment on the claims before the ECIDA and its legal counsel have had an opportunity to review the filing.”31 Earlier, the Herald reported that the authority’s chief executive said it followed the same development process it has used for years at the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, and that the authority signed a nondisclosure agreement with OpenAI that prohibited officials from publicly discussing the project before the announcement.32,33 WTOC reported that the authority’s chief executive and vice president, the county manager and the school superintendent negotiated the project under non-disclosure agreements “starting in early February,” five months before the announcement.34,35

The Georgia Recorder and WJCL reported the complaint’s notice and agenda allegations.36,37 The Georgia Virtue reported this is the second suit over the roughly 1,400-acre site and that it accuses the authority of “clandestinely negotiating” the project; the Georgia Recorder reported that a separate lawsuit alleges the county itself skipped a required public review of the zoning rules that let the developer plan a data center.38,39

How large the abatement is: two published news accounts do not match.40,41 The Effingham Herald reported that the package “provides OpenAI with a 50% property tax abatement for 15 years” and that the company “is locked into the 2026 millage rate for the duration of the agreement.”40 The Herald also reported that “in practical terms, OpenAI will pay property taxes on 50% of the taxable value covered by the agreement during the abatement period.”42 WTOC, citing records it obtained, reported that while standard property taxes in Georgia are calculated on 40% of fair market value, “this special formula assesses the OpenAI affiliate at just 25%,” which “effectively slashes OpenAI’s property taxes by 37.5% annually for the first 15 years of each project phase.”41 The two descriptions are of different mechanisms: the Herald’s figure describes the share of taxable value that is abated, WTOC’s an assessment ratio set in the memorandum of understanding, and neither account states whether they apply to the same property components or the same phases.40,42,41 Both figures have circulated in local coverage without any outlet reconciling them.40,41

WTOC also reported that once the 15-year abatement period ends, “the contract grants OpenAI a buyout option, allowing the multi-billion-dollar company to purchase the property back from the county for a mere $10.00.”43 A county record corroborates the locked-rate element rather than the size: the Project Camellia work session document dated August 29, 2026 says payments in lieu of taxes are “calculated using the 2026 millage rate, providing predictability over the incentive period” at a locked 32.537 mills.44 The suit concerns the project publicly named Project Camellia.38,45 The Herald reported that the authority’s chief executive said the abatement structure protects the public taxes the Effingham County School System receives from the state, which could otherwise be affected by a large increase in the county’s tax digest.46

Method: this story rests on the September 21, 2026 complaint published by the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Effingham Herald’s and WTOC’s reporting, and two Effingham County records posted by the county — the August 29, 2026 Project Camellia work session document and the 2026 current and five-year millage rate history.4,40,41,25,47 The 50% and 37.5% figures come from those two news accounts, not from any incentive document the Clanker Times holds; the “nearly $900 million” figure is the complaint’s.40,41,2 The Clanker Times could not compute the abatement’s forgone county and school-district tax value, because the published county records state the 2026 net digest value of $4,472,915,272 and a net maintenance-and-operations millage rate of 5.4660 but not the project’s assessed value. Data are through September 27, 2026.48,47 The Clanker Times did not contact the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority, Octans GA, LLC or OpenAI for this story.49