New website sheds light on MIDA amid data center controversy. Here’s what it shows

The sun rises over a part of Hansel Valley, in Box Elder County, near the proposed Stratos Project, a massive data center planned for 40,000 acres of land, on Thursday, May 28, 2026. Photo: Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

New dashboard details how the ‘super’ district has gained power and expanded its reach with an increasing number of project areas across the state. It’s spent more than $836 million, taken in over $350 million in revenue, and has more than $2.8 billion in assets

This article was written by Katie McKellar.

Utah State Auditor Tina Cannon’s office has launched a new online dashboard showing financial activity and other publicly available information for the Military Installation Development Authority, the special district behind a controversial proposal to build a massive data center in Box Elder County.

Cannon told Utah News Dispatch in an interview Thursday that her office built the dashboard after she was flooded with requests for more information about MIDA as debate over the data center has ramped up.

“Obviously this has been a very hot topic for the state of Utah, and anytime that happens, we get calls for additional audits or oversight,” Cannon said. “So we went out and looked at what is already (publicly available).”

Cannon called MIDA a “super” special district with city-like powers including bonding, land use authority, and the ability to control and capture tax increment, or taxes resulting from new development. She emphasized that it’s an organization with “a lot of complexity.”

“They have extra authority. They’re not a typical special service district. They are a super district. They have a lot of other powers,” Cannon said. “And the concerns being raised with us usually amount to one one of three things: How did they get the authority to do this? And that can be answered by the legislative history and the power structure. How did they fund all this? Where is the money going? That’s answered typically through their financial statements.”

Cannon said she’s also received questions of whether MIDA has acted appropriately and whether her office could audit the organization. However, as the dashboard shows, Cannon said that due to the level of complexity with all the different project areas and public infrastructure districts MIDA has created, her office would require an enormous amount of resources to do a “deep dive audit” of its dealings.

“The type of resources it would take to audit something this large, I hope, is illustrated by the website,” she said, noting that its reach spans far beyond the Box Elder County Stratos project. “It is a very large, complex organization with a lot of sub-entities and sub-projects, and I think just getting people to understand just how large of a question they were asking was our first motivation. This is just not one project. You’ve got to be more specific (in asking questions) because there’s a lot here.”

That’s the point she’s hoping the dashboard will help convey.

“The answers to people’s questions are not simple answers, because this is not a simple organization,” she said. “It’s very complex.”

In response to the outcry over the Box Elder County data center project and the broader questions it has raised about MIDA, Cannon’s office said in a news release Thursday that it developed the dashboard “to provide a centralized, easy-to-navigate resource of this information.”

“The new interactive dashboard is designed to provide publicly available information to help the public better understand MIDA: what it is, what it does, what authority it has, and how that authority has changed over time,” her office said.

The dashboard, now provided on the Transparent Utah website, includes the following information, dated from 2007 (when lawmakers first created the special district) through 2026:

• Legislative history and power: An inventory of MIDA’s statutory authority, municipal-type powers, public-private partnership capabilities, and property tax allocation authority.
• Project summaries and map: An interactive map of MIDA project areas, including Falcon Hill, the Military Recreation Facility (Deer Valley East Village), the Utah Data Center at Camp Williams in Utah County, the Mountain Veterans Program at Sundance, and the newly announced Stratos Project Area in Box Elder County.
• Documents and meeting materials: Centralized access to hundreds of documents, including project area plans, board member histories, entity relationship charts, and public meeting materials.
• Financial activity trendline: A summary and visualization of MIDA’s financial statements data, detailing total revenues, expenditures, assets, liabilities, and debt service through 2025.

“Compiling nearly 20 years of public information and complex data into an accessible interface, all in one place, this tool empowers Utahns to find information about MIDA’s history, scope, projects, and financial operations,” the auditor’s office said. “It will continue to be updated and expanded as additional information becomes available.”

What does the new dashboard show about MIDA?

The dashboard compiled droves of publicly available documents to shed light on MIDA’s complex history and evolving capabilities.

A list of MIDA’s board members and power players appears on the dashboard, including two lawmakers who have sat on its board since its inception: Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton.

It also shows how since lawmakers first created the entity in 2007, its powers have grown, enabling it to create project areas across the state — some with a clear tie to its original mission to facilitate military development, but it has also created some public infrastructure districts with a focus on recreation, tourism and hospitality.

For example, in 2012 MIDA created the Military Recreation Facility Project Area in Wasatch County “to deliver year-round recreation, hospitality, and infrastructure that supports military families while generating long-term economic value for Utah,” according to a MIDA document.

That project area and its public infrastructure districts paved the way for Mayflower Mountain Resort near the luxury ski resort Deer Valley Resort in Park City, which includes a 387-room Morale Welfare Recreation hotel with 100 rooms offered at a discounted price for military members, according to MIDA’s website.

The dashboard also shows MIDA has so far created at least 29 project areas and public infrastructure districts all over this state, with an increasing number in recent years.

Over its lifetime, MIDA has also spent more than $836 million, with over $235 million spent in 2025 alone, according to its financial statements. It’s also raked in more than $350 million in revenue — and has nearly $2.8 billion in assets.

More details of how MIDA’s money is spent and its other financials weren’t linked to on the dashboard as of Thursday, but Cannon said that’s something her office is working to include more information on. However, she noted a breakdown of financials are limited to what’s already included on the Transparent Utah website.

“We are limited on this for what is reported back to Transparent Utah, and that’s one of our concerns,” she said. “We could immediately see what’s in the financial statements and what is in their expenditures, what’s on Transparent Utah, are not lining up. We’ve requested some clarifying information from (MIDA). We’ll update the website as that information comes in, so that we’re clear. We’re just giving the public everything we have at this point.”