AWS Drops Government NDAs — After South Bend Banned Them First

South Bend Mayor James Mueller. Crop from Indiana National Guard photo of the Jan. 22, 2016 South Bend Armory expansion ribbon-cutting. Public domain (U.S. National Guard / federal work) via Wikimedia Commons.

The non-disclosure paperwork died in South Bend first. On Friday, Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman made the same rule company-wide.

In an Oct. 2 company post laying out what AWS calls its Data Center Commitment, Garman wrote that AWS “no longer use[s] nondisclosure agreements with the government agencies we work with on our projects.” The South Bend Tribune and ABC57 carried the local angle the same day: the tech giant’s national walk-back landed weeks after South Bend’s mayor and Common Council moved to ban those secrecy deals inside city government.

That sequence is the story Hoosiers should read carefully. Corporate commitments arrive after local officials get caught — or after voters notice — not before.

What South Bend already locked in

Mayor James Mueller signed an executive order on Sept. 16 prohibiting city departments from entering into NDAs and other confidentiality agreements on data centers, the Tribune reported. The order followed confirmation that Public Works Executive Director Eric Horvath had signed an NDA with AWS in 2023 tied to wastewater service for Amazon’s New Carlisle data-center campus — a secrecy deal that left council members unable to get straight answers about what was flowing into the city’s treatment plant.

Mueller’s order covered the executive branch. It did not bind the Common Council. On Sept. 28, council members voted unanimously on measures aimed at closing that gap: a resolution backing Mueller’s order, and an ordinance authored by Council members Oliver Davis and Sherry Bolden-Simpson to bar NDAs across city government’s branches on data-center and related Water Works matters. The Tribune’s Sept. 30 report said the ordinance received a favorable committee recommendation and was next calendared for Personnel and Finance on Nov. 9.

Councilman Davis put the accountability point bluntly after the AWS announcement, per WNDU:

Nothing makes up for what was done in the past, except for being in a state where we can correct it… People used public dollars and they used it in a private manner.

What Garman promised — and what he still sells

Alongside the NDA retreat, Garman announced “Built Together,” a community-investment framework AWS says will add more than $1 billion over five years in data-center communities for education, job training, energy affordability, water and energy preservation, and local priorities, according to his About Amazon post. The company also pledged open houses, earlier sharing of plans, and annual public reporting of energy use and efficiency, water use and efficiency, and the share of carbon-free energy.

Garman’s post frames the national pushback as an AI-race threat, citing “over 100 data center moratoriums being considered across the country” and warning that enacted freezes could write America’s “own losing ticket” in that race. Wired’s national write-up noted the same commitment and the community backlash that has produced local secrecy fights from Tucson to New Carlisle.

Hoosiers have heard the pitch before: private capital, local taxes, jobs. The NDA fight was never about whether servers need power. It was about whether city employees can sign away the public’s right to know what those projects demand from water, wastewater, and the grid.

The secrecy fight is not finished in Indiana

Downstate, Evansville’s Common Council is set to take a second reading Monday, Oct. 5, on a 180-day data-center application freeze — a different tool aimed at the same accountability gap (covered separately by the Hoosier Enquirer). In Hancock County, developers pitching the Mt. Comfort Technology Campus told an open house of about 100 people Wednesday they signed no NDAs; county commissioners still have not voted on a letter of intent or rezone, the Greenfield Daily Reporter reported Oct. 3.

AWS’s Friday pledge does not erase the 2023 New Carlisle NDA, does not by itself disclose past contracts, and does not bind every contractor that stands between a tech tenant and a county desk. Wired noted Amazon did not answer whether the no-NDA promise extends to its contractors — the very layer where some Texas and Arizona deals buried end-tenant names.

South Bend forced the secrecy paper onto the public agenda. Garman’s commitment puts the same words in a national blog. The meters, the pipe, and the rate cases will show whether the rest of the deal follows.

Reporting: South Bend Tribune, Oct. 2 and Sept. 30, 2026; ABC57, Oct. 2, 2026; WNDU, Oct. 2, 2026; About Amazon / Matt Garman, Oct. 2, 2026; Wired, Oct. 2, 2026; Greenfield Daily Reporter, Oct. 3, 2026.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.