Who wrote the Project Plan and why the September “minor amendment” is not minor

Kiamichi Tech produced the same drafts as printouts. A printout shows the words. The original file shows the words and the hands: the library system sent the originals, as the request asked, and they carry five kinds of evidence.

1. Document properties. Every Word file stores who created it, who last saved it, when each happened, how many times it has been saved (its revision number) and how many minutes it has been open for editing. These are written by Word itself, not typed by anyone.
2. Tracked changes. With “Track Changes” on, every insertion and deletion is stored with the name of the person signed in and the time. A redline is simply these marks displayed. They are counted below as “marks”: one mark is one stretch of inserted or deleted text, or one inserted or deleted paragraph break or table row, so a mark can be a single digit, a whole paragraph or nothing but a line break. Of the 675 marks recorded against county counsel on 7 April, 174 are breaks and rows.
3. Comments. Margin notes, each with its author, a time, and the exact words it is pinned to.
4. The editor list. When an editor is signed in to Word with a work account, Word records that account beside the name on their changes and comments. It does so wherever the file is kept, so an account by itself does not show that a file was shared. Someone working in a copy kept in another organisation’s online workspace (SharePoint or OneDrive) is recorded differently, as a guest. The accounts are the strongest evidence on the page, because each is an email address the person was signed in with, not a display name anyone could type.
5. Two clocks. Word stamps each comment, and since 2023 each tracked change, twice: once with the editor’s own clock and once in UTC. The gap between the two is what that computer’s clock was set to. It gives the exact time of a change, and it tells one editor’s machine from another’s.

Times in this table are the document properties, which Word stores in UTC; Central time is five hours earlier from mid-March to early November and six in winter, when the two agreements were created. “Marks” are tracked changes, insertions and deletions, by the person they are recorded against.

The “floor”, or required payment, is the least IREN would pay each year however low the abated tax came out. It is the number that protects the schools, the county, Kiamichi Tech, the health department and the library if the valuation disappoints. The drafts do not define the top tier identically, and they do not give their figures the same standing, so each bar is labelled with both. Only IREN’s table of 2 April is written as the payment itself. County counsel’s tables in V6 and V8 are headed “Illustrative”: they apply the abatement to an assumed value. V9 calls its table “a non-binding example”.

V9 also lets the floor fall to $10–13 million a year for up to five years after activation, its “Introductory Period”, and it makes the payment owed in any year the greater of the minimum and the abated tax, so the minimum is what counts if the valuation comes in low. Its figures are not commitments. The plan says “Actual Minimum Required Payments … shall be set forth in the Tax Incentive Agreement”, and at the 21 April meeting, by the committee’s minutes, “Rhyne stated that the numbers in the documents are estimates. Floyd stated that they are illustrated to show what they framework is.”

The September summary does not mention the floor at all. Floyd’s own explanation of the gap, on 8 April, was depreciation: IREN’s floor was “significantly lower than what we proposed based on their depreciation assumptions”. Twelve days later the illustration in the plan he circulated had moved most of the way to IREN’s figure.

Read across a row to follow one provision from county counsel’s draft, through the developer’s markup and counsel’s reply, to the plan the committee recommended and the September summary. Shaded cells are the September changes that run in the developer’s favour.

IREN’s April markup did not touch the definition of MW Energized; the September change to it is new, and it would let the developer’s own on-site generation, not only power delivered by the utility, earn the higher abatement tiers. IREN told the public in June it chose the site for “strong gas production”, and its own February questionnaire gives the fuel for its backup generators as “Diesel or natural gas (natural gas supply is available onsite …)” (supplement, p. 4).

Oldest first, by the UTC time Word stored with each comment. A comment carried from one draft into the next is listed once. Under each time is what the editor’s own clock read when it was written.

A clock is how a computer was set, not proof of where anyone sat. What the clocks add is the order of work and the kind of machine. The tracked changes recorded against Brannen, Bucky are the only ones in the markup with no UTC stamp, which is what a copy of Word from before 2023 would write; the comments from the same sitting carry one, five hours behind UTC. The change recorded against Evan Horn’s guest account, and some of Marat Ahmad’s, are stamped in UTC already, which is consistent with Word used in a web browser on a shared copy, and the earliest of those came some twenty hours after the Bracewell account’s last change. So the markup was not all made in one sitting or on one kind of machine: the Bracewell account’s changes came first, on a clock set to Central time, and the first sign of the shared online copy comes after them.

Exhibits C and D, “Existing Uses and Conditions” and “Proposed Improvements and Uses”, were still title lines with nothing under them in the plan the committee recommended, with IREN’s question to the county, “what do you need for this exhibit?”, still pinned to each. 62 O.S. § 858(A)(5) requires both.

The plan sets its own test for a minor amendment, in Section 9.6 of the version the committee recommended:

The test is not only the plan’s. It is the statute’s own definition, 62 O.S. § 858(D): “An amendment is considered to be minor if such amendment does not change the character or purpose of the plan; does not add more than five percent (5%) to the district’s area; or does not add more than five percent (5%) to the public costs of the plan to be financed by apportioned tax increments.” The statute joins its three conditions with “or”, and the county may argue that meeting any one of them is enough. Section 9.6 does not read that way: it allows a minor amendment only “as long as” the character and purpose of the plan are left alone.

Measured against that, the September summary would change four things a twenty-five-year abatement is built on:

There is also a step before the test. No plan has been adopted. The Board tabled it on 22 June. Under 62 O.S. § 858(D), “The governing body may grant the department, agency or public entity in charge of the implementation of the project plan the authority to make minor amendments to the plan”: a power over an adopted plan, granted by the Board. Under § 858(C), before an amendment is adopted “the governing body shall give notice concerning such amendment and hold public hearings on such amendment in the manner prescribed by Section 859 of this title.”

County counsel said as much in public. On 8 June, by the county’s own minutes, he told the hearing that “if they have to renegotiate the project plan it has to go through the whole process again.” By 30 June he was describing a change as something that “may show up as a minor amendment”; by 25 August, “because we consider the amendments to be ‘minor’ we don’t have to go back through the public hearing process.”

That is a reading of the documents, not a ruling. Whether an amendment is minor is, in the end, for a court if anyone takes it to one. What the documents settle is narrower and harder to argue with: the label was in use by 30 June, for a closed-loop cooling clause, and by 25 August it covered “the amendments” as a whole, before the committee saw a word of them; and the change at the centre of it is one the county’s own counsel had said in writing could not be made.

An impacted neighbouring landowner handed the committee a “Formal Cease-and-Desist Notice and Demand for Statutory Compliance” at the 30 September meeting, and Ron Durbin of Guerrilla Publishing had written to the Board and every member the night before. Both make the same three points, and the documents above support all three:

1. There was nothing to amend. The plan was tabled, not adopted, and minor-amendment power is a power over an adopted plan, granted by the Board.
2. These changes are not minor. Section 9.6’s own test is “character or purpose”, and section 07 above sets out four changes that go to both.
3. Changes to the plan go back through notice and two hearings. That is § 858(C), and it is what county counsel told the public on 8 June.

The landowner’s letter has two errors the county could use to wave it away, so they are worth knowing:

• It cites “62 O.S. §859(D)” for minor amendments. The provision is § 858(D).
• It says Section 9.6 “limits minor amendments exclusively to boundary adjustments not exceeding five percent.” It does not: 9.6 says minor amendments “include” such additions, which is an example, not the whole list. The argument does not need that claim. 9.6’s “character or purpose” test does the work by itself.

Durbin’s letter cites the 8 June minutes “at 9”, and that is right: it is the minutes’ own page number. The passage is the eleventh page of the county’s posted file only because two agenda pages come first. From their second page on, the minutes carry a running header dated “June 1, 2026”; their first page, both agendas and the county’s file name say 8 June. On the amendment, nothing else in either letter is contradicted by the files.

Incentive district; activation

The plan draws two districts over IREN’s ground. Nothing is abated until a district is activated, which starts its twenty-five-year clock. Who decides when that happens is the question this page turns on.

Abatement and its tiers

The share of the new property tax IREN does not pay. It rises with the megawatts in service: in the recommended plan, 0% below 50 MW up to 85% above 550 MW.

MW Energized

The megawatts actually powering the data center, which set the tier. The original definition counted capacity “physically connected to the electrical grid”; the September summary would count IREN’s own on-site generation too.

Required payment, or floor

The least IREN pays in a year, whatever the abated tax comes to. It protects the taxing entities if the valuation disappoints. The “Introductory Period” lets it be lower for up to five years after activation. In the recommended plan it is the greater of a minimum and the abated tax, and the minimums printed there are illustrations: the binding figures are left to the Tax Incentive Agreement.

But-for tax; depreciation

The tax that would be due with no abatement at all. Servers lose taxable value quickly as they age, so how depreciation is counted decides how fast that number, and anything tied to it, falls. The “Deemed Business Personal Property Value” IREN’s markup struck out assumed the equipment is refreshed every five years, which held the value up.

Base value

The taxable value of the ground before the project. Only value above it is abated.

PILOT

A payment in lieu of taxes: what IREN pays on top of its actual tax bill to bring the total up to the floor.

Community betterment payment

A separate yearly payment from IREN, outside the property-tax system, now to be paid to a county public trust.

Behind-the-fence generation

Power generated on the site for the site’s own use, rather than bought from the utility over the grid.

Assignment; “common control”

Assignment is handing the plan’s rights to another company. “Under common control” reaches any company owned by the same parent, so the September wording would let the benefit move within IREN’s group, and to successors, under procedures not yet written.

Minor amendment

A change to an adopted plan that the Board has delegated authority to approve without new hearings, under 62 O.S. § 858(D), and that by the statute and by the plan’s own terms does not “change the character or purpose of the plan.”

1. That Brannen acted for IREN. The file records an editor signed in as bucky.brannen@bracewell.com. That this editor was acting for IREN is a reading of the file, not a statement in it: the changes sit in the file named “IREN Comments” and argue IREN’s position. Nobody has said so in writing yet.
2. Whose workspace it was. Evan Horn is recorded as a guest, which means a shared online copy was hosted by an organisation other than Ernst & Young. Marat Ahmad and Jason Date are recorded without the guest marker, and the 2 April file was made under Ahmad’s name, which points to IREN’s own workspace. The file does not name the host, and nothing in it places the Bracewell account in that shared copy: see section 06.
3. Where anyone sat. The files give exact times and what each editor’s clock was set to. A clock setting is not a location.
4. Who “Jeff Sabin” is, who created the first Economic Development Agreement, and whom McAfee & Taft acted for when that file passed through its system.
5. Who chose the summary’s words. The September file was created and last saved under the name Evan Horn, in a copy of Word registered to “EY”. That shows where the file was made, not who decided what it should say.
6. What the committee did on 30 September. Its minutes are not yet in any production, and the full text of the amended plan has not been produced by anyone.
7. Anything about anyone’s motives. A developer’s lawyers and consultants marking up a draft in the developer’s favour is ordinary. What the files show is whose words became the county’s, and that is a matter of record, not of intent. Nobody named here is accused of anything.

1. [1]

   Southeast Oklahoma Library System — Open Records Act production, 2 October 2026

   186 files, 67 distinct, produced free of charge in answer to letter 08 · every file published byte for byte · the production note, the redaction statement and the full list are source [57] on the timeline

   The nine Word files in section 03, their properties, tracked changes, comments and editor lists; the first draft of 24 February and the 2 March agenda; the developer’s answers to the questionnaire’s data center supplement; counsel’s emails of 30 March, 3 and 7 April, 8 April, 20 April and 30 June; the Clerk’s email of 29 September; the 21 April minutes as certified; the 30 September handouts, including the summary and the cease-and-desist.

   timeline → source [57], the production note · records register → letter 08

2. [2]

   Kiamichi Technology Centers — Open Records Act production, 18 September 2026

   Source [55] on the timeline

   Counsel’s email of 25 August 2026 on “minor” amendments and no further hearing.

   the email · timeline → source [55]

3. [3]

   Board of County Commissioners — minutes of the special meeting and public hearing, 8 June 2026, Southeast Expo Center

   11 pp.: two agendas and nine numbered pages of minutes, posted by the county without a text layer; read by optical character recognition and checked against the page image. Pages 2 to 9 of the minutes carry a running header dated “June 1, 2026”

   Page 9 of the minutes, the eleventh page of the file: “if they have to renegotiate the project plan it has to go through the whole process again.” Page 3: “strong gas production”.

   minutes (copy) · county original

4. [4]

   62 O.S. § 858 — Local Development Act, project plans and amendments

   Oklahoma State Courts Network, retrieved 25 September 2026

   § 858(C) on notice and hearings for amendments; § 858(D) on delegated minor amendments and what makes an amendment minor; § 858(A)(5) on the required exhibits.

   oscn.net → 62 O.S. § 858

This page was checked again against the files the day after it went up. These things were wrong, or said more than the files do. Each has been changed above.

1. The committee had seen a draft. The page said that when IREN’s first comment was made on 13 March “the committee has not yet been sent a draft.” The committee’s 2 March agenda lists “Review of Draft Project Plan”, and a first draft dated 24 February is among its meeting documents. The comment was made in the county’s working file between that draft and the next.
2. Ron Durbin’s page citation was right. The page said his letter cited page 9 of the 8 June minutes where the passage is on page 11. Page 9 is the minutes’ own number; it is the eleventh page of the county’s file only because two agenda pages come first. The error was this page’s, not his.
3. The times can be known. The page said the exact times of the margin comments could not be proven. Word stores a UTC time beside each one, and beside most tracked changes, and the times here now use them. That moves the one change recorded against Evan Horn from 2 April to the evening of 1 April, and the page now says what that change was: a single character.
4. Whose workspace. The page said the plan was rewritten “inside the developer’s own shared workspace”. The files show a shared online copy in which Horn was an outside guest, and they point to IREN as its host, but they do not name the host, and nothing places the Bracewell account in that copy. The opening paragraph and sections 01, 06 and 10 now say so.
5. The floor figures are illustrations. The page marked only the first of the county’s figures as illustrative and said the floor in the recommended plan “is $15 million”. All three of the county’s tables are headed as illustrations, and the recommended plan calls its own “a non-binding example”. The chart and the text now give each figure the standing its draft gives it.
6. Three attributions. The six-month outage allowance is county counsel’s wording, not IREN’s. The recommended plan already allowed assignment with the County’s approval, so the September summary would not make the plan assignable for the first time, and the summary keeps the word “permitted” before “successors or assigns”, which this page had dropped. IREN’s questionnaire gives “Diesel or natural gas” for its backup generators, not natural gas alone.
7. Smaller things. The provisions table has fourteen rows, not thirteen. “Created by” is not always inherited: the 2 April file is a copy of county counsel’s V6 and names Marat Ahmad as its creator. A “mark” can be a paragraph break or a table row as well as words. Central time in winter is six hours behind UTC, not five. Three quotations had been cut short or re-capitalised and are now given as written. The September summary is a proposal, and the page now says “would” where it said “gives” and “removed”.

Two things were added that the first reading missed: the document-management stamp inside the Economic Development Agreement file (section 03), and that “character or purpose” is the statute’s test as well as the plan’s (section 07). The timeline said the September summary “makes the plan assignable”; that row was corrected the same day.