Mako's Voting Record on:
AI Data Centers
Just because you're FROM a community doesn't mean you're FOR a community.
Background
The proposals on AI data centers rapidly mounted.So did the concerns.
It was Spring 2026, and more than half a dozen data center projects were under discussion across the Lehigh Valley. The prospect of the region becoming a hub for artificial intelligence ran from one corner of the Valley to the other.
HD-183 is among the least commercial and industrial parts of the Valley: open land and working farms. A data center is a poor fit. Like Iron Mountain, it is storage. Once built, it employs relatively few people, draws little other business, and does not keep the farms, trails, and open space around it.
Zach Mako has represented HD-183 for nearly ten years. It is his job to keep HD-183 safe from the influx of data centers. A township with no data center ordinance could lose the power to deny a site at all. Yet Mako quietly voted against nearly every guardrail proposed against the data centers; he even voted against banning secrecy NDA agreements with the data centers.
The first data center without the zoning to ban construction was located in Allen Township. Allen Township supervisors told The Home News the vote was strictly legal. No ordinance on the books would have justified a denial. “None of us are for data centers,” Supervisor Paul Link said, according to the newspaper. “We are trying to get something in place so that we can start controlling [them].” “None of us want this,” Supervisor Jason Frack said. “We are trying to deal with it the best we can to protect the community.” “I am just as worried as you guys are,” Supervisor Sean Sculley said. “[But] the law has to evolve to react to these things.”