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Pima County spokesman Mark Evans told the Star Thursday it may be a violation of the nondisclosure agreement but he was not sure. Discussions are taking place on that question, he said.

Evans deferred the question to Chief Civil Deputy Sam Brown, who is the Pima County Board of Supervisors’ legal advisor. Brown had not responded to the Star as of late Thursday afternoon.

Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz said Lesher committed a technical violation of the nondisclosure agreement. But he declined to criticize her because he said Lesher’s release of a memo naming Amazon Web Services was inadvertent and not deliberate.

“I’m not saying this was OK. This was a mistake, an error,” Heinz said. “But it was not purposeful.”

What county officials term a mistaken release of a 2023 county memo led to a story on the news website AZ Luminaria this week, reporting that the memo showed Amazon Web Services was to be Project Blue’s operator. The memo was undated but Luminaria reported it was prepared in 2023 by Pima County government.

Evans said Lesher had been responding to questions from Luminaria reporter John Washington. “I believe she was trying to send him an email that would help him, by answering questions that he had,” Evans said. “She didn’t realize that the email had records that were not supposed to be released.”

Lesher has not returned multiple messages from the Star this week seeking comment, but Evans said Thursday that he was responding at her request.

Pima County Supervisors Heinz and Jennifer Allen said that under the nondisclosure agreement’s terms, the county can be sued for damages.

“A lot of time and energy has been spent by everyone involved to get to this point, but presumably Project Blue can walk away from the project at any point,” said Allen, an opponent of the massive data centers project. “They bought 290 acres of land but I believe the land sale is contingent” on the city of Tucson annexing that property.

Heinz said the County Attorney’s Office had told him “it puts us at risk for failure to perform,” if someone with county government provides information whose release is forbidden by the nondisclosure agreement.

“It puts us at potential liability,” Henz said he was told by the County Attorney’s Office.

However, Heinz said it’s positive in the end that the information about Amazon came out. In general, he said, the NDA has made it very difficult for policymakers and the general public to get important information about the project and understand the issues involved.

County officials signed the nondisclosure agreement in June 2024 with what Deputy County Administrator Carmine DeBonis described in early June of this year as the “business prospect” representing Project Blue.

The agreement was set to last 18 months and the term could be extended by either party, DeBonis said.

Since then, county and city of Tucson officials have released the names of Project Blues developer — Beale Infrastructure — and the company that is buying the 290-acre site for Project Blue’s first phase from Pima County. That company is Humphrey’s Peak Properties LLC, which like Beale is from San Francisco.

City officials have released a 47-page, proposed development agreement for Project Blue that outlined the project’s planned electricity and water use.

But Fletcher McCusker, treasurer of the Southern Arizona Chamber, had told county supervisors on July 1 that Project Blue’s prospective operator would “walk” if its name were publicly disclosed before all necessary city and county approvals needed for the project were granted.

McCusker told the Star Tuesday he was concerned about the possibility the company might bolt from the project now that its name has been revealed as its prospective operator. Chamber officials had reached out to company officials to learn if they’re leaving the project but hadn’t heard back, he said then.

McCusker declined to confirm that Amazon Web Services will be the data centers’ operator because of a nondisclosure agreement the chamber has signed with the prospective operator.

Heinz said Lesher, who earns a $330,000 a year as county administrator, has his unqualified support.

“I can think of so many words to describe Jan Lesher, but careless is not one of them,” Heinz said.

She has 7,000 employees at the county, and she used to run the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as chief of staff under department Secretary Janet Napolitano during the Obama administration, Heinz noted. “We are fortunate to have someone so qualified here at the county.”

Allen also declined to criticize Lesher, saying “this was unintentional. This was a mistake.”

“I have been very frustrated with the impact of the NDA on both policymakers and the public about getting the information we need to really understand this project,” Allen said. “But at the same time, the county has signed the NDA. I have been working to respect that and not go against that legally binding document.”

In September, the supervisors will discuss potential reforms in the county’s use of such agreements, said Allen, saying she has personally been working on reforms.

Supervisor Steve Christy, when asked if the document disclosure violated the agreement Pima County has with Project Blue, said that under the advice of legal counsel county officials have been “strongly advised to not make any further comment on the matter.”

Christy said he wants to talk about the situation “but I just have to follow legal advice.”

McCusker, whose chamber is a major Project Blue supporter, responded Thursday afternoon, “We are under an NDA, have no comment” when asked if the disclosure violated the agreement.

Pima County Supervisor Rex Scott said he was “not sure what the (Luminaria) article referred to, because if there was a memorandum that was disclosed, it was not a memorandum to the board.”

“If it’s accurate, then it very well could be (a violation of the NDA), but I just don’t have any basis for making any kind of judgment or assertion, because the board has never gotten any communication as to the name of the end user for Project Blue,” Scott said.

When asked about Evans’ acknowledgement that Lesher mistakenly sent a document naming Amazon Web Services as the end user of Project Blue, Scott said he wasn’t “questioning the veracity” of Evans’ statement, “but I’m telling you I cannot confirm the accuracy of the Luminaria report as an individual supervisor.”