The Lowndes County Economic Development Commission is the entity recruiting Cloverleaf Infrastructure on behalf of Lowndes County. The commission's bylaws, on file with the Alabama Secretary of State for the last thirteen years, sell voting board seats for $2,500 a year. The body negotiating a billion-dollar industrial project on Lowndes's behalf is, by its own written design, for sale at a fixed price, and it operates with no written conflict-of-interest policy of any kind.
The charter, in plain English.
Two prices. Both in writing.
$2,500 a year buys a voting seat on the LCEDC board.1
$5,000 or more a year buys a seat on the Executive Committee, which the Bylaws grant authority to act between full board meetings.2
These tiers are not policy proposals or aspirational governance preferences. They are written into Article 4 of the LCEDC's Articles of Incorporation and Article II, Section 8 of its Bylaws, on file with the Alabama Secretary of State since the corporation was formed on May 29, 2013. They have been the operating rules for thirteen years.3
For the body recruiting a one-billion-dollar industrial project on behalf of one of the poorest counties in the United States, this is the design.
Who is on the board right now.
The current LCEDC board has thirteen directors.4
- Six of thirteen seats are held by employees of the four utilities that serve Lowndes County: Alabama Power, Pioneer Electric Cooperative, Dixie Electric Cooperative, and Central Alabama Electric Cooperative.
- Two of thirteen seats are held by sitting Lowndes County Commissioners. One of them is the Chairman.5
- Eight of thirteen seats, by simple addition, are held by people with a direct economic or governmental interest in saying yes to Project Red Clay.
The vote that recommends a project to the County Commission is not itself a vote of the elected County Commission. It is a vote of this board. The LCEDC has zero employees of its own; operations are contracted to Byard Associates LLC for tens of thousands of dollars a year, and the corporation is registered at 10 Commerce Street, Hayneville, the same address as a Cadence Bank branch.6
Why the utilities hold the majority.
The utility composition is not coincidence. It is corporate purpose.
The LCEDC's Articles of Incorporation, Article 3(d), state that the corporation's purpose includes “to cooperate with... all utilities serving Lowndes County.”7
Project Red Clay is the most lucrative new industrial electrical load these utilities will ever recruit. A hyperscale data-center campus of the size described to residents would consume more electricity than the rest of Lowndes County combined.8 Whichever of the four utilities ends up serving the campus would book the single largest customer in its rural Alabama service territory.
The board negotiating the deal is, in majority, the suppliers who would sell the project its power and connectivity.
The clearest single conflict: one person, two boards.
The simplest illustration of the structural problem is not a committee composition or a board math exercise. It is a single named individual.
Thomas Ellis is the President of the Lowndes County Economic Development Commission. 9 The LCEDC is the body recruiting Project Red Clay. As LCEDC President, Mr. Ellis is institutionally on the side that wants the deal to close.
Thomas Ellis is also one of five shareholder-elected directors of the Pintlala Water System, 10 a small cooperative that serves parts of Lowndes County. If Cloverleaf or its end tenant asks Pintlala to supply water to the Project Red Clay campus, that request comes before a five-person board on which Mr. Ellis holds one vote.
The same individual who would vote on whether Pintlala Water supplies the data center is the same individual who is recruiting the data center to Lowndes County. There is no written conflict-of-interest policy at either institution that compels him to recuse.
It does not stop with water. Mr. Ellis also sits on the board of Dixie Electric Cooperative,11 one of the four utilities that may serve the campus, on the Alabama Rural Water Association, on the Alabama Cattleman's Association, and on the Alabama Agricultural Development Authority. The same person who chairs the LCEDC sits on the boards of two of the suppliers (water and electricity) who would be paid by Project Red Clay if the project is approved.
When the same individual has fiduciary duties on both sides of a transaction, basic nonprofit governance requires recusal. Even if recusal would not change the outcome, the disclosure and the stepping-aside are the rule. The LCEDC has no written policy that requires it.12
One vote, two roles: Charlie King Jr.
The Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission, Charlie King Jr., will cast a public vote on any Project Red Clay tax abatement. The Chairman of the Lowndes County Commission also serves as Vice-President of the LCEDC.13
This is not a claim from the coalition. It is published on the LCEDC's own brand-new official website, growlowndescounty.org, which appeared in April 2026. On the officers page, “Charlie King, Jr., Lowndes County Commission” is listed as both the Chairman of the County Commission and the Vice-President of the LCEDC. The LCEDC put the dual role in writing on its own masthead.14
The governance vacuum.
The LCEDC's most recent IRS Form 990, signed by Chairman Thomas Ellis under penalty of perjury, answers four core governance questions in the negative.15
- LCEDC has no written conflict-of-interest policy.
- LCEDC has no whistleblower policy.
- LCEDC has no document retention and destruction policy.
- LCEDC has no process for review of executive or contractor compensation.
This for the body recruiting a billion-dollar industrial project on behalf of a public county. The Form 990 in which Mr. Ellis attests to these absences was signed by Mr. Ellis. He is the person who would be required, under a written conflict policy, to step aside from any Project Red Clay vote because of his Pintlala Water and Dixie Electric Cooperative board seats. The policy that would compel that step is the policy his own signature confirms does not exist.
What this means for Project Red Clay.
This is why the 45strong coalition is asking for recusal, not removal. Recusal is the structural correction that the LCEDC's own bylaws fail to require. It does not impugn any individual. It applies the rule that a properly governed nonprofit and a properly governed public commission would already have on their books.
What the LCEDC could do tomorrow.
The coalition's asks are short, specific, and entirely within the LCEDC's authority to grant on its own letterhead.
- Publish the current Executive Committee roster. The $5,000-plus tier is the body that acts between full board meetings. Lowndes residents have no list of who they are.
- Publish the FY2022 through FY2024 contributor list with amounts. Each contributor at the $2,500 or $5,000 tier is a board-eligible seat-buyer. Identifying them names the actual decision-makers in this recruitment.
- Adopt a written conflict-of-interest policy with mandatory recusal language, modeled on the IRS template that the LCEDC's own Form 990 confirms it does not have.16
- Confirm in writing, before the next Commission vote, that LCEDC President Thomas Ellis will recuse from any LCEDC vote on Project Red Clay on the basis of his Pintlala Water and Dixie Electric Cooperative board seats.17
- Confirm in writing that Chairman Charlie King Jr. will recuse from any County Commission vote on Project Red Clay on the basis of his LCEDC Vice-President role.18
The questions are not personal. They are structural. They are answerable on a single page. They have been outstanding since the LCEDC was formed in 2013.