These companies aren't coming in, buying property at market rates, and developing it with existing infrastructure under current zoning laws. They usually want tax breaks, major infrastructure changes, and other accommodations and guarantees. It's completely reasonable for people to want a dialog with their representatives before those kinds of arrangements are made with a company on their behalf. And it's entirely reasonable for them to vote out reps that are overly accommodating.

I live in an historic district. I had to attend a public meeting a couple years ago to get approval to change a lamp post. It is perfectly reasonable to ask tech companies to show up and defend massive projects to the public.

Usually the state gives tax breaks and the town gets double it's tax revenue. That's why the councils rush to vote yes, and $20-30M annually is a rounding error for the datacenter.

A meeting to get a lamp post change is exactly how progress stops. It is why we can't build anything in US and it costs a billion dollars per mile of high speed rail.