Restricting 188, Opening 83: What 836 Local Governments Did About Data Centers This Week

A weekly read of local government meeting records on data centers, AI computing and cryptocurrency mining — the direction of travel, the standards being adopted, and what the public is saying.

This week, 836 local jurisdictions across 37 states carried a substantive data center, AI computing or cryptocurrency mining item in their public meeting records. 188 of them were restricting the use. 83 were opening or defining it. The rest were at discussion, referral or study stage.

Nearly all of that activity took place at the local level, in city council and planning commission packets, rather than in state legislation.

This is the first edition in which we are publishing the trend numbers alongside the items, and we will carry them forward each week: the restricting-to-opening ratio, how it splits by state, which instruments jurisdictions are choosing, the zoning standards being adopted, and what the public is saying at the microphone.

The direction of travel, in numbers

Nationally, restriction leads by roughly 2.3 to one. That national figure has limited use on its own, because the ratio inverts from state to state.

Pennsylvania is the largest state in this sweep by raw volume — 133 jurisdictions — and it runs the other way: 22 opening or defining against 5 restricting. Virginia runs 5 to 2 in the same direction, and Texas 3 to 1. Michigan, with 106 jurisdictions, runs 31 restricting to 7 opening. North Carolina runs 28 to 7. Wisconsin runs 15 to 1. California records 7 restricting and zero opening; New Jersey 13 and zero; New York 12 and zero.

The reason is rarely local appetite. It is which instrument state law makes available, which is the first thing to establish before reading any local packet.

Where a ban is off the table, you get priced entry. Pittsfield Charter Township’s Planning Commission record states that Michigan law prohibits banning certain zoning uses, including data centers, and that the Township cannot legally ban them. Pennsylvania has no standalone moratorium statute at all — Township of Falls says exactly that in its own minutes, and Township of Milford’s solicitor told the board the Township cannot prohibit the use. So those two states produce overlays, conditional-use articles and special-exception standards. Pennsylvania’s House Bill 1733 would allow municipalities a moratorium of up to 18 months; if it passes, expect Pennsylvania’s column to move.

Where a timed pause is expressly authorized, you get moratoria. N.C.G.S. 160D-107 is cited in every North Carolina instrument in this week’s record. California’s Government Code 65858 produces 45-day urgency ordinances that are almost always extended.

Where neither constraint applies, you get prohibition. New Jersey’s 13 restricting jurisdictions are not pauses. Roselle Park prohibits the use district by district across ten zones. Alexandria Township added a definition and prohibited it in all zoning districts. Hackettstown designates it a non-permitted use in all zones. Delaware Township added an express prohibition “out of an abundance of caution.” A prohibition has no expiry date, and it is a different market condition from a twelve-month pause — worth keeping in separate columns, which is how we track it.

A fourth category is now emerging that fits none of the above: allow it, but only at a chosen scale. Statesboro, Georgia’s minutes state its adopted ordinance “was designed to prohibit hyperscale data centers, requiring instead smaller-scale ‘edge’ facilities.” Rice, Texas defines a Micro-Data Center at a maximum of 5,000 square feet of computer floor space, under $200 million investment or fewer than 40 server racks, and 5 megawatts or fewer. Lubbock, Texas has a proposed 18-month moratorium that gates on water and energy intensity rather than on the use itself. For an operator, these are open markets for one product and closed markets for another.

What “allowing development” now costs

The opening column is not what it was two years ago. Where jurisdictions are permitting the use, they are attaching conditions that have to be priced at site selection rather than at permitting.

Pontiac, Michigan put the fullest version of this to first reading on 8 September. The ordinance permits data centers only as a Special Exception Use in the M-2 General Industrial District, and it sets out what an applicant owes before an application is even accepted.

Before submission, the applicant must convene and pay for a community workshop, at least 15 days ahead, with mailed notice to every property owner within 1,000 feet; the notice, mailing list, sign-in sheet and minutes are filed with the application. The submission must carry a utility demand summary covering anticipated electric demand and water usage, a generator inventory by count, size, fuel type and fuel storage, a hazardous materials statement covering batteries, and a property tax disclosure indicating any abatement or other agreement affecting ad valorem taxes. Section 2.561.B.9 requires an initial $5,000 third-party review escrow, replenished whenever it drops below $1,000, and provides that no application is complete until it is paid. Section 2.561.B.8 requires a decommissioning security instrument at 125 percent of estimated cost. Section 2.561.A.2 keeps every principal operational component — building, generator yard, substation, transformer yard, cooling yard — 300 feet from any residentially zoned or used property.

After the facility is running, the City may audit and meter actual electric demand, water usage, generator testing and noise levels, at the applicant’s expense. Final approval rests with City Council on a Planning Commission recommendation, and a development agreement is required.

Charter Township of Oxford, Michigan noticed two items for public hearing on 10 September: a text amendment creating data center standards, and a map amendment establishing a Data Center Overlay District on all I-1 and I-2 parcels north of Ray Road and south of Davison Lake Road. The draft requires the applicant to demonstrate that on-site renewable generation will meet at least 15 percent of projected annual energy demand, with power purchase agreements, renewable energy credits or utility green power programs available only where the Township is satisfied on-site generation cannot reasonably achieve it. A percentage requirement of that kind is a capital cost that has to be priced at site selection rather than at permitting.

Comstock Charter Township, Michigan reproduced three peer ordinances in its 10 September packet as reference material, and the terms in them are the ones to watch spreading. Montague Township’s Ordinance No. 4.34 requires a host community payment of $2,000 per megawatt of nameplate capacity annually, and requires at application “a copy of the applicant’s power purchase agreement or other written agreement with an electric utility showing approval of an interconnection.” Eagle Township’s draft Section 5.14 prohibits modular formats outright: “Pre-fabricated or ‘modular’ data centers are prohibited. All data center uses shall be within site-built buildings.” Negaunee’s ordinance defines sensitive receptors to include in-home daycares, cemeteries, campgrounds and places of worship. Comstock has adopted none of it.

That interconnection-evidence requirement is the one to track. It also appears in East Rockhill Township, Pennsylvania as a will-serve letter, and in Millcreek Township, Pennsylvania, which requires an applicant connecting to the grid to show that the electric service provider will serve the facility. Municipalities are moving the utility question upstream, into the zoning application, rather than leaving it to the interconnection queue.

Atlanta is regulating the input rather than the land use: its ordinance carries a prohibition on routine use of City water for data center cooling, with a related provision capping total electrical demand for the data center use at 100 megawatts, and states an intention to encourage substantially similar requirements outside the City.

Benchmark: the zoning standards actually being written

There is no model ordinance for this use yet, so the table below is the working comparison set — the districts, buffers, heights, noise limits and financial conditions that appear in adopted or proposed instruments in this week’s record. We will carry it forward and add to it each week, so a developer can see what a given standard costs in practice and a jurisdiction can see what its neighbors have already adopted. Every figure is the jurisdiction’s own, not a recommendation, and items marked draft have not been adopted.

Two things are worth noting about this set. The financial conditions — escrow, decommissioning security, host payment — are the ones converging fastest, and they are the least negotiable once adopted. The physical standards vary widely: a 300-foot residential buffer measured from a cooling yard is a materially different constraint from a 500-foot buffer measured from perimeter fencing, and the measurement point matters as much as the distance.

How the closing side is drafting now

The moratoria in this week’s record are noticeably better drafted than the early ones, and three moves are worth copying into any diligence checklist.

Definition by NAICS code. Waxhaw, North Carolina adopted a twelve-month moratorium 5-0 on 11 August, on the night of the public hearing, after the Board had voted at a work session to suspend the rule requiring a separate meeting between hearing and adoption. It defines a data center as facilities reasonably classified under NAICS Code 518210, or functionally equivalent uses, and expressly includes cryptocurrency mining and AI computing. A NAICS anchor is considerably harder to argue around than a square-footage or megawatt threshold. The ordinance also reaches rezonings, not just permits, which closes the legislative route around it. Applications complete and vested before the commencement date are carved out, as is equipment clearly incidental to a permitted principal use.

Closing the accessory route. Forest Park, Georgia — where data centers had been permitted by right in designated areas — adopted a 90-day pause 3-0 at a special called meeting on 31 August, with a definition that catches the use “regardless of whether such use is accessory to or combined with another principal use.” Most other ordinances this week leave that route open.

Shifting the burden. Visalia, California took up an urgency interim ordinance under Government Code 65858 whose staff report reaches any use that, to the extent it cannot be shown not to be a data center, will also be caught. That puts the burden on the applicant to prove a proposal is not one, which reaches mixed-use and ambiguous industrial filings a threshold test would let through.

Two further instruments extend the reach of a pause beyond zoning. Newton Falls, Ohio passed Ordinance 2026-52 on 2 September, a twelve-month emergency moratorium that suspends discretionary utility-service approvals alongside land-use approvals — the first instrument in this week’s record to reach interconnection directly. Valley City, North Dakota’s Resolution 2535 bars the City from executing or approving related non-disclosure agreements, which reaches the step that normally precedes any discussion of load, water or incentives.

Camden County, North Carolina is the reminder that a short moratorium is not necessarily a short wait. Its County Attorney’s stated position is that because data centers are not defined, not listed and not substantially similar to any permitted use in the UDO, they are already prohibited; the five-month moratorium exists to let staff memorialize that through a text amendment. Check whether a target jurisdiction’s code lists the use at all before reading a short pause as a short delay.

What operators are filing into

MCD 7, LLC is before Limerick Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania with Project Laurel: a 750-megawatt, eight-building campus on roughly 191 acres, filed as a conditional use under a data center overlay option added to the code in 2024. It is the largest single load in this week’s record. A plan note states that the PECO switch-yard, substation, utility storage yard and user substation will all be constructed during the development. The wastewater consultant describes a closed-loop cooling system with 26,757 gallons per day of wastewater.

The submission is also a reminder to read plan sets closely. The township engineer records the building height shown as 835 feet on the cover sheet, 100 feet in the dimensional standards table and 85 feet elsewhere, against a code maximum of 120, and asks the applicant to resolve it. The impervious coverage percentages correspond to a site of roughly 100 acres, not the 191.30-acre tract described. A separate state technical-assistance record describes an approximately 360-acre site. None of that is reconciled in the record, and none of these figures is an approval.

Public sentiment, as it appears in the record

Public comment usually appears in the record weeks before an ordinance does, and this week it ran heavily in one direction.

In Warren County, North Carolina, six citizens spoke at the 19 August hearing and all six spoke in favor of the moratorium. One asked whether data centers could be banned completely. Another asked that the County seek alliances with neighboring counties — which is the mechanism by which the North Carolina count keeps climbing, since each adopted ordinance circulates as a template next door.

In Waxhaw, a retired Duke Energy engineer told the Board that 97 data centers already operate in North Carolina. The Mayor noted there are no active discussions about data center construction in Waxhaw, or to his knowledge on the eastern side of Union County; the moratorium was described as proactive and preemptive. Several of this week’s pauses were adopted the same way, with no application pending in the jurisdiction.

In Throop Borough, Pennsylvania, July minutes record residents asking why the Borough does not simply prohibit data centers, and the solicitor’s answer being that Pennsylvania municipalities cannot. In Statesboro, Georgia, a rezoning was opposed on the grounds that data centers generate little long-term employment. In Wythe County, Virginia, public comment referred to a plan to site 37 data centers and 14 associated facilities, and to a company named as DECA developing a proposed 1,000-acre project; a supervisor reported visiting Henrico County, where officials said data centers use approximately 2 percent of the county’s water and have been present since the late 1990s. Four residents spoke on data centers in Sarasota County, Florida, where a motion was made for no revisions or approvals on any data center application for twelve months.

Several jurisdictions are now writing that public process into the ordinance itself rather than handling it at the podium. Pontiac writes an applicant-funded community workshop into the ordinance as a condition of a complete application. Forest Park is negotiating a community benefits agreement with Digital Realty, with an advisory council including Ward 3 residents, roughly a year in the making. In Silver Bow County, Montana, a court is deciding whether a data center question reaches the ballot at all. In Keller, Texas, the Council held a closed session on possible legal action over a million-square-foot data center approved in the neighboring Town of Westlake. A neighboring municipality’s litigation is a risk that will not appear anywhere in the host jurisdiction’s zoning file.

The other direction: where the money is still moving

Not every instrument restricts, and the opening side this week is mostly financial rather than regulatory.

Beaver Dam, Wisconsin’s Tax Incremental District No. 10 was created under Wis. Stat. 66.1105(17)(i), a data-center-specific TID class, for the Meta project alone. It carries $204,218,300 of incremental value as of 1 January 2026, and under the special legislation its increment does not count against the 12 percent value test that normally caps district creation, project costs must relate to a data center inside the district, and increments may not be allocated to another city district. It is the only state instrument in this week’s record that finances the use rather than restricting it.

In Douglasville, Georgia, Microsoft exercised its option to purchase the data center financed through a Series 2020 Development Authority bond of up to $400 million, and the 2020 tax incentives agreement is being terminated on a consent agenda — the first time in this brief that a Georgia bond-lease abatement structure has been seen reaching its end. Halifax County, North Carolina is amending an economic development agreement with Quiet Data Centers Halifax Inc., against a state bill that in its current form reaches only certain projects. Greensville County, Virginia took a roll call vote on an ordinance creating a separate tax classification for computer equipment and peripherals used in a data center, effective 1 January 2027; the rate is not stated in the record, and one landowner told the Board he has not been contacted by a data center.

What we will be tracking week over week

Starting with this edition, each weekly brief carries the same series so the movement is visible rather than anecdotal.

The practical point

Most of these items surface as routine business — a first reading, a work session, a consent agenda item, a staff memo reproducing three other townships’ ordinances as reference material — well before they are reported anywhere. Pontiac’s rules were on the record from 10 June, when the Planning Commission held its public hearing, and are still not adopted. Camden County’s attorney stated the county’s legal position at a public hearing on 3 August, five weeks before the update item reached the 8 September agenda. Waxhaw’s Board settled the procedural question at a work session before adopting the ordinance the night of its hearing.

In each case the standards were readable weeks before they took effect, and in Pontiac’s case they are readable now, before second reading, while the code still has no data center rules and no pause in place.

Obedio reads that window. We monitor government meeting records at scale and publish this brief weekly — 836 jurisdictions across 37 states carried an item this week alone.

This article summarizes public government meeting records and is factual background, not legal, financial, or investment advice. Moratorium dates, ordinance numbers and thresholds change without notice; verify every date and citation with the jurisdiction before relying on it.