Who can still say no to a data center

How many places have said no depends on who is counting

Nobody keeps one official count of local data-center pauses and bans. The national counts run from 76 to 632 and a fourth covers New Jersey alone, because each one counts a different thing, so each is listed here with its date and what it includes.

Of the National League of Cities entries, three are permanent bans: Marshall County, Indiana; Monterey Park, California; and St. Charles, Missouri. None of the four counts says how many projects were stopped, and the examples below show why a pause or a vote is not always a stop. The counts also do not nest. GatherGov’s 270 adopted actions sit below Denver7’s “nearly 500,” yet both are national counts: GatherGov counts formal action since January 2026, and Denver7 uses its own database. We could not line the two lists up against each other, so we do not add or reconcile them.

Voters are also deciding some of these directly. Ballotpedia has at least 49 local data-center ballot measures in 13 states, 21 of them in Ohio, and 41 of them are on the November 3 ballot. As of October 28, six had been decided, and Ballotpedia says all six favored greater limits on development. One was in Port Washington, Wisconsin, where 66 percent (2,710 to 1,371) voted on April 7 to require voter approval for tax incremental districts above $10 million. The table below names each place, using Ballotpedia’s descriptions. By our reading of those one-line descriptions, 26 would ban, pause or add conditions, 8 ask whether to allow data centers, and 7 are zoning or agreement questions, so a vote on November 3 can cut either way.

Your own county’s measure, if it has one, is on Ballotpedia’s page.

In Butte, Montana, a citizens’ group sued after local officials reversed course on a data-center initiative. The state Supreme Court allowed the initiative onto the ballot in an order the paper’s September 23 story says was filed “Tuesday,” which we infer was September 22 because the story gives no date, then vacated that order on September 24, saying it had not been told that ballots were already printed and mailed. The reports we found do not say whether the measure will appear on any ballot by another route.

The state steps in

On July 14, 2026, New York became the first state to try the pause for itself. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62. It directs one agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, to hold discretionary permit applications for data centers that consume or can consume 50 megawatts or more, if the agency had not found the application complete before July 14. Facilities used mainly for manufacturing, research, education or medical care are excluded, and the order says it “does not apply to permits, approvals, licenses, or similar forms of permission from local governments.” The hold lasts until the Department of Public Service submits the final environmental impact statement. The order sets no end date, and the governor’s announcement says that study “will take up to a year” and that projects can then proceed “as long as they follow state, zoning code and other local approvals.”

The order also sets two 60-day tasks: Empire State Development is to post a Community Investment Framework, and the Department of Public Service is to form a Data Center Interconnection Working Group. On who pays for the wires, the order says the cost of electric system upgrades for large loads “should not be paid for by every-day New Yorkers.” The legislature had separately passed the Responsible Data Center Development Act (S10642/A11560), with a 20-megawatt threshold. As of August 3, Foley & Lardner reported that Hochul had not signed it, and on July 14 her office told Spectrum News she was “still looking at the legislation.” On August 27, State of Politics reported state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez urging her to sign it, and that Hochul has until the end of the year to act. We found no report after that of a signature or a veto, as of October 29.

Where Washington stands

Washington has produced bills and no statute. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act on March 25, 2026. It would freeze AI data centers until national safeguards are in place. Sanders’ Senate bill, S.4214, was introduced March 25 and referred to the Commerce Committee. Ocasio-Cortez’s House bill, H.R.9442, was introduced June 24 and sent to the Energy and Commerce and Foreign Affairs Committees; LegiScan shows both still pending in committee. Rep. Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat on Energy and Commerce, said at a June 24 subcommittee markup, “I am in favor of a national AI data center moratorium.”

A federal moratorium would need Congress to pass one of those bills. The Congressional Research Service, in a December 12, 2025 report on federal permit requirements for data center energy infrastructure, says individual data centers have “a discrete geographic footprint, typically falling under state and local siting jurisdiction,” though some federal approvals may still apply (PDF page 11). That report is about permits for the power side of a project. It does not map how far a federal override of a county could reach, and we found no bill that would give one.

Who can say no, place by place

The question “who can stop a data center” has a different answer in each of these seven places, as of the dates shown.

Three questions to put to the county clerk before a hearing follow from the table. Does the county zone this land, or only the city? Is the vote on a rezoning, a tax abatement or a development agreement, since each is a different decision? Which state permits does the project still need, and has the state paused any of them?

So the answer to who can stop a data center changes at the state line. A county holds the decision where state law gives it zoning, and does not where it lacks it. States are adding holds of their own on top, while West Virginia has gone the other way.

Correction, October 29, 2026: Earlier versions said more than 100 communities had used a pause or ban and about three dozen were outright bans, with no source for either; the story now gives four dated counts and what each includes. They also said the Montana Supreme Court had put the Butte initiative on the November ballot (it withdrew that order two days later); that the House bill was introduced in March (it was June 24); that Ballotpedia counted 38 measures in eight states with 20 in Ohio and 34 on November 3 (it now lists at least 49 in 13 states, 21 in Ohio and 41 on November 3); that New York’s order freezes every discretionary state permit a large data center needs (it holds only Department of Environmental Conservation applications not yet complete, does not reach local permits and exempts some facility types); and that a Congressional Research Service report mapped federal preemption (it is about federal permit requirements). Statements we could not source were removed: a 12-gigawatt New York queue figure, a Long Island quotation attributed to Hochul, a claim that decisions sit with the county in almost every state, and an advertising-spending figure. The first version also said New York was the only state to have stepped in; Texas and Pennsylvania had acted too, and are now in the table. New Hampshire is in the table as well, but no statewide moratorium has passed there; its governor has said she will propose one. This update gives Hill County and Denver the month Denver7 reports, describes Pinal County as a rezoning denial rather than a stop, attributes the Maine reason to the governor’s letter, changes the Texas row from “until state audits are done” to “until the ERCOT and Texas Water Development Board audits are complete,” and cuts the polling and presidential-post passages, which did not bear on where the decision sits. It also stops calling the 76-to-632 range a count of bans, since GatherGov’s 632 includes first readings and items under review and its own categories add to 661; names the places with November 3 measures; and adds the Maine bill’s threshold and end date, the New York bill’s latest status and the basis for the Butte date. Later on October 29: the GatherGov row now cites GatherGov’s own tracker page, published September 10 (credaily republished it September 16), with the page’s definition of the 632, the 1,030 jurisdictions it is drawn from, and the fact that its four categories add to 647; the 661 earlier in this note came from adding credaily’s rejected and repealed counts to those four. The Texas lines now report TCEQ’s October 19 letter, the October 20 dispute over 35 permitting actions and the October 22 suspensions, in place of a flat statement that Texas halted permits. The intro and count paragraph say that Gothamist’s 93 covers New Jersey alone.

Editor written. AI used for spelling and grammar only.