Maine Gov. Janet Mills vetoed legislation that would have established what the bill’s backers described as the nation’s first statewide moratorium on large data centers, despite having passed the Democrat-controlled Maine Legislature. In a decision announced Friday, Mills said the bill failed to include a carve-out for a project in Jay, a town she said is seeking jobs after a local mill closure.
The measure would have put in place a pause for more than a year on data centers above a specified size and would have created a special council intended to help towns review and vet potential projects. Mills argued that it was necessary for Maine to examine and plan for the potential impacts of large-scale data centers, particularly as the use of artificial intelligence becomes more widespread.
In her statement, Mills said she would rather proceed through an executive order after vetoing the bill. She said she believes the work should begin without delay and argued that a carve-out issue drove her decision: the bill, she said, did not include the exemption for the Jay project that would bring needed jobs to a community that has struggled since the closure of a local mill.
While bills proposing moratoriums on data centers have been introduced in at least a dozen states, the AP report said none besides Maine had passed a legislative chamber. The effort faced opposition from multiple interests, including data center developers, chambers of commerce, tech companies, labor unions and electric utilities—groups that have raised concerns about how blanket pauses could affect economic development and the buildout needed for technology expansion.
Mills said she plans to issue the executive order she described as an alternative path, with a council that would examine the impact of data centers. The governor’s veto also drew backlash from across the political landscape, including from within her own party, as well as from groups pushing a more conservative approach to data centers.
Rep. Melanie Sachs, the Democratic state representative who sponsored the vetoed bill, criticized Mills for blocking what Sachs called majority support in the state. In a statement, Sachs said the governor is “resisting the will of a majority of Maine people” with her veto, adding that while it might protect the proposed Jay data center, it “poses significant potential consequences for all ratepayers, our electric grid, our environment, and our shared energy future,” which Sachs said made the decision “simply wrong.”
The veto landed as resistance to new data center proposals has risen in communities across the country, even amid high-level political support for artificial intelligence and the infrastructure built to run it. The AP report said President Donald Trump’s administration and many governors have described data centers as a top economic and national security priority in the race with China.
At the same time, voters have raised concerns about the large amount of power data centers use, and analysts have warned about the possibility of blackouts in the mid-Atlantic grid in coming years. Mills’ decision to veto the statewide moratorium while setting out an executive-order council approach reflects the same national dispute—how to balance technology-driven growth with questions about energy demand, grid reliability and environmental impacts.