By Will Parker
Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill Friday that would have made Maine the first U.S. state to temporarily ban data-center construction.
The majority Democratic Maine state legislature passed a bill this month to pause large data-center projects until November of 2027.
More than 90 local governments across the country, mostly small towns and counties, have considered or enacted limits on data-center construction, as communities reckon with the local effects of the global artificial-intelligence race.
Gov. Mills was initially supportive of a pause on data centers in Maine, but she had requested an exemption for a project at the site of a former mill in the town of Jay. The legislature voted against the exemption.
"I supported the exemption and would have signed this bill if it had included it," Mills said in a letter explaining her veto.
State Rep. Melanie Sachs, the bill's sponsor, proposed the data-center pause to give Maine more time to study the impacts on the electric grid and on the environment.
Many in Maine, as in much of the rest of the country, have become increasingly concerned about the effects of AI on utility costs. Maine already has some of the country's highest home electricity prices, and data centers demand an increasing amount of power and expensive new infrastructure to support it.
In a statement, Sachs criticized Gov. Mills's veto decision. "She is resisting the will of a majority of Maine people," Sachs said.
Though Maine was the first state to advance a ban to a governor's desk, there are similar proposals in other states, including New York and South Carolina. In South Dakota and Wisconsin, similar bills failed earlier this year.
Other state legislatures are considering rolling back generous sales-tax exemptions for data-center operators, who spend enormous sums every year on equipment.
Maine has few data centers to date, but it has attracted a handful of developers recently. The developers of the project in Jay plan to spend $550 million to build it, with construction scheduled to begin in July.
Mills is running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate this year.
Artificial intelligence and data-center construction are emerging as important issues for voters ahead of the midterms. A Quinnipiac poll published last month found that a majority of both Republicans and Democrats oppose the construction of AI data centers in their communities.
Write to Will Parker at will.parker@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 24, 2026 17:55 ET (21:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Comments