The state-policy menu on data centers came into clearer focus today. Wisconsin's nonpartisan fiscal bureau finally put a price on the hyperscaler sales-tax exemption. Dayton, Ohio became the largest Ohio city to pause data-center applications. And Tennessee's legislature passed a bill that lets data centers self-power with gas turbines outside state or local oversight — the deregulated answer to the cost-allocation question Wisconsin and Indiana are still arguing about.
Wisconsin's Legislative Fiscal Bureau projects the state's 2023-25 sales-tax exemption for data centers will cost $1.5 billion in forgone state revenue during construction, plus $369 million per year once built. The estimate covers a $1 billion Meta facility in Beaver Dam, a $20 billion Microsoft complex in Mount Pleasant, the $15 billion Vantage Data Centers / OpenAI / Oracle project in Port Washington, and the smaller Epic facility in Verona. State Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), who requested the estimate, has asked the Republican-controlled legislature for an extraordinary session on data-center bills rather than waiting until January.
Underneath the headline number is the legislative-trend datapoint, also from the Wisconsin Watch piece: in 2021-22, 44 of 45 state data-center bills offered tax or economic incentives. In 2026, of 262 data-center bills introduced across the states, only 61 cover incentives — the rest deal with regulation, environment, and transparency.
Source: Tom Kertscher / Wisconsin Watch, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Dayton City Commission approved a 180-day moratorium on April 22, halting acceptance of all data-center-related zoning, building, and permit applications. The Dayton City Plan Board on April 14 recommended zoning code amendments that would add a definition for data centers and list the use itself as prohibited, capturing cryptocurrency mining, blockchain transaction processing, and server farms.
From Director of Planning Steven Gondol's memo to City Manager Shelley Dickstein: "Current zoning regulations do not properly account for data centers, and the impact they may have on nearby properties."
Dayton joins Ravenna, Kent, Shalersville, and Tallmadge in the active Ohio cluster — but it is the first major Ohio city outside the Northeast Ohio cluster to act, and the first to write the prohibition into the zoning code rather than impose a study-window pause.
Source: Sydney Dawes / Dayton Daily News.
Tennessee SB2128 / HB1847 passed both chambers (House 76-14, Senate 28-0) and is awaiting signature by Gov. Bill Lee. The bill applies to data centers requiring at least 50 megawatts of power and prohibits utility ratepayer cost-shifting unless the upgrades also benefit other ratepayers. It also allows data centers to produce their own power — using gas turbines or other methods — without state or local oversight, and to purchase power from independent producers operating outside public utilities.
House sponsor Rep. Ed Butler (R-Rickman): "In Tennessee, we love data centers. We want to have data centers, but we want to put guardrails around that to protect our ratepayers."
Trey Bussey, attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, on the record in the same piece: "This bill removes the guardrails so that independent, gas-fired power plants aren't prohibited, and they're not regulated either."
Six other Tennessee data-center bills — including water-reporting, public-benefit, registration, and the AI Clean Transition Tariff Accountability Act — failed in committee this session. Of seven bills introduced, only the deregulated-self-generation version survived.
Source: Tennessee Lookout / States Newsroom.
The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader ran a syndicated op-ed today by Peter Clark via InsideSources headlined "Backlash is creating a data center buildability crisis," explicitly framed against Maine's LD 307 moratorium. Maine's moratorium passed the legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Janet Mills on April 24 — covered in the Docket on April 25. The Maine legislature is scheduled to take an override vote on Wednesday, April 29 — tomorrow.
Clark's argument: targeting data centers “addresses the symptom rather than the cause,” with the real problem framed as grid scaling speed (Vogtle 3 nuclear took seven years longer than planned; transmission expansions average 10 years; northern Virginia's 2024 voltage event caused 60 data centers to disconnect). The closing prescription is to streamline permitting for grid expansion rather than restrict data-center growth.
Worth tracking the InsideSources distribution channel over the next 48-72 hours: if Clark or other InsideSources authors appear in the Centre Daily Times, Tribune-Review, Beaver County Times, or Williamsport Sun-Gazette, the syndication pattern is confirmed as active.
Source: Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
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