Gov. Janet Mills killed the nation’s first statewide data center moratorium to protect one $550 million project in the town of Jay. The override failed by five votes. Two months later, the Jay developer backed out anyway — and Maine ended up with neither.
On April 24, 2026, Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed LD 307 — a bill that would have placed the first statewide data center moratorium in American history on the books. It had passed both chambers. Five days later, the House voted 72–65 to override her. They needed two-thirds. They fell short, and the veto was sustained.
Maine has no statewide data center moratorium. It never did.
The bill — formally An Act to Establish the Maine Data Center Coordination Council and Place a Temporary Limitation on Certain Data Centers — would have blocked municipal and state permitting of any data center drawing 20 megawatts or more until November 1, 2027. It also created a 13-member council to study siting and report back by February 2027.
Mills said she supported the idea. Her veto letter reads: “A moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates.”
The sentence that follows is the whole story: “But the final version of this bill fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region.”
Jay is a mill town in Franklin County — where Mills has lived for decades. The Androscoggin Mill suffered a boiler explosion in 2020 and closed in 2023 when Pixelle Specialty Solutions left, taking hundreds of jobs and roughly 22% of the town’s tax base with it. Jay spent two years assembling a $550 million data center redevelopment on the brownfield site: 800 construction jobs, 100+ permanent ones. Jay’s town manager and the Franklin County commissioners wrote to Mills asking to be carved out of the moratorium.
Mills said she would have signed LD 307 if it had included that exemption. It didn’t. So she vetoed the whole thing.
Your county commissioners don’t need a state law to say no. They already have the authority — they need to hear from you.
Send a Preemptive Letter Now Full National Tracker →On June 18, 2026 — less than two months after the veto — the company behind the Jay data center backed out. The project is on hold indefinitely.
Maine traded the nation’s first statewide moratorium for one project in Jay, and then lost the project. It got neither.
Local governments moved anyway. A $5 billion proposal in Wiscasset was paused after community backlash in November 2025. Lewiston city councilors voted down a $300 million project in December 2025. After the veto, Warren scheduled a special town meeting to enact its own moratorium. Proposals are still live in Sanford, in Limestone at the former Loring Air Force Base, and offshore near Eastport.
Seth Berry of Our Power, which organized nearly 6,880 letters urging Mills to sign, put it this way after the veto: Maine people will take matters into their own hands, community by community.
Florida is not getting a statewide ban either. SB 484, signed by Gov. DeSantis on May 7 and effective July 1, regulates — it doesn’t prohibit. It bars utilities from shifting data center infrastructure costs onto residential ratepayers and it applies only to facilities at 50 megawatts or more. Iron Mountain’s MIA-1 in Miami-Dade is rated at 16 MW. None of SB 484 touches it.
Every real decision in Florida has been local. Citrus County commissioners voted 5–0 for a moratorium on May 26. Palm Beach County commissioners denied Project Tango 5–1 on July 15 after a 12-hour hearing. Pembroke Park moved its own data center ordinance through its planning board. None of that came from Tallahassee.
Maine’s lesson is not that the movement is losing. Nationally, 75 projects worth $130 billion were delayed or canceled in the first quarter of 2026 alone — matching all of 2025 — while active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states, and 116 municipalities now have local moratoriums. The lesson is narrower and more useful: the statewide route runs through one governor’s signature. The local route runs through your commission. One of those you can actually reach.
Don’t wait for the application. Send your letter to your commissioners before a developer files. It takes under 2 minutes and costs nothing.
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