Declare a One-Year Moratorium on Data Centers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the construction of massive, hyperscale data centers are moving at light speed with no guardrails to protect communities. What's worse is that the most powerful politicians in our state are taking hundreds of thousands from AI hyperscale data centers while urging us all to get on the AI train.

Communist China can cram AI data centers down the throats of their people, but in Alabama, Montgomery and corrupt politicians can only do it if we let them.

As Governor, Doug will declare a one-year moratorium on data center construction so that the effects of data centers on the people of Alabama can be studied, understood, and communicated.

People deserve to understand what is being built beside them before decisions are made. We should not just barrel forward and “do data centers” as certain politicians want to do until we make sure every community is informed and protected. Every person in every community has a right to know what a data center will do to their water, their power bill, their sleep, their tax bills, and their quality of life before the ink dries on any deal. They have a right to be heard early enough to change the deal. No Alabamian should learn what is being built next door from a press release.

The Challenge

Right now, public officials in our state are signing non-disclosure agreements to keep all of their conversations and promises - including tax breaks for data center companies - behind closed doors.

That stops with Doug as Governor.

Today, Alabama has virtually no rules or regulations to protect communities from the rush to build these massive data centers - no siting law, no noise standard, no water-withdrawal rule, no requirement that they pay their own power costs, no public accounting of what tax abatements cost or the financial benefit to the state or locality, and no standards to hold folks accountable should they fail to meet their representations.

That is why one of Doug's first acts as governor will be to impose a one-year moratorium on new state and local approvals for AI data centers above 20 megawatts — so Alabama can write the rules first, the way we should have on prisons, pipelines, and coal ash before we signed our name. 

Doug will not allow Alabama to become the dumping ground for hyperscale data centers.

Doug's Plan

During the pause, and permanently after, Alabama will require:

• A ban on non-disclosure agreements between developers and any city, county, or utility. No council should vote on what its residents are forbidden to read.

• Mandatory public notices regarding proposed data center construction to every resident in an affected community with adequate notice to attend at least two public hearings on any proposal.  

• Full economic, environmental and health impact studies made public from day one, and a funded community advisory board with standing to negotiate conditions and hire independent experts for lifetime monitoring.

• A searchable statewide database of every abatement, water permit, and large-load power contract, updated annually by project and dollar. Alabama is one of 14 states that publish no such figure. That ends on Doug's watch.

• The authority for state and/or local officials to levy appropriate taxes, fees, or other financial measures to ensure that the state and local communities will reap a significant financial benefit if they choose to allow construction and operations to go forward.

• Ethics disclosure by every official voting on a data center project, abatement, or utility contract — financial interests on the record, before the vote, and a lifetime ban for every official and their immediate family from financially benefiting from any project that they voted on.

• Full, transparent disclosure of all true owners of any proposed facility. No shell games.

What the pause does not touch

Not one construction job today will be affected. We cannot break signed contracts — but we can hold existing and under-construction facilities to real reporting and mitigation standards. The pause covers new approvals only and provides twelve months for Alabamians to access and understand the information their government has never provided before.

What this delivers for Alabama

Alabama has spent a hundred years signing deals its citizens haven't read, in rooms they weren’t allowed in, and paying for them for thirty years or more. Doug demands one year of daylight — to read the contract in public, with the microphone on.

It's simple: no secret deals, no tax breaks to benefit the corrupt and the wealthy, and no new construction of data centers in Alabama until we have had the time to ensure our communities are protected. No more raising our electricity or water rates at a time when costs are rising every day. And no more corrupt politicians using the people of Alabama as an ATM with zero accountability or transparency.