Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill on Friday, April 24, 2026, to impose an 18-month moratorium on data centers with electricity loads of 20 megawatts or more. If passed, LD 307 would have been the first temporary state-level ban on data centers in the country.
Mills’ decision is a departure from her Democratic party colleagues in the state legislature, who overwhelmingly supported the measure in the House and Senate. Yet the version of the bill that arrived on the governor’s desk did not include exemptions she requested for a proposed $550 million data center project in rural Jay, Maine – a mill town in Franklin County in the western part of the state. A previous version of the bill with an amendment to exempt Jay’s data center from the moratorium failed to pass the legislature.
Mills wrote to legislators on April 24 that she vetoed the bill because it did not include these carveouts for Jay, where New York City-based Sentinel Data Centers LLC plans to develop a former Androscoggin paper mill site.
“A moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates,” Mills wrote. “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.”
See Previous Coverage: Maine Is Set to Ban Data Centers, Becoming the First State in the Nation to Do So
Jay’s town manager and commissioners from rural Franklin County and neighboring Kennebec County asked the governor not to sign LD 307 into law in letters this month, writing that a moratorium would threaten needed economic opportunities in the community.
Mills reiterated these concerns when she announced her decision to veto the bill, writing, “The 2023 closure of the Androscoggin Mill dealt a devastating blow to the Town of Jay and its surrounding area. As a long-time resident of Franklin County, I know well how critical the mill was to generations of working families, and how important it is – and how challenging it has been – to promote reinvestment and job-creation at the former mill, which is a brownfield site.”
The governor announced on April 24 that she plans to issue an executive order to convene a council to examine the impact of data centers in Maine, including on electricity bills and the environment, which was an action called for in LD 307.
Mills also signed LD 713, which prohibits data centers from claiming tax incentives under the state’s business development programs.
Strong Support for the Bill
Prior to the veto, supporters of the moratorium across the state urged the governor to sign the bill. Our Power, a nonprofit organization advocating for energy democracy in Maine, set up an online petition that garnered nearly 7,000 letters asking the governor to sign LD 307, according to executive director Seth Berry.
“We’ve never had a petition receive so much interest, and we do expect the concern to grow,” Berry said after the veto. “I can confidently say, Maine people are going to be very upset when they learn about the governor’s veto and are not going to take it lying down.”
Without a state-level moratorium, data center developments will proceed in the state according to local decision-making. In addition to the project in Jay, other proposals have surfaced this year in Sanford, a town in the more populated southern part of the state, as well as in rural Limestone, at the former Loring Air Force Base, a few miles from the Canadian border, and underwater, off the coast of Eastport, the state’s easternmost city. A proposal for a $5 billion data center in Wiscasset, Maine, was paused after community backlash in November of 2025. A $300 million data center slated for Lewiston, Maine, was voted down by city councilors after swift opposition in December of 2025.
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Most new data centers in the United States are coming to rural areas, according to April 2026 research from the Pew Research Center. While 87% of existing data centers are in urban areas, 67% of planned data centers are in rural areas, researchers found. The Pew Research Center used the U.S. Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification and county geography data to make demographic distinctions.
Nationwide, the majority of planned data center construction is slated for the Midwest and the South, with three-quarters of all planned data centers to be built in these two regions, Pew Research Center found. The Northeast, which includes Maine, currently has 106 planned data centers and 397 existing ones, marking a 26% increase in the facilities overall.
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