Editorial Team
7 min read
Wisconsin Assembly member and gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong proposes a statewide pause on new AI data-center construction while lawmakers write rules on utilities, environmental protections, subsidies, labor and local approval. The proposal puts a clear choice before the state: set those terms before more projects advance, or keep local dealmaking open while regulations are debated.
Francesca Hong, the Democratic Madison state representative who has served five years in the Wisconsin Assembly and is running for governor, wants the state to stop approving new AI data centers while lawmakers set the rules that would govern them. Her campaign’s “Control-Alt-Delete” plan calls the pause a way to establish the environmental, energy and economic terms before more development proceeds.
That makes the proposal more than another set of conditions on developers. It would temporarily put the burden on the state to decide how it protects ratepayers, measures water and electricity use, treats tax incentives, enforces labor and environmental standards, and divides authority between the Legislature and host communities. A statewide moratorium would require a law; Hong’s comparable bill in the last session did not pass.
Hong’s skepticism is rooted in a record Wisconsin voters know. Before entering the Assembly, she worked in Madison’s restaurant industry, including as chef and co-owner of the now-closed Morris Ramen. A profile of her campaign says the Foxconn project in Mount Pleasant—a factory that promised 13,000 jobs and required more than $1 billion in public spending before its value diminished and the site became a data center—shapes her argument against incentives without durable returns. That history explains why a candidate focused on working-class affordability has made data centers a central campaign issue; it does not establish that every new project will produce the same outcome.
Hong’s campaign page for its “Control-Alt-Delete” plan calls for a pause on AI data-center construction. Source: Francesca Hong for Governor.
Hong says her proposal would apply to new construction, not projects already under way in Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam. In an interview, she said the pause would give Wisconsin time to create rules that end subsidies, shield consumers from higher utility costs, set environmental safeguards and require union labor.
Her campaign platform goes further in outlining the direction of those rules. It proposes tying sales- and use-tax breaks to continuing economic activity in Wisconsin; directing tax revenue to emissions-free energy infrastructure owned by state or local government; and requiring energy, water and electric utilities to report consumption. Those are campaign proposals, not enacted standards, and the platform does not supply the bill text or enforcement mechanism that would turn them into law.
The moratorium is also Hong’s distinctive position in the Democratic primary. At a June debate, she was the only one of six Democratic candidates to endorse a one-year pause. Her opponents have generally backed some combination of environmental, labor, ratepayer and transparency protections; former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has said new construction should not proceed until guardrails are in place. Republican presumptive nominee U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has called for ending subsidies and protecting farmland, the same account reported.
The Legislature has already debated narrower regulatory paths. A Republican bill from Rep. Shannon Zimmerman and Sen. Romaine Quinn would require water-cooled data centers to use closed-loop systems, put the Public Service Commission in charge of preventing electric customers from absorbing construction costs, and require annual water-use reports. A Democratic bill by Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin would add electricity-use reporting, energy-efficiency or green-energy standards, a requirement that 70% of a data center’s energy come from renewable sources, and an annual fee for state energy projects. Neither proposal reached Gov. Tony Evers, according to the legislative comparison.
Those bills narrow the real point of disagreement. The question is not simply whether data centers use substantial power and water, or whether communities need oversight. Hong says the bills lack clear enforcement mechanisms, particularly injunctions. Their backers and business advocates argue that standards can manage risk without closing Wisconsin to projects during the legislative debate.
There is an unresolved infrastructure question beneath both approaches. A Wisconsin Policy Forum finding cited in the analysis says new electrical infrastructure will likely be needed for additional data centers, but it remains undetermined how those costs will be allocated. That is why a ratepayer-protection requirement is consequential: it addresses a prospective cost allocation, rather than proving what a particular facility will cost households.
QTS’s company-reported planned Dane County campus and $50 million community commitment. Source: Isthmus.
Opponents do not argue that every project is cost-free. Their strongest objection is that a state pause may take a project-specific decision away from communities that want its construction work, tax base or negotiated benefits.
Dale Kooyenga, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and a former Republican state lawmaker, says in the report that data-center investment has helped Wisconsin suppliers such as Generac and Modine Manufacturing add workers and that projects under construction support thousands of union construction jobs. He also points to the property-tax growth that projects can bring to schools and local governments. His conclusion that a moratorium would mean a moratorium on economic growth is a forecast and an advocacy position, not a facility-by-facility accounting of benefits after public costs.
The local incentives are concrete. QTS has said it would commit $50 million to “critical needs” in Dane County if its proposed DeForest campus is approved, while unions have supported some projects because they create hundreds of temporary construction jobs. The local report also notes that permanent staffing is limited. Those different forms of benefit—one contingent community commitment, temporary construction work and prospective tax revenue—should not be treated as interchangeable measures of a project’s long-term return.
Local authority is itself unsettled. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway has said the amount of leeway municipalities have is unclear because building-code requirements, including energy-efficiency standards, are controlled by the state. Communities including Superior, Wrightstown, and Manitowoc and Dane counties have adopted their own temporary moratoriums, while Madison’s city council approved a one-year pause on approvals, local reporting shows. Hong presents state action as a common floor that equips local governments to decide; Kooyenga calls it “anti-local control.” Both descriptions depend on what a statewide law ultimately lets communities do.
The political opening is real, but it is not a referendum on Hong’s exact plan. In May, 71% of Wisconsin voters said the costs of data centers outweighed their benefits in the Marquette Law School Poll. Its director, Charles Franklin, said skepticism crosses Democrats, Republicans and independents, but also cautioned in the poll coverage that it is unknown how heavily data centers will weigh on votes in the Aug. 11 primary.
The broader pattern helps explain why the issue has moved from planning meetings into a governor’s race. Lawmakers in 15 states, including Wisconsin, have considered moratoriums or other restrictions on data-center development. Local opponents have also challenged projects in Wisconsin: organized community opposition helped end a proposed Microsoft project in Caledonia, the report says. But national and local resistance does not answer the state-specific questions of infrastructure pricing, enforceability and host-community authority.
Hong’s proposal can only become policy if a governor and Legislature can assemble support for it. Her earlier bill’s failure, and the failure of both parties’ regulatory bills to reach the governor, show the obstacle is not just public concern but the ability to agree on enforceable terms.
Before the next large project is approved—or blocked—Wisconsin lawmakers would need to make the comparison visible: who funds power and water upgrades; what operators must disclose; which environmental, labor and tax conditions are enforceable; and which choices remain with the host community. A moratorium postpones those decisions. Letting projects proceed while standards are unfinished makes them case by case. The evidence still needed is not another broad promise of growth or protection, but a rulebook that specifies where the financial risk and decision-making power land.
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