Michael Turner, a county supervisor in Loudoun County, Virginia, estimates that the public perception of hyperscale data centers has shifted considerably in the last six to nine months — and he isn’t sure why.
Turner, a government official in the county with one of the world’s highest concentrations of data centers with over 250, said constituents calling to ask about them used to be pacified when they learned that their real property taxes were 25% lower than any other region in the Washington D.C. metro area.
But no longer.
“The answer now is: ‘I don’t care. Raise my taxes. Don’t build any more data centers,’” Turner told a packed room at the Ocean City Convention Center on Wednesday, the opening day of the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference, where artificial intelligence and data centers are a hot-button issue
Still, Turner said he disagrees with counties taking the step to ban data centers altogether, in response to an angry constituency.
Numerous Maryland counties have temporary data center moratoriums of varying lengths. In Frederick County, where a large data center campus is still planned, officials set a moratorium on new proposals through the end of December. In Prince George’s County, the pause is two years long. In Harford County, it’s a ban with no expiration date.
“Just having a blanket moratorium, saying we don’t ever want data centers in our community — if you do it, I think it’s short-sighted,” Turner said. “They can really help the community. We have great schools. We have great roads.”
Turner maintains a detailed list of tips for county officials hoping to place guardrails around data center development. Never sign a non-disclosure agreement. Pass an ordinance limiting data center noise. Require information to be submitted on energy use, water use and wastewater disposal. Build them close to power lines — but not too close. Set limitations on pollution and noise from back-up generators. The list goes on from there.
Frederick County, which neighbors Loudon, is perhaps at the forefront of the issue among Maryland counties.
In 2025, the county passed a zoning ordinance essentially expanding an existing data center campus centered on a brownfield near Adamstown, but preventing data center development elsewhere.
But the reaction from voters to the roughly 2,500-acre campus was strong. More than 20,000 county residents signed a petition to bring the issue to voters in a ballot question in November, but the Maryland Supreme Court squashed it, citing legal problems with the question. Still, in the June primary election, voters unseated the Frederick County Council’s president, Brad Young, and selected candidates who opposed the new data center zoning changes.
Deborah Carpenter, director of Frederick County’s planning and permitting division, said she isn’t sure where the public sentiment will turn next. Currently, it’s a stalemate. There is a hunger for AI, but a growing distaste for data centers.
“I don’t foresee the need getting less, and I don’t see the controversy getting less,” Carpenter said. “From a government perspective, you do what your job is, and you keep going, and you just keep doing the hard things.”
One detractor was Del. April Miller (R- Frederick), who brought her concerns to Tuesday’s panel, including about the high quantity of diesel back-up generators that the Frederick data center campus could require.
“That is what the issues of my community are,” she said. “We’re not looking at cumulative impact.”
This story was originally produced by Maryland Matters, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Virginia Mercury, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
