Madison, WI – Today, Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) voted against the majority’s threadbare attempt at data center regulation, AB 840. The bill would restrict data centers’ use of off-site renewable power, deepening an unprecedented energy use problem and Wisconsin’s commitment to dirty energy.
Rep. Clancy spoke against AB 840 on the floor of the Assembly. Floor sessions and committee hearings are still not being broadcast or recorded by WisconsinEye, due to Republican indifference.
Rep. Ryan Clancy released the following statement:
“It should be obvious by now: saying that a bill does something doesn’t make it so. Republicans say this bill protects consumers across Wisconsin, but that’s a lie. AB 840 fails ratepayers, it fails to protect our environment and climate, it fails workers, and it’s simply bad legislation.
This is part of a clear pattern. This session, we’ve seen bills that Republicans claim protect families while actually targeting our kids and their healthcare. We’ve seen Republican legislation that explicitly says it doesn’t violate the First Amendment, when it would actually lock up people for dissenting or peacefully assembling.
AB 840, similarly, is a failure on multiple fronts. It doesn’t confront the looming problem of data centers doubling Wisconsin’s energy use – in fact, it puts up additional, arbitrary barriers to data centers using renewable energy. This bill’s very few supporters say it protects ratepayers, but it absolutely does not. There’s no mechanism to do that and no teeth to make data centers comply. And the authors know it.
Any legislation regulating data centers, whether authored by Republicans or Democrats, must protect labor, the environment and ratepayers. This one is zero for three, providing no assurance of permanent, good-paying, union jobs. We’re already seeing big data center developers fail on job promises – what’s more likely, that a glorified server warehouse becomes the next A.O. Smith, or the next FoxConn?
But I also want to address the framing of this and other proposed legislation. Data centers are not inevitable. People all across the country, and even just in Wisconsin — from Port Washington to Janesville, to Menominee, to Kenosha, to Beaver Dam, to Milwaukee, to Madison – are standing up in their communities and saying they don’t want massive AI datacenters at all. Are this bill’s supporters listening to their constituents? If not, who are they listening to?
So as we discuss guardrails – or in this case, the lack thereof – I ask that we keep in mind the many organizing against massive data centers right now, as a very concept. Scores of data centers across this state have already been stopped entirely – 25 in 2025 alone. Developers and big tech companies are falling through on their promises left and right. As we work to keep them in check, we can work to defeat them entirely, too. Because the best way to protect jobs, the environment, and ratepayers is not to build data centers in the first place.”
