A Wisconsin city just made a historic push to say no to big tech’s data center frenzy.
Voters in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington just overwhelmingly passed a measure to limit the construction of future data centers unless the community gets a say.
Port Washington residents voted on the referendum earlier this week, which made it to the ballot through a grassroots effort that required collecting signatures across the 12,000-person town. The backlash against big tech’s AI plans was prompted by a controversial project in the area known as the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus, a sprawling $15 billion 672 acre computing hub for OpenAI and Oracle.
That construction is part of a $500 billion Trump-backed initiative known as “Stargate” that will dot the country with infrastructure designed to power the AI boom. Other Stargate sites include Shackelford County, Texas, Doña Ana County, New Mexico, and Lordstown, Ohio. “AI can only fulfill its promise if we build the compute to power it,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the Stargate announcement. “That compute is the key to ensuring everyone can benefit from AI and to unlocking future breakthroughs.”
While they weren’t able to keep Stargate from coming to town, the Port Washington residents who organized the opposition to data centers are looking ahead. Last year, they formed the Great Lakes Neighbors United nonprofit to unite the community around concerns about big tech’s interest in their small city.
“Tonight, democracy worked the way it’s supposed to,” the group’s spokesperson Christine Le Jeune said after the referendum succeeded. “Over 1,000 residents signed the petition that put this measure on the ballot, and tonight Port Washington voters spoke with one clear voice. The people deserve a seat at the table when their tax dollars are on the line.”
The ordinance will force the city’s government to seek approval from voters before offering tax breaks for development projects over $10 million. The voter-led effort will add some roadblocks to future data center development, but it won’t halt construction of an enormous AI data center project that broke ground in December. Nearby Port Washington residents have already protested 24-hour noise at the construction site in packed city council meetings.
“We are not against development,” Great Lakes Neighbors United founding member Michael Baester said. “We are for development that the community understands, supports, and has chosen together.”
Data center skepticism is growing
Americans are growing skeptical about the explosion of data centers built to power big tech’s AI explosion. The massive power and computing demands of companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Amazon have quickly outstripped supply, a choke point that many tech CEOs have lamented as an obstacle to growth. Tech’s biggest players are pouring billions and even trillions of dollars in investment into dotting the country with data centers – many of which end up in smaller, rural communities around the country.
While executives paint all of that spending as essential for the promised AI breakthroughs that will improve everyday life, Americans aren’t always buying it. A Pew survey conducted earlier this year showed that Americans think data centers will negatively impact the environment, their energy bills, and the quality of life for people who live nearby.
Data centers have powered cloud computing services for many years, but in 2026 the huge warehouse-like buildings mostly devoid of human workers are becoming a hot button issue. According to Pew, three quarters of Americans now say that they have heard or read at least a little bit about data centers, with a quarter saying they’ve encountered the topic a lot.
Unlike most Americans, data centers also enjoy enormous tax breaks. The Texas Tribune reported this month that the state – a magnet for big tech’s AI buildout – will lose $3.2 billion in sales tax revenue over the course of the next two years. Lucrative tax breaks can bring the world’s wealthiest companies to town, but in places like Port Washington, communities are starting to wonder if they’re getting the raw end of the deal.