Harwood, North Dakota, already had a $3 billion AI data center going up when voters got a chance to make the next one harder to build. They turned down the proposed charter amendment, 325 to 105, according to unofficial results.
Good for Harwood. In one roundup of data center ballot measures with results available Wednesday, it was the only place where voters rejected added review of industrial projects, data centers included, instead of backing new limits.
The measure wouldn't have touched the data center already under construction, which is set to be finished next year. The next company with a big enough industrial project would have been the one waiting on an outside technical review, a public hearing, and written findings. The city would also have had to make records available to the public. Mayor Blake Hankey had a problem with how broadly that could apply.
“This amendment to the home rule charter wasn't strictly aimed at data centers. It was any kind of business coming to town.”
Mike Swartz counted 21 days from the announcement to the start of construction. If that’s going up down the road from your house, you might want a little more than three weeks to find out what you’re in for. Hankey had a clock running, too. He figured that if Harwood took too long, Fargo would get the project. The developer hopes to hire 200 people. Harwood has about 940.
On Wednesday, Google put a number on what it plans to spend in Malaysia over two years. Fifteen billion dollars, with new data center campuses, power and water investments, and worker training all in the mix. In Negeri Sembilan, Google says it’s putting up $160 million for an off-river reservoir and water treatment plant that will supply its campus and the public. Once it’s built, the state government’s asset-management body will own the facilities, not Google. Google also says it will pay for 100 percent of the power its data center campuses use and the direct infrastructure costs required to connect them to the grid. I’d want to know what a developer coming to my town would put up for the same thing.
There were 21 data center measures on the ballot in Ohio alone. Every town gets to decide what it can live with. The company gets to decide where to spend its money, too. If the project goes somewhere else, so does the work of pouring the concrete, wiring the buildings, and keeping the place running.
Democrat Rep. Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) is one example of how the local fight over data centers has become part of a national debate over whether to slow AI development. She wants Democrats to put a “pause on advanced AI development” at the top of their day-one agenda, along with new regulation and a ban on artificial superintelligence.
Top of the Democratic agenda on day 1 needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry, and a ban on artificial superintelligence.
— Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari (@RepYassAnsari) November 4, 2026
How long does she think Beijing would give us? The best American and Chinese models have already swapped places at the top of the rankings several times since early 2025.
And there are people here who would like to keep doing the work. I’ve covered the tradespeople who show up at planning meetings and public hearings to make the case for these projects. For the people installing the cooling systems and wiring the buildings, a project getting shelved means one less job site.
Look at what was happening in construction in June. Data center spending reached an annual rate of $68.3 billion, up $21.5 billion from a year earlier. Over the same stretch, the annual rate of spending on all other private construction fell by $101.6 billion. The Wall Street Journal asked Barclays economist Jonathan Millar about the economy’s reliance on the boom.
“It is very much an AI-driven economy right now. It’s hard to imagine that we would be anywhere near as resilient without that impetus.”
The Journal also reported that Oxford Economics economist Michael Pearce estimated that AI investment and spending supported by AI-related stock gains together accounted for roughly a third of recent U.S. economic growth.
So ask who’s paying for the new power lines and how much water the project will use. Get the commitments in writing. If the deal holds up, pour the concrete. Harwood voted by more than three to one against adding review requirements. If Washington wants to hand Beijing more time to pull ahead, an American AI shutdown sounds like a hell of a way to do it.
