Why Clarke and Mobile County Leaders Say Their Hands Are Tied on Data Center Projects

Residents near Thomasville in Clarke County and near Calvert in Mobile County have packed local government meetings in recent weeks to oppose large data center projects proposed for their communities. But elected officials in both counties have delivered largely the same message: under Alabama law, there is little to nothing they can legally do to stop the projects from moving forward. The explanation traces back more than a century, to a state constitution written in 1901 that stripped most independent governing power from Alabama’s cities, counties and school boards.

That document, still in force today with well over 700 amendments attached to it, requires local governments to seek permission from the Alabama Legislature in Montgomery for many of the basic decisions that officials in most other states can make on their own. The arrangement is commonly known as the absence of “home rule,” and it is now colliding with a wave of data center development sweeping across the state.

A Constitution Built to Limit Local Power

Alabama’s 1901 Constitution was written at a time when state lawmakers wanted to keep tight control over local affairs, and that design has proven remarkably durable.

Of Alabama’s 67 counties, only Baldwin and Shelby — two of the state’s fastest-growing and most populous — have been granted broad home rule authority by the Legislature. Every other county, including Clarke and Mobile, must rely on state statute for most of its governing power, and neither has the kind of comprehensive zoning authority that would let commissioners regulate where an industrial-scale facility can be built outside city limits. That gap is now at the center of two unfolding disputes in southwest Alabama, where developers are eyeing sites just south of Thomasville in Clarke County and in the Calvert community of Mobile County for new data centers.

What a Data Center Is — and Why Communities Are Divided

Data centers are large, often nondescript buildings packed with computer servers and networking equipment that keep websites, apps, cloud storage and artificial intelligence systems running. Once concentrated in major metro areas, they have spread into smaller and more rural communities across the country as demand for computing power — particularly to run AI applications — has surged. Supporters point to the economic upside: individual projects can cost billions of dollars, generate thousands of construction jobs, support a smaller but steady permanent workforce, and produce significant sales and property tax revenue for state and local governments. That revenue potential is a major reason economic developers and some elected officials have welcomed the projects.

But many nearby residents worry about the tradeoffs, including heavy electricity and water consumption that could strain utility systems in smaller communities, along with the near-constant mechanical noise the facilities can generate around the clock.

Thomasville: ‘There’s No Vote This Council Can Take’

In Clarke County, opposition has centered on a proposed data center just outside Thomasville’s city limits. A recent Thomasville City Council meeting drew a large crowd of concerned residents asking what officials could do to stop it. Mayor Sheldon Day told the crowd the city’s authority effectively ends at its own boundary line. “There’s no vote that this council can take directly to stop the project,” Day said.

He noted that while Thomasville has zoning ordinances that govern development inside city limits, those rules do not extend beyond the municipal border, and Clarke County — like 65 of Alabama’s 67 counties — has no zoning ordinance of its own to fill that gap. Day added that the city does retain one lever: it can decline to offer local incentives if the developer requests them, though that would not block the project outright. Clarke County Commission Chairman Jackie Ray Rush said he has fielded numerous calls from residents about the proposal but wanted to be clear about the limits of his board’s role. “I want to be clear, Clarke County does not have a dog in this fight,” Rush said at a recent commission meeting.

“The Clarke County Commission has nothing to do with it.” Like the city, the county commission has no legal mechanism to approve, reject or condition the project.

Calvert: Mobile County Commission Says It Lacks Zoning Power

A similar scene has played out in Mobile County, where residents of the Calvert community attended a county commission meeting to raise concerns about a separate proposed data center in their area. Commissioner Merceria Ludgood told attendees the commission’s hands are similarly tied. “The county commission does not have the authority to permit or not permit a data center,” Ludgood said. “We do not have zoning. What we do comes by statute. Anyone who lives in the county can do pretty much anything they want.” Her comments underscored that, absent home rule or a county zoning ordinance, unincorporated Mobile County has few tools to regulate large-scale industrial land use, whether it involves a data center or another type of development.

State Lawmakers Weigh Whether to Act

The pattern playing out in Clarke and Mobile counties has drawn the attention of state legislators, some of whom argue Montgomery needs to give local governments more say. State Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, said the state should not ban data centers outright but does need to create guardrails.

“We don’t need to ban them but we do need some kind of controls where they can’t just come in and plop down next to people who have lived in a particular place for decades and without any type of say-so by local government,” Orr said. He argued that local governments should be able to weigh in on proposed projects on a case-by-case basis, an idea that could be taken up when the Legislature convenes for its next regular session in 2027. Lawmakers have already taken one modest step.

Legislation passed this year requires data centers that consume more than 150 megawatts of power to come under the oversight of the Alabama Public Service Commission, a move aimed at ensuring the state’s largest, most power-hungry facilities receive at least some regulatory scrutiny even where local zoning does not apply.

A Broader Political Divide Over Data Centers

The debate over data centers has also surfaced in Alabama’s 2026 governor’s race and in Washington, with candidates and members of Congress staking out notably different positions. U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, the Republican nominee for governor, has argued data centers provide valuable revenue for public services and said he supports their continued construction.

Tuberville has also suggested that much of the negative narrative around data centers is being pushed by Chinese interests opposed to the United States expanding its computing capacity, framing robust domestic data infrastructure as important to national security and America’s ability to compete with China on artificial intelligence. Doug Jones, the Democratic candidate for governor, has staked out a more cautious position, calling for a six-month to one-year moratorium on new data center construction to give state and local governments time to develop stronger regulatory guardrails before more projects move forward. At the federal level, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Birmingham, has co-sponsored legislation that would pause construction of all data centers nationwide until Congress establishes uniform national standards for the industry.

Data Centers Multiplying Across Alabama

The Thomasville and Calvert proposals are part of a larger statewide trend. According to Cleanview, a website that tracks data center development, Alabama currently has 27 operating or planned data centers. Most are clustered around the state’s larger metro areas — Huntsville, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and Mobile — but several large projects are also on the drawing board for rural areas, including Lowndes County and Childersburg, along with a planned expansion of an existing Google facility in rural Jackson County. For now, residents in Clarke and Mobile counties are left watching a process that state and local officials alike say ultimately rests with Montgomery.

Unless the Legislature grants new authority to counties or enacts statewide standards for siting large industrial facilities, city and county governments in most of Alabama will continue to have little formal say over whether — or where — a data center gets built in their community.

A Note on the State Constitution

In November 2022, Alabama voters ratified the Constitution of Alabama of 2022, a recompilation of the 1901 document that reorganized its many amendments, including the large number of local amendments that apply to only one county, and removed racist language. The recompilation was not permitted to make substantive changes, so it left the basic relationship between the Legislature and local governments, including the limits on county authority described above, in place.

Related coverage from South AL News

• Clarke County Commissioners Say They Have No Power to Block Data Center Near Thomasville
• $6 Billion AI Data Center Planned for Calvert — and Residents Want It in Writing
• Doug Jones Takes Data Center Pause, Hospital Pledge to Thomasville Library Crowd
• Alabama Regulators Open Data Center Power Contract Review as Calvert, Prichard and Stockton Projects Loom