InnovateUS 
This article is co-published with Fast Company
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey recently laid down a new rule on the contentious question of whether to build data centers in her state: “Unless a community says yes to a data center, we are saying no.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro took it a step further, requiring developers to “[c]ommit to open, transparent engagement with local residents and leaders…early enough in the process to allow meaningful public input on major design decisions."
But what does it mean for a community to say yes?
Is “yes” a vote at a town meeting? A zoning approval? Who speaks for the community? When Texas compels developers to account for water use, electricity costs, noise, traffic, and other neighborhood impacts before connecting to the grid, how should residents help shape those choices? And when Massachusetts requires a community benefits agreement (a negotiated deal over what a developer will give back to the community), how does a town know what it can ask for?
Governors of both parties are competing aggressively for data center investment and jobs. But at a time when more Americans are more likely to oppose an AI data center in their area than a nuclear power plant, building the infrastructure for the AI economy increasingly depends on earning the trust of the communities asked to host it.
That trust is in short supply. Between January 2024 and May 2026, at least 46 proposed AI data center projects across 20 states—representing more than $170 billion in announced investment—were blocked, withdrawn, or stalled following community opposition, according to one industry analysis.
Developers often respond to that skepticism by trying to justify their projects with promises of jobs, tax revenue, investment, and economic growth. Some hold information sessions and public hearings intended to reassure residents about water consumption, electricity demand, noise, and other environmental impacts. Others withhold the information communities need to evaluate a project, relying on nondisclosure agreements, shell companies, or selective disclosure, which deepens mistrust.
Too often, public engagement begins after the most consequential decisions have already been made. Residents are presented with a proposal and asked to react to it. And community benefits are determined by what companies are prepared to offer rather than what residents say their community actually needs.
To be sure, the public debate over data centers suffers from its own problems. Data centers have become proxies for larger anxieties about AI, climate change, jobs, and corporate power. Most people have never had reason to understand how a hyperscale AI data center works, much less compare its electricity or water consumption with other industrial uses. Claims about their environmental and economic effects can be confusing, contradictory, or exaggerated.
But the shortcomings of the way we engage with this issue are an argument for better engagement, not less.
Communities need credible information to understand the trade-offs. And developers and public officials need local knowledge that cannot be found in an engineering report: which water resources residents already worry about, where additional traffic or noise would be especially disruptive, what kinds of jobs the community needs, what infrastructure is already strained, and what investments residents believe would make the project worthwhile.
Obtaining that collective intelligence does not have to become a referendum on whether America should build data centers. Some communities actively want them. Governors and economic-development officials often see data centers as a way to attract investment, expand the tax base, and participate in a rapidly growing industry.
In Ellendale, North Dakota, a town of just over 1,000 people, annual sales-tax revenue has more than tripled since a data center arrived, providing new resources for local needs. (Though it’s worth noting, as the North Dakota Monitor reported in August, the state’s data centers have also received millions in state sales-tax breaks.)
Other communities will conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits. The point is not to prescribe the answer but to give communities the information and capacity to reach an informed answer of their own.
That information should be provided early enough that the data center's design and location can change in response to community concerns. Companies should also not conduct negotiations that affect communities behind closed doors, as we’ve seen across the country, from North Carolina to California.
A community might ask for changes in siting or design. It might demand stronger water-conservation requirements, noise limits, or protections against higher electricity costs. It might want local hiring and training commitments. Or it might negotiate investments in schools, libraries, transportation, parks, or other local priorities.
Communities should be able to have an open, accessible, and informed conversation about a larger question: If we are hosting the physical infrastructure of the AI economy, what should we receive from the AI economy in return?
Community benefits agreements, good neighbor agreements, and similar policy mechanisms could provide more than money. They could include AI training for residents and small businesses, technical expertise for schools and nonprofits, computing resources for universities, or support for local governments to build tools that improve public services. They could help pay for grid upgrades that ease the strain data centers place on the power system and on residents’ utility bills. And they can supplement local ordinances on zoning, noise, water, pollution, and aesthetics.
Glimpses of what a different relationship could look like already exist.
In West Virginia, Clearway Energy and Microsoft recently established a 20-year community energy fund expected to provide $13 million to the region. A local advisory committee identified priorities for the first round of funding, directing $4.5 million to workforce development, emergency preparedness, education, home weatherization, and other local needs.
In Northwest Louisiana, Amazon is investing $18 million in fully funded electric-grid and water-infrastructure upgrades that do not raise local ratepayer costs, new solar generation, workforce training, local business opportunities, and steps to use less energy and water. A nonprofit partner, Change X, manages the Amazon Northwest Louisiana Community Fund, which has already awarded $500,000 to about 50 local nonprofits, schools, and community projects.
In Colorado City, Texas, Cipher Digital, Fluidstack, and Anthropic, which are building a data center nearby, committed $10 million to repair and expand the city’s water system after storm damage to its well pump station left residents without reliable water for days. The companies established and funded a nonprofit organization to manage the funds in partnership with community leaders, and said the data center would run on its own on-site water and draw nothing from the city system.
In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the city negotiated a community benefits agreement with Chirisa Technology Parks, the developer of the Lancaster AI Hub, that goes beyond writing a check. Alongside $20 million in community investments, it commits the developer to limits on water use, 100% clean electricity, noise caps, and local hiring and workforce development.
These examples are still evolving. But they demonstrate something important: the terms of a data center deal are not fixed. Communities can help shape them.
Still, requiring engagement is only the beginning. Communities also need the capacity to engage.
A small town negotiating with one of the world's largest technology companies does not begin on equal footing. Residents need independent technical expertise, understandable information about environmental and economic impacts, skilled facilitation, and ways for people to participate beyond showing up at a public hearing on a Tuesday night.
States should help provide that capacity.
Universities, philanthropies, and civic organizations can help. AI itself can make technical documents easier to understand, translate meetings, organize thousands of comments, identify unanswered questions, and allow residents to explore competing options. In Bowling Green, Kentucky, for example, Jigsaw, a Google unit, supplied AI tools that helped organizers collect and synthesize thousands of residents’ ideas for a long-range community plan.
The principle should be straightforward: developers can pay for the conversation without owning the conversation.
A legitimate process may sometimes produce a no. But even where the larger decision to permit data center development has already been made, communities still have consequential choices to make about how projects are built and what obligations developers assume.
For developers, this is not simply civic altruism. As hyperscalers bet their billions on “speed to power,” it is increasingly a business imperative. Developers who spend years acquiring land, securing power, and developing a site only to discover that they have lost the community have made an extraordinarily costly mistake.
That gives developers a powerful incentive to change how they engage. The question is whether they will simply get better at selling projects to communities—or start involving communities in shaping them.
The better strategy is also the more democratic one: start the conversation before the blueprint is finished.
Ask residents what they need to know. Give them independent information with which to evaluate the answers. Put meaningful choices on the table. Give communities the capacity to negotiate. And make sure that when a community is asked to host the infrastructure powering the AI economy, it has a meaningful role in deciding the terms.
Developers can't earn community trust after a data center is designed. It is part of the infrastructure they need to build from the beginning.
Dr. Deborah D. Stine is a senior fellow for InnovateUS, founder of the Science and Technology Policy Academy, and has conducted analysis on AI data centers for nonprofits in Appalachia. She is the author of “From Expertise to Impact: A Practical Guide to Informing and Influencing Science and Technology Policy.”