A city in Wisconsin overwhelmingly approved a referendum on Tuesday to push back against the development of future data centers.

According to The Center Square, the city of Port Washington approved a referendum that would require “future projects worth more than $10 million to be approved by taxpayers before being added to a tax increment district.”

The referendum to regulate future data center projects is a first-of-its-kind.

More from The Center Square:

The initiative, in response to a large-scale AI data center in the city, passed with 2,710 votes of approval compared to 1,371 in opposition. More than 50% of the 8,257 registered Port Washington voters voted in the election.

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The initiative came in response to an $8 billion data center project that is expected to receive more than $450 million in property tax breaks along with not paying state sales tax on everything from construction to the servers inside to electricity at the site, which is estimated to require as much electricity as the city of Los Angeles once fully operational.

“Tonight, democracy worked the way it’s supposed to,” said Great Lakes Neighbors Incorporated member Christine Le Jeune in a statement. “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.”

Data centers have shown to be unpopular with voters as 69% of Wisconsin voters in a recent Marquette poll said that they believe that the cost of data centers outweigh the benefits.

Republican candidate for governor and Congressman Tom Tiffany vowed to “end subsidies for data centers in Wisconsin” if he becomes governor.

The controversial data center that sparked the referendum is being constructed for Oracle, OpenAI, and Vantage.

“OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers, a leading global provider of hyperscale data center campuses, today announced plans to develop a data center campus outside Milwaukee in Port Washington, Wisconsin. The new campus is part of OpenAI and Oracle’s previously announced partnership to invest up to 4.5 gigawatts of additional Stargate capacity and is the Midwest site that was recently announced as part of OpenAI’s Stargate expansion,” an October 2025 press release from Vantage read.

Daily Caller shared further:

While the measure does not stop the construction of the Trump-backed center first announced in October 2025, it adds a requirement for the public to approve hefty tax incentives for developers involved in future multi-million or billion-dollar projects in the area.

Brad Tietz, the state policy director for the Data Center Coalition — a membership organization that supports such facilities, told Politico that he is “not aware of another ballot referendum” on the issue “that has been taken directly to the voters yet.”

“If this trend continues and grows, it’s going to have significant consequences for our economic competitiveness [and] our national security,” Tietz added in his comments to the outlet.

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However, the city’s residents who proposed and organized the successful ballot measure disagreed with this premise.

Carri Prom, a Port Washington mother who co-founded Great Lakes Neighbors United, the group behind the referendum, told Politico, “None of us are specifically anti-development.”

“We’re not even really anti-tech,” she continued. “It’s just that we want responsible development, and we want responsible tech moving forward.”

 

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