County places moratorium on data centers
LISA HOBBS - News Editor
During its monthly session Monday night, the Warren County Commission voted to place a one-year moratorium on data centers.
“I do want the public to understand; this has nothing to do with the proposed data center in the city of McMinnville,” said County Executive Terry Bell. “I know a lot of people think that this has something to do with that. This is the most proactive thing this county court has done: to pass a moratorium to keep this from happening in our county to protect our residents. That’s what we are doing here tonight.”
The purpose of this resolution is to establish a temporary stay to allow Warren County officials sufficient time to investigate, evaluate, and determine what protections, regulations, resolutions, codes, ordinances, standards, and polices may be necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens and residents of Warren County with respect to data centers, cryptocurrency mining facilities, and other high-density computing operations.
Bells says the county’s plan is to work towards determining what they can do to limit, without banning, data centers.
“There are some factories that use data,” he said. “Our hospital has data, so we don’t want to get it to where you can’t even have a hospital in the county. We want to get committees together and have them begin researching that and find out the appropriate level of regulations that we can put on it. We can get a private act ready by this fall.”
A county private act is a localized law passed by the Tennessee General Assembly that applies only to a specific county or municipality rather than the entire state. These acts address specific administrative, tax, or structural needs that are not covered by standard state general laws.
Because the county does not have zoning restrictions like the city of McMinnville, it has uses private acts to address past issues like adult entertainment, junkyards, etc.
The One Hundred Fifteenth Tennessee General Assembly convenes at noon on Tuesday, January 12, 2027.
County Attorney Robert Bratcher was questioned by Commissioner Scott Kelly about the possibility of the county opening itself up to litigation by targeting a specific industry.
“The question about whether or not that is a litigation attractor is difficult to predict,” said Bratcher. “The thing that’s important to note regarding that, the suit is the type where they’d be asking the court to declare the moratorium to be unenforceable and therefor, allowing them to go ahead and start a business operation, because there’s not one out there. So, it’s not a question of an existing data center, AI company or cryptocurrency mining operation that would have to stop operations and have profit losses, building losses, wage losses and other damages that you might see in one of those lawsuits. This would be a quick lawsuit trying to define whether or not this moratorium applies to the company seeking to do business during the duration of this and whether or not this would apply to them and is enforceable.”
When questioned about the duration of 12 months and the possibility of adding to that, Bratcher cautioned commissioners against extending the moratorium past 18 months, because that could be interpreted as a ban and not a temporary stay.
Commissioners unanimously voted 20-0 to approve the resolution. Voting in favor were Commissioners Kelly, Ron Lee, Christy Ross, Charles Dotson, Ken Martin, Chris Rippy, Blaine Wilcher, Brad Hillis, Donna Smith, Phillip Stout, Gary Martin, Tommy Savage, Scott Rubley, Carlene Brown, Steven D. Helton, Gary Prater, Cole Taylor, Michael Bell, Steve M. Glenn and Kenny Moffit. Absent were Carl D. Bouldin, Randy England, James Hines and Cam Montgomery.
Unlike the city of McMinnville’s use of ordinances, which require two passing reads, Warren County government uses resolutions and only one passing read is required.