PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes will hold a public town hall on data centers next week in Mesa, keeping a spotlight on her call for a statewide pause on new projects even as Gov. Katie Hobbs and Republican leaders reject that idea.
The “Community Conversation on Data Centers” is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at the Eagles Community Center, 828 E. Broadway Road in Mesa, the attorney general’s office announced Monday. It is open to the public and the media, and the office is asking attendees to RSVP on its website.
“Arizona has to have a plan before we approve more data centers,” Mayes said in the announcement. “With energy bills rising and our Colorado River water supplies cut by almost 30%, we can’t keep approving projects and hope for the best.”
From Ahwatukee to Mesa
Mayes first promised the town hall on Aug. 31, when she urged Hobbs and lawmakers to pass legislation halting data center approvals and construction, especially hyperscale artificial intelligence projects, until the state develops a plan to manage the industry. At the time, her office said the event would be held in Ahwatukee to hear from neighbors of Menlo Digital’s planned hyperscale campus there. The new announcement places it in Mesa.
Menlo, also known as Menlo Equities, is building a five-building, roughly 1-million-square-foot data center campus at East Thistle Landing Drive and 48th Street, on a 40.6-acre site it bought in 2015, the Ahwatukee Foothills News reported. Residents have complained to city officials about pre-dawn construction and bright site lighting.
The attorney general’s office has stressed it is not investigating the project. “The AG is not investigating the Ahwatukee data center approval,” spokesperson Richie Taylor told the newspaper, saying Mayes wants to hear directly from residents after receiving multiple complaints.
A split among Democrats
Mayes cannot impose a moratorium herself. Hobbs could, but she has said she won’t. “I don’t believe that a state moratorium is the right approach and will continue to work to find the right balance,” the governor said in September, according to AZFamily, while acknowledging residents’ concerns about water and electricity.
The fight is tied to power bills. Mayes has opposed double-digit rate increase requests from Arizona Public Service and Tucson Electric Power, arguing those requests are driven in part by infrastructure for data centers. APS has said grid limits have kept it from committing to new data center customers for about two and a half years and has proposed a 45% rate increase for that class of customer, a plan Microsoft is challenging, AZFamily reported.
Election-year politics
Mayes, a Democrat seeking a second term, faces Republican Senate President Warren Petersen in November. Petersen has accused her of seeking credit for fighting high utility costs she helped create during her years on the Arizona Corporation Commission, and noted the Legislature already approved a three-year moratorium on tax incentives for data centers that had not applied by June 30, the Ahwatukee Foothills News reported.
The Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry has mocked the moratorium idea with an “Arizona Offline Pledge,” daring supporters to give up streaming, online banking and other cloud-based services, while saying the state should have serious conversations about where data centers go.
Arizona has about 160 data center facilities, according to AZFamily.
Photo: Rsparks3 via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 public domain dedication). Generic file photo of a data center roof with cooling equipment and backup generators; not a facility named in this story.
Sources: Arizona Attorney General’s Office; Ahwatukee Foothills News; AZFamily.
This article was produced with AI assistance and is based on reporting from Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Ahwatukee Foothills News and AZFamily.