CAPITOL HILL — Rep. Tim Burchett’s new data center bill is one sentence long. The most revealing thing he has said about it isn’t in that sentence.
“It just provides local control. That’s what we need,” Burchett, R-Tenn., told Migrant Insider in an exclusive interview on the House steps Thursday morning after introducing the Community Control of Data Centers Act. “If folks want ’em, they oughta be able to get ’em. But if they don’t, it’s local control. I come from local government. Folks are really concerned about ’em. I think they oughta be on our military installations and on federal land.”
Migrant Insider asked, “But not in communities?”
“No, not unless they want ’em,” Burchett said.
A House Republican just drew a line through the AI boom. On his side, the data centers go on land Washington owns. On the other side are towns that never asked for them, and they get to keep them out. That puts Burchett with the growing local backlash against data centers. It also puts him in the path of an administration that has spent more than a year clearing federal land for exactly these buildings.
What the bill does
H.R. 10976 was introduced Tuesday and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The one-page bill says that “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” no federal funds may pay to build or run a data center unless the project follows all applicable state and local laws, including getting any required state or local approval. It takes its definition of “data center” from a 2007 energy law.
The bill doesn’t leave it to the towns to decide whether a project followed local rules. That call belongs to the secretary of energy, in consultation with the secretary of the Treasury.
That’s an odd detail for a bill sold as a rebuke to distant power. Burchett’s press release says the decision to build should rest with the people who live in those towns, “not Washington bureaucrats and Big Tech CEOs.” Under the bill’s text, two Cabinet secretaries in Washington still decide whether those people got their say.
“As the former Mayor of Knox County, I know how important local control is over projects that could have adverse effects on the municipality where they’re located,” Burchett said in a statement. “People are sick and tired of federal overreach that harms their communities, businesses, and the places they call home.”
Federal land, in his own backyard
Burchett’s preferred destination already exists. In July 2025, the Energy Department selected Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Reservation, Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and Savannah River Site, where private sector partners will develop AI data center and energy generation infrastructure.
The selection aligns with executive orders from President Trump that prioritize accelerated permitting for data centers, advanced nuclear deployment, and expanded energy production on federal lands. At Oak Ridge, about 25 miles west of Knoxville, two sites were under consideration: one at the East Tennessee Technology Park and the other on land next to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
County zoning boards generally have little say over federal land. Burchett’s bill never mentions military installations or federal land. It doesn’t steer data centers toward either one. It only cuts off federal dollars to projects that skip local approval.
A crowded lane
Burchett isn’t the first Republican to see this backlash coming. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., proposed the Local Control Protection Act, H.R. 9262, in June. It would also require community benefit agreements as a condition for federal tax incentives.
Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., filed the Protecting Local Control of Data Centers Act, which would bar any federal agency head from overriding, bypassing, or displacing state or local land-use, zoning, siting, or permitting authority for data centers on non-Federal land.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has gone furthest, with a bill to impose an outright moratorium on new data center construction.
Barrett’s bill writes down the same exception Burchett said out loud: non-federal land.
When Burchett was asked where the servers should go, he didn’t name a town. He named the one landlord that rarely has to ask the neighbors.
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