Florida lawmakers weaken data center regulations

Emily L. Mahoney, Tampa Bay Times on Mar 11, 2026

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After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to hold firm against data centers and protect consumers, lawmakers on Wednesday watered down a bill designed to regulate the industry — stripping the piece that tech companies had found most objectionable.

The Florida House amended Senate Bill 484 to allow government officials to sign nondisclosure agreements with data center companies. For weeks, the industry had been pushing back against a prohibition on such agreements, saying confidentiality is an essential part of developing their plans in the early stages. But the Republican sponsors had held firm as lawmakers of both parties agreed the public had the right to know about high-impact projects in their neighborhoods.

That tone changed Wednesday.

“The concern is these are multibillion-dollar corporations and some proprietary information (could be disclosed) when they’re doing site selection,” said Rep. Philip “Griff” Griffitts, Jr., R-Panama City Beach, on the House floor Wednesday.

Also gone is a requirement for local economic development agencies to disclose to residents that a data center project is under consideration.

The bill would still prohibit local water management districts from issuing permits to data centers “if the proposed use of the water is harmful to the water resources of the area.” And when it comes to electricity costs, the legislation requires that any data center “bears its own full cost of service and that such cost is not shifted” to the public.

Wednesday’s amendment also added a required government study on the impacts of data centers, to be completed by July 1, 2027.

Because of the amendment, the House must send the bill back to the Senate for approval before it can be sent to DeSantis’ desk. This process must be completed by the end of the day Friday, when the legislative session is scheduled to end and most unpassed bills will die.

The bill has been tied up in Republican politics that extend all the way to the White House, as President Donald Trump backed the industry. Rumors continued to circulate Wednesday that the White House was weighing in on the Florida bill, despite it being a DeSantis priority. Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez, R-Miami, previously echoed Trump by saying artificial intelligence is an area where the federal government should get “first dibs.”

Hyperscale data centers are climate-controlled warehouses containing thousands of computers used to power artificial intelligence and other programs. They can span hundreds of acres and drink millions of gallons of water per day. In other states, they have driven up electricity costs for nearby residents.

While large-scale data centers have not yet come to Florida, there are signs that’s changing. They’ve been proposed in multiple counties, and in those areas, local government officials have looked to Tallahassee for guidance on how to handle them.

That includes Citrus County, where a local planning and development board delayed a final decision on a 1,356-acre proposed industrial park last week, in part because the officials wanted to see what state lawmakers would do. Locals also turned out in force against the idea of a data center there.

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