TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A wave of local moratoriums on artificial intelligence data centers could drive billions of dollars in private investment out of Florida, a prominent conservative advocate warned Friday.
During an exclusive interview with Florida’s Voice, Jenn Pellegrino, founder of Defend Forgotten America Action, said county commissions enacting pauses in areas like Hernando, Citrus, and Pasco are responding to a lack of familiar facts regarding utility grids and water supplies. She warned that these delays risk handing historic economic opportunities to competing states.
Every new moratorium sends a clear message to job creators: Take your investment, your jobs, and your tax dollars somewhere else,” Pellegrino said.
Local officials pushing for the multi-month pauses argue they need time to evaluate how the massive, energy-intensive server facilities will impact local resources. However, Pellegrino noted that Florida already has necessary guardrails in place under SB 484, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which takes effect July 1.
The law ensures that large power-using data centers must fully pay for their own infrastructure and electricity, guaranteeing that added financial burdens are not shifted onto the utility bills of everyday Florida families. It also establishes a strict water-permitting process to safeguard local aquifers.
“Governor DeSantis said, ‘Listen, we want this kind of growth here in Florida, and so we’re going to make sure that these big concerns are taken care of,’” Pellegrino said. “We need to make a distinction between denying an individual project and imposing a sweeping categorical ban.”
Pellegrino pointed to a proposed development in Citrus County as a prime example of the free-market benefits at stake, noting it would generate an estimated 2,500 construction jobs, 825 permanent jobs, and $105 million in local property tax revenue.
For small urban and rural communities that have faced decades of manufacturing decline and population loss, Pellegrino argued that big-tech infrastructure represents a vital pathway to prosperity.
“We need those small communities to be great again, and this could be a pathway to that for them to bring in those jobs,” Pellegrino said, drawing on her own upbringing in a small community in upstate New York. “They shouldn’t be treated as a flyover zone for investment.”
Proponents of the moratoriums have pointed to a national progressive push to limit data center expansion due to environmental concerns. Pellegrino cautioned that by mimicking those sweeping regulatory bans, conservative Florida counties are inadvertently playing into a national progressive agenda that stifles American technological dominance.
“If we have a short-term delay, or even a permanent ban, that business is going elsewhere,” Pellegrino said. “I think they need to take action and make sure that this is something they look at—it could really, really benefit the people in that community.”
