# Tom Carpenter Tom Carpenter is the City Attorney for the [[City of Little Rock]]. At the 2026-06-02 Board of Directors meeting adopting the city's data-center regulations, he confirmed — in response to a question from City Director Virgil Miller Jr. — that **Act 851 of 2023 prevents the city from banning data centers**, framing the ordinance as regulation rather than prohibition. ## Role and affiliations City Attorney, City of Little Rock. ## Appearances in the corpus - [[2026-06 Little Rock City Board Adopts Data-Center Regulations Ordinance]] — stated the Act 851 constraint on the record (web research 2026-06-03). ## Notes Tier-3 appearance only (news coverage of the 06-02 meeting).