# Letter to Quorum Court A **July 6, 2026** letter to the members of the Pulaski County Quorum Court from attorney **[[Richard H. Mays]]** of Mays Gore Gipson, PLLC (Little Rock), enclosing the Virginia **Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC)** 2024 study *"Data Centers in Virginia"* (`Letter to Quorum Court (1).pdf`, 14 pp., image-only scan recovered by OCR). The letter is a private submission into the county's decision record urging caution and study before approving data centers; it is the fiscal-*caution* counterpart to the [[Data Center Revenues — Google Only (County Analysis)|Chamber's revenue projection]] produced in the same set. ## What's inside - **Pages 1–3** — the cover letter (Mays Gore Gipson, PLLC letterhead; attorneys Richard H. Mays and Hannah Gore Gipson), Re: *"Information on Data Centers."* - **Pages 4–14** — the enclosed JLARC materials: the study's web summary ("Data Centers in Virginia") and the printed **Recommendations and Policy Options** (Recommendations 1–8, Policy Options 1–10). ## Key takeaways - **The framing: benefits real but conditional.** *"[Data centers] offer substantial tax revenue (although at reduced rates), and employment in their construction and operation; but they are accompanied by high usage of electricity and land, and emissions of air and water pollutants and noise..."* (`Letter to Quorum Court (1).pdf`, p. 1). Mays urges the court *"to defer any decision on whether to open the door to Data Centers until you are certain of the consequences"* (p. 2). - **Northern Virginia as the cautionary comparator.** Mays, a former Northern Virginia resident, describes "Data Center Alley" — *"Some 600 Data Centers... now located in that area"* handling *"up to 70% of the global internet traffic"* (p. 1) — and offers the JLARC study as *"a credible and objective assessment of the benefits and drawbacks"* (p. 2). - **The enclosed JLARC finding on ratepayer cost-shifting** (the enclosure's content, describing Virginia, not Arkansas): *"Data centers are currently paying their full cost of service, but growing energy demand is likely to increase other customers' costs"*; a typical Dominion residential customer *"could experience generation- and transmission-related costs increasing by an estimated $14 to $37 monthly... by 2040"* (`Letter to Quorum Court (1).pdf`, p. 8). This is the same cost-allocation question the corpus tracks for Arkansas — here entered into the county record as external comparative evidence. - **JLARC recommendations mirror the county's own draft toolkit** — authorize localities to *"require... water use estimates,"* *"require sound modeling studies,"* and *"establish and enforce maximum allowable sound levels"* (p. 7) — closely paralleling the [[Draft Data-Center Regulatory Framework — HIDIU, CUP, and Related Resolutions|HIDIU/CUP/NOII framework]] the Quorum Court was drafting. ## Evidentiary note This is a Tier-1 record of *what was submitted to the Quorum Court on 2026-07-06* (a private attorney's letter plus an enclosed out-of-state study). The JLARC findings describe **Virginia** and are reproduced here as advocacy/comparative context; per the source-tier firewall they do **not** establish any fact about an Arkansas utility, agency, or project. Where the wiki needs the Arkansas cost-allocation record, that is the Entergy rate case (APSC Docket 26-001-U) and the [[Generating Arkansas Jobs Act (GAJA) rider]], not this enclosure. ## People and orgs mentioned - [[Richard H. Mays]] — author; attorney, Mays Gore Gipson, PLLC. (Co-signer Hannah Gore Gipson named on the letterhead.) ## Cross-references - [[Data Center Revenues — Google Only (County Analysis)]] — the benefit case produced alongside this caution case. - [[Draft Data-Center Regulatory Framework — HIDIU, CUP, and Related Resolutions]] — the county measures that echo JLARC's recommended tools. - [[county-pulaski/data-center-moratorium-26-439-2026-07-07/_overview|#26-439 production overview]]