# Pulaski County's Attempt to Regulate Data Centers As of late May 2026, Pulaski County — host to the corpus's largest single project, the ~$21B / 1 GW [[AVAIO Digital Partners|AVAIO "Project Leo"]] — has **no enacted county-level mechanism specific to data centers**, and its first attempt to create one failed on a procedural threshold while drawing a formal legal objection from its own attorney. The county's regulatory posture is best understood as four moves across the Quorum Court's two May 2026 meetings (2026-05-12 and 2026-05-26) and the days after, against a backdrop of a pre-existing zoning vacuum: the vacuum that let Project Leo through, a failed moratorium, a legal objection that clouds the moratorium path, and a pivot toward Planning-Board zoning that has not yet produced anything. ## The starting condition: a zoning vacuum Project Leo is the documentary baseline. The [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review|county's own planning file]] shows the 296-acre site sits in **unincorporated, un-zoned** county territory, so the county's only review was an administrative [[Site plan review]] — no rezoning, no variance, no Quorum Court vote, no public hearing. AVAIO's engineer wrote that *"there is no zoning, and therefore, no land use restrictions on the property"* and that the project *"will not be subject to a public hearing"* ([[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]], `email 101025.pdf`). Plan Review Coordinator [[Jim Cranor]] put the county's leverage plainly: *"with the ordinances currently adopted, Pulaski County would have difficulties stopping uses like data centers"* (same source, `email 042426.pdf`). This is the gap every subsequent county action is trying, and so far failing, to close — see [[Pulaski County Zoning and Land-Use Authority]]. ## Move 1: the moratorium that did not pass On 2026-05-26 the [[Pulaski County Quorum Court]] took up emergency ordinance **26-I-37A** — a twelve-month moratorium on accepting, processing, or approving data-center applications in the unincorporated county, paired with a Planning-Department study mandate ([[Data Center Moratorium Ordinance 26-I-37A and the Grandfather Amendment]], `26-I-37 Moratorium.docx`). Drawn as an **emergency** ordinance, it required two-thirds of the whole court — **10 of 15** — under the county's own [[Quorum Court Organizational Ordinance 25-I-01|organizational ordinance]] (Art. 11(c)) and [[Arkansas Quorum Court Ordinance Procedure|A.C.A. § 14-14-908]]. It did not get there. Clerk [[Terri Hollingsworth]], serving as Quorum Court Secretary, initially recorded it as adopted, then corrected the record on 2026-05-28: the votes were *"recorded … incorrectly,"* and the ordinance *"was marked as adopted when it should not have passed"* ([[Pulaski County Clerk Statement on the Corrected Moratorium Vote]]). The reported corrected tally was 9–4–2 — one short. (A County-Attorney memo asserting the opposite is reconciled at [[T004 - Did the Pulaski County Data-Center Moratorium Pass|T004]]; the certified per-JP roll-call is not in the legible record.) A second feature matters for the investigation's through-line: [[Phil Stowers|Justice Stowers]]'s floor **Amendment 1** added a **criteria-based grandfather clause** (Art. 8) exempting projects with executed utility-interconnection agreements, *"final County approvals,"* or complete interconnection applications. It names no project, but its "final County approvals" prong reaches the only data center known to hold them — AVAIO, approved December 2024. Even had the moratorium passed, it would not have reached Project Leo. ## Move 2: the County Attorney's preemption objection The moratorium also carries a legal cloud independent of the vote count. County Attorney [[Hamilton Kemp]] **refused to sign** the ordinance and filed a memo arguing it *"impermissibly suspends authority granted by Arkansas law to permit construction of data centers,"* citing the [[Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 (Act 851) and 2024 Amendments|Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023]] (Ark. Code § 14-1-601 et seq.; amendments at § 23-119-101 et seq.) and [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers|AG Opinion 2023-060]] ([[County Attorney Memo and AG Opinion 2023-060 on the Moratorium]], `0307_001.pdf`). The opinion's core holding is that a county cannot **ban** the protected industry by ordinance — but it leaves **regulation** (zoning, noise, generally-applicable rules) open, and a 2024 amendment is reported to have restored local regulatory authority (see the open questions on the [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers|concept page]]). The objection is therefore strongest against a flat moratorium/ban and weakest against ordinary zoning — which shapes the county's next move. ## Move 3: the pivot to Planning-Board zoning (the surviving track) At the earlier regular meeting of **2026-05-12** — two weeks before the moratorium vote; the wiki previously conflated the two meetings, corrected 2026-06-03 per the event page — the Quorum Court voted **11-3** to refer five data-center measures to the County Planning Board, directing it to draft comprehensive unincorporated-area zoning amendments, hold public hearings, and report back within 90 days ([[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Refers Five Data-Center Measures to Planning Board]]; web research 2026-06-03, [KLRT-Fox16 report](../../web%20archive/2026-06-03/fox16.com/pulaski-sends-five-data-center-measures-to-planning-board-2026-05-12.md)). This is the path the County Attorney's ban-vs-regulate objection leaves open, and it is the only county action of the two May meetings that survived intact. But it is a *process*, not a rule: as of 2026-05-29 it has produced no ordinance, and the county still has no unincorporated-area zoning regime to amend. ## Move 4: the County Judge's stopgap After the moratorium failed, County Judge [[Barry Hyde]] issued a ~30-day executive order directing Planning & Development to stop *accepting* new site-plan applications (carve-outs for mobile-home/RV parks and multi-family), citing high-intensity digital infrastructure as *"of great concern to the citizens of Pulaski County"* ([[2026-05 County Judge Executive Order Pauses Data-Center Planning Applications]]; web research 2026-06-03, [ADG report](../../web%20archive/2026-06-03/arkansasonline.com/review-of-pulaski-county-quorum-court-vote-finds-2026-05-28.md)). It is an administrative intake pause from a lame-duck executive — far shorter than the twelve months the ordinance sought, and not a substitute for zoning. ## Evidence - **Zoning vacuum / AVAIO's administrative path:** [[AVAIO Project Leo Site Plan and County Review]], [[Pulaski County Planning Correspondence on Project Leo]] (Tier-1, FOIA). - **The failed moratorium:** [[Data Center Moratorium Ordinance 26-I-37A and the Grandfather Amendment]], [[Pulaski County Clerk Statement on the Corrected Moratorium Vote]], [[Quorum Court Organizational Ordinance 25-I-01]] (Tier-1, FOIA #26-341). - **The legal objection:** [[County Attorney Memo and AG Opinion 2023-060 on the Moratorium]] (Tier-1, FOIA #26-341), construing the [[Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023 (Act 851) and 2024 Amendments|Data Centers Act]] and [[AG Opinion 2023-060 and County Authority Over Data Centers|AG Opinion 2023-060]]. - **The referral and the pause:** [[2026-05 Pulaski County Quorum Court Refers Five Data-Center Measures to Planning Board]], [[2026-05 County Judge Executive Order Pauses Data-Center Planning Applications]] — **Tier-3 news reporting only** (web research 2026-06-03, [KLRT-Fox16 report](../../web%20archive/2026-06-03/fox16.com/pulaski-sends-five-data-center-measures-to-planning-board-2026-05-12.md); [ADG report](../../web%20archive/2026-06-03/arkansasonline.com/review-of-pulaski-county-quorum-court-vote-finds-2026-05-28.md)); primary records (the referred measures, the signed executive order) not yet obtained. ## Caveats - **Two of the four moves rest on Tier-3 reporting.** The Planning-Board referral and the County Judge's order have not been anchored to primary documents (the referral resolution and the signed executive order). The synthesis treats them as corroborated-but-provisional and does not assert their exact scope. - **The per-JP roll-call is unknown.** The wiki cannot say which Justices supported or opposed the moratorium; the certified worksheets embody the disavowed miscount (see [[Certified Quorum Court Voting Worksheets 2026-05-26]]). - **The preemption question is genuinely open.** Whether the Arkansas Data Centers Act actually preempts a *data-center* (as opposed to digital-asset-mining) moratorium — and whether the 2024 amendments restored the authority — is unresolved law, not a settled fact. The synthesis reports the County Attorney's position as his position. - **Confidence: medium** — the Tier-1 spine (AVAIO file + moratorium production) is strong; the Tier-3 dependencies and the open legal question hold it below high. ## Move 5 (2026-06-09): the refile arrives — and is postponed The reintroduction question answered itself, with two twists. The refiled twelve-month ordinance was **drafted by [[Wendell Griffen]]** — the Democratic County Judge nominee — and sponsored by JPs [[Tina Ward]], [[Julie Blackwood]], and [[Rebekah L. Davis]]; it abandons the data-center label for **industry-neutral thresholds** ("high-impact industrial and high-intensity digital infrastructure": electrical demand ≥ 5 MW or water use ≥ 100,000 gal/day), a direct drafting answer to the Act 851 preemption objection. On **2026-06-09** the Quorum Court voted **8–5 to postpone** the motion to advance it until **July 14**, first hearing from an "independent subject matter expert" at a special meeting to be scheduled; acting County Attorney [[Hamilton Kemp]] renewed his preemption objection by letter, and the [[Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce]] (the Project Boar NDA holder) lobbied against the thresholds on the floor (web research 2026-06-11, [Arkansas Times meeting report](../../web%20archive/2026-06-11/arktimes.com/data-center-moratorium-postponed-2026-06-09.md); see [[2026-06 Quorum Court Postpones the Refiled Data-Center Moratorium]]). Meanwhile the Planning Board track shows a documented gap: as of 2026-06-10 the **posted June 23 Planning Board agenda packet contains only three routine variance items — none of the five referred data-center measures** (primary public record, [June 23 agenda packet](../../web%20archive/2026-06-11/assets.speakcdn.com/planning-board-june-23-agenda-packet-2026-06-10.md)). The "surviving regulatory track" has, on the public agenda record, not yet started moving. ## Open questions - ~~Will the moratorium be reintroduced?~~ **Refiled (Griffen draft) and postponed 8–5 to the July 14 motion** — the live questions are now the July 14 vote, the expert special meeting, the Young-Baker amendment, and whether the County Judge would sign or veto an adopted ordinance. - What do the **five referred measures** actually say, and will the Planning Board's 90-day process produce an enforceable unincorporated-area zoning regime — the machinery [[Pulaski County Zoning and Land-Use Authority|that does not yet exist]]? **The June 23 posted agenda contains none of them** — first observable slippage in the referral track. - Does the **Arkansas Data Centers Act** preempt a data-center moratorium, or only a digital-asset-mining ban? This is the legal hinge on which any future county action turns. - The separate, still-open FOIA to [[Jim Cranor]] on the unincorporated-county development pipeline may show whether any *new* data-center application is in intake — which would make the timing of the pause and any reintroduced ordinance load-bearing.