Maine Data Center Advisory Council

Governor Janet Mills signed an executive order creating the Maine Data Center Advisory Council on 29 April 2026, hours after the Maine House sustained her veto of L.D. 307 by a 72-65 vote. The council is the administration's alternative to the legislative moratorium, intended to develop a policy framework for managing data-centre development without a blanket ban. Mills had said she would have signed the moratorium bill had it carved out the $550 million Androscoggin Mill redevelopment in Jay — a decision that reveals the precise weight she placed on the economic-development case against the moratorium.

The council's mandate is to advise the governor on data-centre siting, energy consumption, and community-impact frameworks. Its membership and reporting timeline had not been publicly specified at the time of this writing. It represents the standard executive response to a legislative moratorium the governor does not want to sign: a consultative body that substitutes process for prohibition and buys time without closing the development pipeline.

The practical significance of the council depends entirely on whether it produces binding guidance before further legislative pressure builds. Maine is a small electricity market — its grid is part of the ISO-New England system — and a statewide moratorium would have had limited direct capacity impact, but the symbolic weight of being the first US state to ban new large data centres would have been considerable. The council trades that symbolic clarity for flexibility.