Phyllis Randall
Chair of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, Virginia's densest data-centre county.
On 16 September, Phyllis Randall’s Loudoun County Board voted 7-1 to prepare a year-long pause on new data-centre rezonings, pending an October decision. The proposal sits within Loudoun’s planning response to its data-centre concentration.
Last refreshed: 24 September 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Timeline for Phyllis Randall
Framed the draft pause as a bridge to Phase 2 standards
Data Centres: Boom and Backlash: Loudoun drafts a pause on data centresBackground
Elected county-wide chair in 2015, Phyllis Randall leads the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in Virginia. Her office matters because the board decides local planning policy in a county closely associated with data-centre development.
Before entering politics, Randall worked as a mental-health therapist with juvenile and adult offenders. Voters returned her as chair in 2019 and 2023, giving her a continuing public role beyond any one planning dispute.
Loudoun’s data-centre pipeline makes the chairmanship relevant to questions of land use, power infrastructure and local consent. The board’s 16 September 2026 instruction to prepare a temporary rezoning pause showed how that role can shape the county’s response to future development.
Randall’s board begins a planning pause
On 16 September, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 7-1 to have staff prepare a 12-month halt on rezoning applications for data centres and substations. Randall chairs the board considering that measure in a county hosting 233 data centres.
The instruction did not itself change the zoning rules. Supervisors are due to vote on formal adoption in October, while schemes already approved, including 35.7m square feet of unbuilt capacity, remain outside the proposed pause. For Randall, the decision puts the board’s chair at the centre of a choice about how quickly Loudoun permits further digital infrastructure.
