Boone County's commissioners voted unanimously on 15 June for a one-year pause on new data centres in unincorporated areas, running through 15 June 2027 while the county writes zoning rules1. It is the 12th Indiana county to enact such a moratorium. No bill went through the statehouse and no governor signed anything, yet Indiana now carries functionally statewide coverage assembled one county at a time.
Maine tried the single statewide route, and Governor Janet Mills vetoed LD 307 before it took effect, with the House sustaining the veto 72 to 65. A veto kills one bill. Twelve county ordinances are twelve separate instruments, each defensible on local zoning-authority grounds, with no common target for a single lawsuit or executive strike. The cost to an operator is no longer lobbying one capitol but contesting a dozen county boards, which is the legal asymmetry that has made the freeze hard to undo. The wider US moratorium wave gave Indiana the template, with twelve states filing bills in April and five cities voting within a single week in May.
There is a carve-out, and operators have found it. Meta's existing campus sits in Lebanon's LEAP (Limitless Exploration Advanced Pace) innovation district, inside city limits by annexation, which exempts it from the county pause entirely. The breadth of the freeze and the narrowness of its exits now point developers toward the few annexed municipal districts where building can still proceed, concentrating build-out rather than stopping it.
