A counterpoint on Maryland’s data center backlash
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Frederick County’s data center fight — a 2,600-acre zoning overlay, a referendum drive that gathered more than 22,000 signatures (about 21,000 validated), and a legal battle that ended with the Maryland Supreme Court siding with developers challenging the referendum, not a public vote — has drawn the most statewide attention. But it wasn’t first, and it isn’t alone. Prince George’s County had already approved a $5 billion Landover Mall data center project in 2024, stood up its own task force by spring 2025, and passed its first moratorium in September 2025. Calvert County rewrote its zoning specifically for data centers, effective March 2025. Charles County got its first zoning briefing that October. Frederick’s council didn’t even recommend its overlay ordinance until May 2025. What’s changed since isn’t that Frederick started something new — it’s that the number of jurisdictions moving to bans and moratoriums accelerated sharply from roughly December 2025 through mid-2026.
What’s changed since isn’t that Frederick started something new — it’s that the number of jurisdictions moving to bans and moratoriums accelerated sharply from roughly December 2025 through mid-2026.
By mid-2026, roughly a dozen Maryland jurisdictions will have some form of moratorium, ban, or zoning fight underway. That scale matters for the “professional opposition” question, too: some of the state’s loudest opposition voices are indeed veteran preservationists. Others are first-time activists who’d never testified before a council in their lives until a data center proposal landed in their backyard. Both are part of the same statewide moment, and they’re not the same story.
Here’s where every county currently stands, followed by the benefits case that gets lost in the county-by-county noise.
Frederick County — the fight that drew the most attention
The Council’s December 2025 passage of Ordinance 26-01-001, expanding the Eastalco overlay zone to roughly 2,600 acres, triggered a referendum drive that gathered more than 21,000 valid signatures, well past the roughly 15,000 needed. The effort, led by Steve Black (Sugarloaf Alliance president, Adamstown farmer) and Elizabeth Bauer (Envision Frederick County board chair), was blocked first by the Frederick County Circuit Court and then by the Maryland Supreme Court, both on two grounds: that a zoning ordinance isn’t a “law” subject to referendum under the county charter, and separately, that the petition itself was legally deficient because it didn’t include the full text of the ordinance and maps as required. The challenge was brought by developers and property owners with a stake in the zone — including Quantum Maryland and several affiliated LLCs — not the county government itself; Frederick’s Board of Elections had actually certified the signatures and declined to appeal the circuit court’s ruling. Both lead organizers have fought Frederick development battles for years — the Sugarloaf Mountain overlay fight, a proposed gun range, a mega church — predating data centers as a target.
The legal loss wasn’t the only setback for data center supporters that month. In the June 2026 Democratic primary for an at-large County Council seat, Council President Brad Young lost his bid for renomination, finishing third behind Tiffany Grant (13,780 votes, 29.38%) and Renee Knapp (12,368 votes, 26.37%); Young took 11,459 votes (24.43%), losing the second nomination to Knapp by 909 votes, with Sam Newhouse finishing fourth. Young’s defeat was reported alongside Calvert’s commissioner ousters as part of the same statewide pattern of data-center-skeptical challengers unseating incumbents.
Harford County — the only outright ban
In June, Harford became the first Maryland jurisdiction to permanently ban data centers, with the County Council voting unanimously on legislation proposed by County Executive Bob Cassilly. Because data centers were never an explicitly permitted use under the county’s zoning code, the ban formalizes a prohibition that technically already existed. Even supporters have acknowledged that the law’s vague language leaves it vulnerable to a court challenge.
Baltimore City — moratorium signed, tied to a state study
Mayor Brandon Scott signed a one-year moratorium in June, blocking new data centers of 10 megawatts or more, after the measure passed the City Council in May with 12 of 15 members as sponsors. The bill mandates its own nine-month city study on energy, ratepayer, economic, and public-health impacts, separate from a broader statewide Data Center Impact Analysis and Report — from the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Maryland Energy Administration, and the University of Maryland School of Business — due September 1. The moratorium won’t affect a planned expansion of an existing sub-10-megawatt facility at Johns Hopkins.
Baltimore County — moratorium likely to be extended
The County Council passed a one-year moratorium in February after a developer’s plan to convert a vacant 42-acre Social Security Administration site in Woodlawn into a 150-megawatt data center drew public backlash, including equity concerns about siting the project in a majority-minority area already facing disproportionate environmental burdens. A bipartisan council majority now says it will support extending the freeze past its scheduled expiration to give the county time to review a Planning Board study due October 1.
Montgomery County — executive and council still negotiating
County Executive Marc Elrich signed a six-month executive order in June pausing new data center permitting, aimed squarely at Atmosphere Data Centers’ proposed five-building, 700-acre campus at a decommissioned coal plant site in Dickerson. The order doesn’t stop the county’s Planning Board from continuing to review the project on a separate track, and the developer has since filed an appeal arguing the executive branch overstepped the council’s zoning authority. The council is simultaneously drafting a permanent zoning text amendment restricting data centers to industrial zones.
Prince George’s County — the state’s most restrictive pause
The County Council adopted a two-year moratorium in early July — the longest of any Maryland jurisdiction — following a 180-day pause that had already expired. The fight was catalyzed by a proposed data center at the former Landover Mall site, which drew a 23,000-signature petition organized by first-time activist Taylor Frazier McCollum, who has said she wants a statewide ban, not just a Prince George’s one.
Charles County — effectively banned by zoning silence
Data centers aren’t currently a permitted use anywhere in Charles County’s zoning code, meaning they’re already blocked absent a zoning text amendment. The county’s Planning Commission — an advisory body — recommended denying the amendment in March, after which the Board of County Commissioners voted 3-2 in April to send it back for revision rather than acting on it directly. A revised version, narrowed to industrial zones and tied in part to a proposed TeraWulf hyperscale project, drew a second unanimous Planning Commission denial recommendation in June. The Board of County Commissioners still hasn’t taken its own final vote as of this writing.
Carroll and Howard Counties — parallel study-first pauses
Carroll County passed a 12-month moratorium in February to study impacts before any new development. Howard County’s council followed in June with a pause running until November 2027, pending a task force review of noise, siting, energy, and water use.
Queen Anne’s County — the most recent to join
Commissioners approved a 12-month moratorium in early June, citing zoning regulations that were never built to address large-scale data center impacts.
Anne Arundel, Calvert, and St. Mary’s Counties — the industry side of the map
Not every county is fighting these projects — some are actively recruiting them. Anne Arundel has offered tax breaks to data centers investing at least $10 million and creating 10 jobs since a 2022 law took effect, and its County Council’s only move so far — a bill passed in November 2025 — was to study grid impact, not to pause development. Calvert County’s economic development director, Julie Oberg, co-chairs the Data Center Alliance of Maryland alongside a land-use consultant, putting a sitting county economic-development official in the position of actively courting projects statewide. But Oberg’s advocacy no longer reflects where Calvert’s elected leadership is headed: in the June 2026 Republican primary, voters ousted all three incumbent commissioners who had voted against a data center moratorium — board president Todd Ireland, vice president Mark C. Cox Sr., and commissioner Earl “Buddy” Hance — replacing them with challengers who campaigned against data center development. St. Mary’s County Commissioner Ralph Patterson has been listed on the same alliance’s 20-member steering committee since at least early 2025 — an elected official’s presence on an industry advocacy body that, unlike most of the county-level opposition groups above, hasn’t been broadly disclosed to voters at public hearings. (Cecil County, for what it’s worth, has taken no position at all — no legislation, pro or con, as of this writing.)
What gets lost in the county-by-county fight
Most of the state, outside a handful of counties actively courting these projects, is moving in the same direction.
Zoom out from the individual votes and moratorium dates, and a pattern emerges: most of the state, outside a handful of counties actively courting these projects, is moving in the same direction. That raises a fair question that the county-by-county coverage tends to skip past — what does Maryland actually give up by mostly saying no? The industry’s pitch rests on a few claims, and they don’t all hold up equally.
That raises a fair question the county-by-county coverage tends to skip past — what does Maryland actually give up by mostly saying no?
Tax revenue is real, and it’s substantial. A Baltimore County staff analysis — produced by a government trying to regulate data centers more aggressively, not by an industry group — found they generate roughly $171,000 per acre annually in property tax revenue, compared to about $82,000 for manufacturing and $35,000 for warehouses. A Maryland Tech Council-commissioned study estimated a single mid-sized Prince George’s County facility would produce more than $1 billion in economic activity during construction and roughly $20 million in new annual county tax revenue.
Jobs are the weakest part of the case, by the industry’s own adjacent numbers. That same Baltimore County analysis found data centers generate about half a permanent job per acre once built, compared to 13 for warehouses and 17 for manufacturing. Construction employment is real but temporary.
Grid costs cut both ways, and the state is managing, not solving, the tension. Maryland’s push to implement a capacity price cap in PJM’s most recent Base Residual Auction is credited with preventing an estimated $13.3 billion in excess costs. At the same time, PJM’s own market monitor attributes roughly $6.3 billion in added wholesale power costs across the region specifically to data-center-driven demand growth.
“Keeping data out of China” is the softest talking point. Most of what a Maryland facility would handle — cloud storage, enterprise workloads, streaming — was never realistically headed to Chinese-controlled infrastructure, regardless of local zoning. The more serious version of the argument is about national AI compute capacity broadly, where the U.S. and China currently host the largest shares of global data center power. But that’s an argument for the country having enough capacity somewhere — not a case that any single Maryland parcel, in any single county, is the hinge point. A no in Frederick, or Charles, or Montgomery doesn’t send a project to Beijing. It sends it to Virginia, or Ohio, or whichever jurisdiction says yes next.
A no in Frederick, or Charles, or Montgomery doesn’t send a project to Beijing. It sends it to Virginia, or Ohio, or whichever jurisdiction says yes next.
Strip away the overstated claims on both sides, and what’s left is narrower than either side’s rhetoric suggests: real tax revenue and very few jobs, against permanent land conversion and grid strain the state is only partially offsetting. That’s a legitimate question for each of these dozen jurisdictions to answer for itself — not one with a single statewide, let alone national-security-sized, answer attached to it.
Sources: County-by-county status and dates drawn from reporting by the Baltimore Banner, Baltimore Sun, WYPR, WTOP, Bethesda Magazine, Maryland Matters, the Bay Journal, the Frederick News-Post, WMAR-2 News, CBS Baltimore, Fox45/Fox5 DC, Inside Climate News, the Southern Maryland Chronicle/BayNet, and Baltimore Fishbowl, along with county government press releases (Harford County, Montgomery County) and the Maryland Supreme Court’s June 30, 2026 order in the Frederick County Data Center Referendum Committee case (No. 67, September Term 2025). The Sugarloaf Alliance/Envision Frederick County background draws on NBC4 Washington, WUSA9, the Washington Post, and each organization’s own public filings and website. The Data Center Alliance of Maryland steering committee and Calvert/St. Mary’s roles are drawn from the alliance’s own published materials. Economic figures come from a Baltimore County staff analysis of data center tax revenue and job density per acre, a Maryland Tech Council-commissioned economic impact study, PJM’s 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction results and market monitor analysis, and Anne Arundel County’s 2022 data center tax incentive legislation.
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