State Representative Ed Butler said a 10-year extension for courthouse revitalization funding and new legislation on data centers among his highlights in the just-completed legislative session.
Butler said the costs for new power lines or substations to build out data centers are too often being passed on to rate payers nationwide.
“It’s kind of a controversial issue for some folks, but I was able to pass legislation, you know, on the support of the General Assembly to require data centers to pay for all of their own infrastructure,” Butler said. “So if they’ve got to build new power lines or a substation or whatever the cost associated with that data center, then that data center has to for all that infrastructure.”
Butler said the courthouse revitalization extension allows Livingston and five other cities to retain a portion of their sales tax for local upgrades through 2038.
Butler said the data center legislation is expected to be signed into law by the Governor within a week.
“I saw that in one of the legislative conferences I went to last year and thought, ‘That’s pretty important,'” Butler said. “I think we need to make sure that we’re proactive in passing legislation that protects our ratepayers. And so, after seeing some concerns in the northeastern states, where they had raised rates because they had offered incentives and so forth to some of these data centers, I wanted to ensure that we didn’t do that to our Tennesseans.”
Butler said the law will regulate both municipalities and electric cooperatives across the state to mandate that data centers cover all infrastructure costs.
Butler said of the three data centers currently slated in Tennessee, all of them are already covering their own infrastructure costs.
Butler said the state also clarified language regarding Safe Haven Baby Boxes to address concerns from city and county attorneys. Butler said these changes will allow more baby boxes to be installed across Tennessee.
Butler said he was disappointed that the state did not invest more than the allocated $435 million into roads and bridges. Butler said he had requested $10 billion for infrastructure projects to address growth and the condition of approximately 3,000 county-owned bridges, and feels that by not fully funding, legislators are just kicking the can down the road.
“As a whole, I guess my only disappointment was probably that we didn’t invest more money into our infrastructure and just trying to be proactive in eating that elephant, so to speak, because we have a big…lots of… I won’t say issues, but lots of projects that are not funded completely yet,” Butler said. “And those projects are not getting any cheaper, they’re continuing costs are continuing to go up, so that number continues to get larger.”
