Congressional Candidate Randy Villegas Calls For A Moratorium On New Data Centers

Congressional Candidate Randy Villegas Calls For A Moratorium On New Data Centers

“A moratorium gives the Central Valley the chance to get this right before it’s too late.”

Bakersfield, CA – Today, Congressional candidate in California’s 22nd District Randy Villegas released a new platform calling for a moratorium on the construction of new data centers in the Central Valley, for one year at minimum. The call for a one-year moratorium comes after conversations with local leaders and voters across the Central Valley about the rapid expansion of data centers and the strain they put on local communities. This comes ahead of Randy speaking at a non-partisan town hall in Hanford later this week on proposed data center developments. 

His call for a moratorium comes with five standards that Congress should establish to put Central Valley families, workers, and resources first. Those include: 

• Making Big Tech pay. Data centers should pay the full cost of the electricity, grid improvements, and other infrastructure they require. Those costs should never be passed on to working families through higher utility bills. 

• Protecting our water. In the Valley, we know water is precious. Any new data center should come with a commitment to closed-loop cooling systems to avoid wasting gallons and gallons of water or polluting local water resources. 

• Guaranteeing good-paying local union jobs. Data centers should be built by American workers and local union labor here in the Valley. Before a single shovel hits the ground, workers should have a seat at the table. 

• Investing in our communities.  Revenue from data center development should help fund our local schools, technical and apprenticeship programs, and workforce training – particularly for workers whose jobs could be disrupted by AI. 

• Protecting our privacy and putting guardrails on AI. The technology these facilities power cannot come at the expense of our personal information, our jobs, or our economic security. Congress needs strong rules governing how corporations collect and use our data and deploy AI. 
  

You can read Randy’s full platform here. 

“When everything from our healthcare, to our groceries to our rent already costs too much, we can't afford to let unchecked big tech developments make life even more expensive,” said Randy Villegas. “Congress must do more to prioritize working people over the tech billionaires and corporate interests making money off of data centers at the expense of working families. A moratorium gives the Central Valley the chance to get this right before it’s too late. No data center should be allowed to raise families’ utility bills, threaten our water supply, exploit our personal data, or disrupt local jobs. No Data Center should be built without the people of the Central Valley having a real say.”

In the past few weeks and months there has been growing concern about the rapid expansion of data centers from voters across party lines. In contrast to Randy’s strong stance fighting to protect the Central Valley, not Silicon Valley, his opponent, Republican David Valadao has sided with big tech and corporate interests in support of high scale data center expansion. 

Background On ‘Data Center David’: 

• Valadao has taken tens of thousands of dollars from pro-data center tech billionaires and corporations, including having taken thousands from companies that use AI algorithms to deny healthcare claims. 

• Valadao voted to make it easier and faster to build data centers. 

• Valadao voted to undermine environmental review for data centers.