Gov. Tina Kotek said Tuesday she now supports a statewide moratorium on data centers.

In a significant escalation of her position on an issue that is prompting voter outrage around the country, Kotek appeared at an anti-data center rally outside the Capitol building in Salem, lending her support to calls for lawmakers to pass a temporary data center ban when they convene next year.

“I support a moratorium until we make sure that any data center development is done on our terms,” she said at the event. “We must protect Oregon.”

The announcement makes Kotek the most prominent Democrat in state government to call for a sweeping policy barring data centers. And it signals the governor is abandoning her cautious approach on the issue as she seeks reelection this year.

Kotek has previously said she supports local governments’ right to issue their own moratoriums on data centers, as a growing number of cities and counties have pursued. She also says repeatedly that Oregon cannot be a “cheap date” for data centers, a reference to generous property tax breaks that the state’s more than 120 data centers have secured.

But Kotek has been far more measured on what she believes statewide policy should be, saying she would wait for recommendations from a Data Center Advisory Committee before deciding what to advocate in a bill before the Legislature.

That has now shifted.

Beyond signaling she supports a moratorium on Tuesday, Kotek also issued an order to state agencies to immediately pause unapproved requests for “easements, rights-of-way, leases, rentals, land-use permits, and sales or transfers of state-owned property” for data center projects.

It was not immediately clear how that move would impact proposed data centers in Oregon. Kotek’s office directed state agencies to send a status report by Sept. 14 if they had halted work on a proposal.

“This is what I can do right now under Oregon law,” Kotek said as protestors waved signs with red stop signs outside the Capitol on Tuesday. “But we need to do more and the Legislature needs to step up next year.”

The governor’s appearance at the rally came shortly before lawmakers gathered for a hearing about the status of data centers in the state and their impacts on water, energy and air quality.

Oregon has been a hotspot for data center development for decades as some of the world’s largest tech companies, such as Amazon and Meta, have invested heavily in cloud computing, and more recently, generative AI.

In rural Oregon, data centers have continued to flourish and local governments are often less resistant to their development. Amazon has a heavy presence in Eastern Oregon’s Umatilla and Morrow counties and Google’s data centers in The Dalles have made the tech giant a big player in the Columbia River Gorge.

But as the industry has grown, so has the pushback.

Kotek recently intervened to stop the sale of state land for a Salem data center project, and earlier this summer the Hillsboro City Council approved the first data center moratorium in the state.

Polling by Lake Oswego-based DHM Research found extreme skepticism toward the facilities, with 36% of Oregon voters favoring a moratorium on data centers, and nearly 75% opposing tax breaks to attract them.

The strength of public opposition has made data centers a ripe topic for Kotek’s reelection race against Republican state Sen. Christine Drazan. The two candidates have increasingly traded barbs on the topic, with Drazan launching an ad last week that suggests Kotek “rolled out the red carpet for data centers” in Oregon by historically supporting tax breaks that the facilities use.

Kotek signed a bill this year that pauses tax breaks for data centers from one state intensive program, though she initially opposed such a move.

Despite her criticism of Kotek, Drazan told OPB on Aug. 25 she would not advocate rolling back existing tax incentives used by data centers. She is expected to release a formal policy platform on the facilities soon.

Kotek, meanwhile, has criticized Drazan for voting against the so-called POWER Act, a 2025 bill that allows state regulators to set special rates on data centers and other high-volume energy users.

OPB visual journalist Eli Imadali contributed to this story.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/09/08/oregon-data-centers-tina-kotek-politics-climate/