JAY — Town and school officials got their wish Wednesday when the Maine Legislature sustained Gov. Janet Mills’ veto of a bill that would have halted plans to redevelop the former Androscoggin Mill site as a data center.
On what is known as “Veto Day” at the State House in Augusta, the House of Representatives voted 72-65 to override the veto, well short of the two‑thirds margin required in both chambers.
Before Mills’ veto, L.D. 307 passed the House 79-62 and the Senate 21-13 — short of the two‑thirds margins needed for an override.
Sponsored by Rep. Melanie Sachs, D‑Freeport, the measure would have imposed a temporary moratorium on data centers and created a Data Center Coordination Council to study their effects on Maine.
Tony McDonald, a principal in JGT2 Redevelopment LLC, which owns the site, told the Jay Select Board on March 24 that “the moratorium would kill this project.” He said Monday he was “very, very satisfied with her veto.”
In her veto message April 24, Mills wrote that Sachs’ bill “establishes (a) council for the purpose of ‘protecting ratepayers, maintaining electric grid reliability, minimizing environmental impacts and maintaining responsible and appropriately sited economic development.’”
“I support these goals and I intend, by executive order, to establish a commission to pursue this important work,” the governor wrote.
Mills has not announced the members of the commission or a schedule for its work.
“I believe it necessary and important to examine and plan for the potential impacts of large-scale data centers in Maine,” she said. “Given the serious conversations about data centers here and around the country, I believe this work should commence without delay.”
The data center had broad support from local officials. The Jay Select Board sent the governor a letter urging a veto, and three Franklin County commissioners also asked Mills to reject L.D. 307. They were Jeff Gilbert, whose district includes Jay; Tom Saviello, whose district borders Jay; and Tom Skolfield, whose district covers much of northern Franklin County.
In a statement issued after the veto but before lawmakers upheld it, Saviello said: “Janet Mills displayed exceptional resolve in vetoing the data center bill, a decision that ensured the Jay data center could proceed. By staying connected to her Franklin County roots and disregarding the panic fueled by certain legislators, she showed a deep commitment to the community’s and the county’s future.”
Jay Selectman Gary McGrane abstained from the board’s vote to send a veto request, saying he needed more information before backing the project. But when the veto came, McGrane said: “I was pleased with the veto. It buys us time.”
Both the town of Jay and Regional School Unit 73 could benefit from the expanded tax base that redevelopment of the Androscoggin Mill site would bring.
“The proposed data center would help the schools because it would increase the tax revenue for the town of Jay,” Shari Ouellette, chair of the RSU 73 board of directors, said.
Ouellette, who has been school board chair for a year, was voted out of office Tuesday.
Sachs had predicted the override attempt would fail. The votes to enact the bill “did not reach the two-thirds threshold needed to overturn the governor’s veto, so a successful override vote appears unlikely,” she said before the override vote.
Upholding the veto, she said, leaves it “to individual communities to regulate or force transparency into the process.”
She noted that in Festus, Missouri, voters defeated all four members of the City Council who had approved a data center.
The Festus project was about 11 times larger than the Jay proposal. Festus, like Jay, has lost its historic economic base. It was a center of lead mining until the metal was found to be toxic in almost all uses.
In elections Tuesday, Jay voters reelected two of the town’s five selectpersons, meaning it will be a year before any board members could be challenged over their support of the data center.
Sachs still held out hope and called on the governor to act to forestall development of data centers. Sachs said the governor could impose her own temporary moratorium preventing state and “quasi-state” agencies from issuing permits for such projects.
With a freeze, Sachs said, Maine would not see an “unregulated proliferation of these centers without adequate protections for Maine ratepayers, our natural resources and all of our residents.”
McDonald said Monday that remediation of the mill is virtually complete. Paper machines are being dismantled and shipped to Pakistan. He said he expects that work to wrap up by July 1, allowing crews to begin “selective demolition” of the old mill structure.
JGT2 Redevelopment “needs to deliver the building (to the data center company) by the end of the year,” McDonald said. The company has been identified as Sentinel Data Centers LLC of New York City.
Sentinel is expected to spend 2027 developing the site and plans to open early in 2028, McDonald said.
In Jay, Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere said, “The immediate role is to continue as we have in support of asking the state to allow this project to move forward.”
Now that the Legislature has upheld the veto, she said, “the board can determine a path forward.”
With the veto now settled, some in the community are beginning to speak out about what it could mean for Jay and the mill site.
“I am optimistic that Andro (mill) and Jay will experience a resurgence, rising from adversity and embracing new opportunities for growth,” Saviello said.
Like McGrane, Ouellette said she wants to be careful about developing data centers.
“We do need businesses to move here, but the problems that go along with a data center are something Jay residents should consider carefully,” Ouellette said before the veto vote.
In his presentation to the Jay board, McDonald emphasized the distinction between data centers and artificial intelligence. He noted that while all AI relies on data centers, not all data centers host AI operations, citing Instagram as an example of a data center that does not involve AI.
His company, he said, is “not the bogeyman the drafters of L.D. 307 are worried about.”
“That bill just isn’t about us,” McDonald said. “It’s about something else.”
