Town and county leaders in and near Jay are urging Gov. Janet Mills to veto a bill that would create a temporary statewide ban on new data center permitting.

In a pair of letters sent to the governor’s office last week, Jay’s town manager and three Franklin County commissioners asked Mills to veto the bill, arguing that it would kill a major economic opportunity for the community, where a developer has proposed building a $550 million data center in the former Androscoggin Mill.

The proposed moratorium would effectively kill that project, developer Tony McDonald has said. Last month, he and Mills pushed for an exemption for the Jay site, but lawmakers shot down an amendment that would have created one.

“We here in Franklin County need the redevelopment of the Androscoggin Mill in Jay to succeed,” Commissioners Tom Saviello, Tom Skolfield and Jeff Gilbert wrote.

The mill project would plug into existing infrastructure, and it lacks the negative attributes associated with hyperscale data centers cropping up throughout the country, they argued. McDonald is proposing an 82 megawatt data center.

“The Jay project has been swept up in the hysteria over these large projects,” the commissioners wrote.

In a separate letter, sent the same day, Jay Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere said the project would have no impact on the community’s electricity bills, and it would require less than 1% of the water the mill used to consume. Power and water consumption have become major points of concern among data center critics nationally.

“This development stands to provide hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue, helping to restore the vibrancy of our town and the surrounding region,” LaFreniere wrote.

The letters, dated April 15, were shared with the Press Herald on Tuesday.

The bill, LD 307, passed both chambers of the Maine Legislature last week, giving Mills until Saturday to act. Though the governor has expressed concerns over its sweep, she has not yet signaled whether she plans to sign or veto the measure.

In the days since its passage, the bill has garnered international media attention. If passed, it would create the first statewide restriction in the country.