This week I was quoted in the Billings Gazette about a question that is landing right on our doorstep here in the Heights. Companies are looking at building enormous data centers in Montana, including a proposal for thousands of megawatts of power south of Broadview, just up the road from us. It is worth slowing down and talking honestly about what that means for our families, our power bills, and our community.

Let me start with something that might surprise you. I use AI tools in my own work. I build websites and I run a small business, and these tools are genuinely useful. So I am not coming at this as someone who wants to shut technology down. I am coming at it as someone who uses it and who is asking a fair question: do we need to build it this way, and who pays for it?

Here is what worries me. In Memphis, a company put up one of the largest AI facilities in the country in 122 days. It powered the thing with dozens of gas turbines, many of them without the usual permits, in a neighborhood that got no real warning and no chance to weigh in. People there are now living with worse air and higher costs they never agreed to. That is not a story about technology being bad. It is a story about a community getting steamrolled.

We do not have to do it that way in Montana.

A recent Gallup poll found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans do not want a data center built near them, and that concern runs across party lines. The reasons are practical, not partisan. People worry about their electric bills, their water, and their quality of life. Those are Montana concerns. We have spent generations watching outside interests show up, take what they want, and leave the cleanup to the people who live here. We know this pattern.

There is also a fairness problem that should bother every homeowner in the Heights. Property taxes went up on our families over the last couple of years. Meanwhile, the one thing the Legislature actually managed to pass on data centers in 2025 was a cut to their property taxes. Think about that. Your taxes went up. Theirs went down. That is backwards.

So here is where I land. I am not interested in chasing these companies away, and I am not interested in rolling out the red carpet either. I want us to do this right. To me that means a few clear things:

• Data centers pay their own way, in a separate rate class, so the cost of new power lines and plants does not land on your monthly bill.
• The Public Service Commission gets real oversight, and the contracts are open to the public instead of hidden.
• Companies meet honest standards for water and clean power, because our air and our rivers belong to our kids and grandkids, not to a balance sheet in another state.
• And our community gets a say before the bulldozers show up, not after.

I understand why some folks want to hit pause entirely until we have rules like these in place. That is a reasonable instinct, and the conversation about it is happening right now. What I care about most is that whatever we do, we do it on Montana’s terms, with Montanans protected.

Welcome the jobs. Protect the ratepayers. Make them pay their own way. That feels like common sense to me, and I think it does to most of our neighbors too, whatever party is on their voter card.

If this is the kind of practical, look-out-for-each-other approach you want representing the Heights, I would be grateful for your support. If this matters to you, help us by signing up to get involved here.