Rom Roddy
Data centers have suddenly become a big issue in South Carolina. First, let me say I completely oppose them in South Carolina especially given the leaders we have who do not understand how to make any reasonable deals. I also oppose federal mandates on what state should or should not do with data centers.
A series of federal executive actions are pushing states toward certain regulatory frameworks, and as usual, politicians are lining up to comply without asking the most important question first – Is this constitutional?
First, data centers themselves. They do not create any level of meaningful jobs and consume vast amounts of power, water, and land. The politicians, including some of the candidates running for office, glibly say what their consultants told them to since none of them have any current governing skills.
They say they will get the data centers to pay for the power and water. What they do not say is that the state system is a generic cost-plus system that is not set up to manage power generation and distribution capacity to specific locations.
The power companies simply say we need more power; they spend the money for power generation and distribution, add their mark up and pass it on to us with higher rates. If you say that the capacity expansion was for the data center, they will argue it was not, and it was a generic power expansion.
Remember the nuclear project of $10 billion dollar plus disaster that was attributed to Santee Cooper. No one got assigned the blame. They just write it off with higher rates to us. So do not buy their 45 second talking points. They always talk about slick policy but do not know how to get anything done.
Then you have the ruling class’s disastrous deal making skills. They absolutely have never done deals with their own money and now think they can do deals with our money. They do not understand risk. They do not understand leverage.
They do not understand long term cost vs short term press releases. The disasters with Scout motors, battery plants, solar panel plants and data centers should be a grim warning to not trust making more bad deals with our money. If these were private sector deals, they would all be fired. Terrible terms. Disproportionate risk. Any deals with data centers will be a disaster. Don’t let them do it. We will end up holding the bag and paying the price for their addiction to OPM (Other People’s Money).
Under the Tenth Amendment, states retain sovereignty over matters not explicitly granted to the federal government. Yet what we keep seeing is state leaders bending the knee to federal pressure, adopting federal direction as if it were law, and setting dangerous precedent in the process.
You may like the current president. You may believe he is doing a good job. I do. I gave him a seven figure donation. That is not the point. What happens when the next president is someone like Gavin Newsom? Are you prepared to take direction then? If you have already surrendered state authority, you will not get to choose when to resist. That is why state sovereignty must be defended at all times, not just when it is politically convenient
For that reason alone, I oppose federally driven mandates around data centers. South Carolina should assert its Tenth Amendment rights and make its own decisions and resist all attempts at federal mandates with data centers.
South Carolina is not in a position to gamble on projects it does not understand, negotiated by people who cannot negotiate, under pressure from a federal government that has no constitutional authority to dictate these decisions.
This is how states get into trouble. Slowly. Quietly. One bad precedent at a time.
The smart move is simple. Walk away.
Reassert state sovereignty. Protect taxpayers. Stop chasing shiny objects. And demand leadership that understands the Constitution, understands economics, and understands that not every deal is a good deal. -Rom Reddy, candidate for Governor.
