Vos Warns Data Centers Issue Could Cost Republicans Votes
Chastises GOP-Led Senate on '80 percent issue,' dropping bill to regulate data centers.
From left, Speaker Pro Tem Kevin Petersen, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, and Senate President Mary Felzkowski listen to Gov. Tony Evers as he delivers the State of the State on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR
Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos criticized his Senate GOP counterparts on Tuesday for letting a bill to regulate data centers die, calling the issue “bigger than most that I have seen in my 22 years.”
Vos made the remarks in a lunchtime event hosted by WisPolitics at the Madison Club, as the state Senate convened inside the Capitol building just up the street for what was expected to be their last day of session of the year.
A bill to regulate data centers that passed the Assembly in January did not make it on the Senate’s agenda. The proposal would have imposed certain data reporting and water recycling requirements on data centers, and made the centers — not consumers — pay for related improvements to the state power grid. It also would have required project owners to revert land back to its original purpose if a data center development plan is not completed.
“I think it is absolutely sad the state Senate is not voting on data center regulation,” Vos said Tuesday. “People are using what these data centers are providing.”
Vos cautioned that the issue could cost the state Senate some seats in November, at a time when they’ll be defending their majority from a Democratic effort to flip the chamber. He described some of the provisions of the bill as “80 percent issues” with the public, meaning they’re widely supported.
“The idea that … we’re going to not require data centers to pay their own way, that we’re not going to say that if they leave — which, they certainly could at some point, become obsolete — that they’re not going to become a brownfield,” he said. “The state Senate should vote on that bill, especially if they want to get back in the majority.”
Property tax, school funding negotiations continue
Vos said that Republicans and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers have continued to discuss a deal to reduce property taxes and increase education funding, including special education funding. Those negotiations have been going on for months, and Vos indicated that lawmakers would have to come back in special session to pass something later this year.
“If we do it, it’s not going to be this week,” he said.
Vos added that he wants the proposal to be narrow, rather than an effort to pack a bill with other provisions that didn’t pass in the last 15 months of legislative session.
Reflecting on two decades in the Legislature
Reflecting on his tenure in office, Vos — who announced last month he would not seek reelection — said he’d strongly considered not running again two years ago, after he narrowly survived a primary challenge that saw him at odds with President Donald Trump. But he said that efforts to recall him from office, which were backed by national figures like My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, made him want to leave on his own terms.
“The pillow guy and all the whack jobs couldn’t stop themselves, right?” he said. “So, screw them.”
Vos said that in more than two decades in office, he has evolved away from a pure ideologue to a pragmatist trying to win.
“If the 2005 freshman Robin met the 2026 speaker, he would be deeply disappointed … because when I ran for office, I was much more ideological,” he said. “I would be more interested in finding a compromise and winning and moving the ball down the field, as opposed to when I started, when I was probably more like a typical primary voter, which is, I want my person to always be fighting for what I believe in, even if it means losing.”
He said that, in Washington and in Madison alike, he’d rather watch the legislative process unfold slowly than let power accrue in the executive office
“That’s worse for society, because it reinforces (the idea that) one person gets their way. They don’t have to compromise,” he said. “How about reaching out and trying to find consensus? You don’t have to do it if you’re the single person making a decision.”
Vos warns Wisconsin Senate inaction on data centers could cost GOP votes was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.
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Vos talking about compromise and consensus? He must be off his rocker, he’s never stood for those things.
Sure. Now that the doorknob is about to hit him “where the sun don’t shine,” he talks big. Perhaps he can kiss and make up with Mr. Gableman and defraud the government (and the taxpayers) in some manner, shape or form
Growing a conscience pretty late in the game. I find it very telling that any R who does grow one, or had a conscience to begin with and wanted to hold onto their values, heads for the exits.
In 10 years or less Wisconsin communities will be struggling with what to do with “obsolete and abandoned” toxic data centers because these facilities are being built with borrowed money and the weird speculative idea that consumers, like me and you, will need places to store all of our data, our images and videos and documents, in the cloud and that the new Large Language Models for AI will need thousands of data centers all over the country to run the AI that will be writing code for all of us as we struggle to figure out why we all need code to be written for us. But certainly we’ll need “AI agents” to do things for us like writing code and deciding what we need before we need it and buying it for us before we know we need it, with our money or maybe we’ll all need a AI friend to listen to us complain about our lives and to remind us of how wonderful we are to work for and we will all be very willing to pay for these services that we don’t need or really want. AI is a bubble. Super General AI will never happen. This is all being built by people who know that when/if it does happen the first thing Super General AI will do is figure out how to run itself on less expensive equipment and fewer data centers.
Reciting the Charlie Sykes “atonement” playbook, huh Robbin?