The Houston County Commissioners are considering a proposal, from a cloud computing company, to construct a data center in unincorporated Houston County. At the June 23 commissioners' meeting, the Assistant County Attorney, Hugh Coleman, said, "The county has very, very, very, very little regulatory authority" over what happens on private property in unincorporated areas. The commissioners said that the commission and the data center company would need to create an agreement that defines and authorizes the oversight of construction and the monitoring of a data facility.

The 2027 Texas legislature will be discussing their research about regulatory and safety measures related to data centers. Then, they will write laws that county authorities can use if they choose to approve the construction of a data center.  In addition to the 2025 Senate Bill 6 about data centers, the 2027 legislature will work on the following:

1. -Whether or not to allow sales tax exemptions for data centers
2. -Determining who pays for grid interconnection and infrastructure costs
3. -Outlining water- efficient cooling requirements for data centers
4. -Collection of annual reports documenting electric and water use

TO THE HOUSTON COUNTY COMMISSIONERS: Since the Houston County Commission is limited in their authority outside of incorporated cities, we, the following residents of Houston County, request that you pause approval of any data center construction until after the 2027 Texas Legislature passes laws that will define and clarify rules and regulations for data centers. It is important that Texas data centers have a common set-of-rules and regulations which will, hopefully, maintain sufficient oversight, from the state.