Wendell Griffen, the Democratic nominee for Pulaski County county judge, unveiled his plan on Wednesday for the county to increase its regulation and permitting of data centers as the government he seeks to lead next year seems to be devolving into chaos.
Griffen, a known skeptic of data centers, has joined organizer Kathy Wells and the Coalition of Little Rock Neighborhoods to criticize the lack of transparency around the centers being developed by large technology companies like Google, Meta and Apple to power artificial intelligence services. Two of the industrial behemoths, which have drawn ire around the country for using massive amounts of electricity, land and water, are currently planned for Pulaski County. One would be located at the Port of Little Rock and another near Wrightsville. With his latest announcement, he becomes one of the most prominent candidates in the state taking a critical stance toward data centers while more and more residents are starting to organize against data centers.
“My ordinance says that if a data center project reaches a large scale, it must go through a conditional use permit process, and that process ensures that infrastructure capacity is verified, impacts are mitigated and costs are not shifted on to taxpayers,” Griffen said at a press conference in the Tower Building on Center Street in Little Rock.“We will create a consistent message that growth is welcome, but it must be planned, compatible and responsible. This is about getting ahead of the curve and allows us to say yes to investment and innovation, and yes to protecting our infrastructure and our communities. And most importantly it says yes to growth that pays its own way. I’m asking the Quorum Court to support these measures, and I call on Pulaski County residents to urge members of the Quorum Court to do so. We are one county, one community and one future.”
The draft ordinance, which Griffen shared with the Quorum Court, incumbent County Judge Barry Hyde and acting county attorney Hamilton Kemp, would creatively skirt around the Arkansas Data Centers Act of 2023, which limits local governments’ ability to regulate data centers. However, the law allows counties and cities to continue regulating land use, which is what Griffen’s ordinance would do.
Griffen’s proposal would create a new legal definition in county law called “high-intensity digital infrastructure,” which would include any developments “engaged in digital data processing, storage, artificial intelligence computation, or similar activity…” Some of the criteria Griffen includes in his ordinance’s definition are centers that need at least 10 megawatts of continuous electrical load, 3 megawatts of on-site generation or backup capacity, 100,000 square feet of land or at least 100,000 gallons of water a day.
That definition is expansive enough to include almost all data centers, especially the hyperscale centers proliferating around the country to power the AI boom. Griffen’s ordinance would also require each development to receive a conditional use permit, meet setback requirements from residential areas, adhere to noise pollution limits and provide development and environmental plans. Griffen’s ordinance would also allow counties to monitor the centers and to charge fees when centers apply for permits. Data centers would also have to pay for ongoing monitoring of their activities in the county.
Read the proposed ordinance below:
Griffen seemed confident that the Quorum Court would take up his proposal and has heard interest from justices of the peace on sponsoring the ordinance. Coupled with the ordinance is a resolution aimed at establishing a “regional infrastructure impact policy for large-scale industrial and digital infrastructure development in the Sweet Home and Port of Little Rock corridor.”
“I have no reason to believe they [the Quorum Court] don’t want to take it up, and from every conversation I’ve had I believe they want to take it up. Their concern is how soon can I do it,” Griffen said. “The question is why weren’t they invited to take it up before now. The impacts were known and the numbers were known, so yes, the Quorum Court is ready to take this up; we just needed someone with enough leadership to give it a chance.”
After the press conference, Griffen told the Arkansas Times that he hoped the Quorum Court would take up the proposal in May and that it would go into effect as soon as possible. He said it would apply to the developments at the Port of Little Rock and near Wrightsville, as well as all future developments.
Even as Griffen proposes an ambitious new plan for the county to deal with a hot button issue, county government under Hyde has faced headwinds. Griffen defeated Hyde in the March Democratic primary with well over 60% of the vote, and is the favorite to defeat his Republican opponent, Michael Rushin, in the November general election. Rushin declined to comment for this story, saying he was on his honeymoon and would like the chance to discuss the matter at a later date.
Pulaski County is currently having to redo zoning policy because of a recent law passed by the state legislature in 2025 that stripped away municipalities’ ability to zone far outside their boundaries. The zoning plan that Hyde proposed drew massive controversy within different community groups for opening up development in unincorporated parts of the county. The longtime planning director, Van McClendon, was fired by Hyde in February after the zoning plan was tabled in December 2025. Information received through a Freedom of Information Act request showed that McClendon didn’t know what the zoning plan was, and he indicated that the county’s planning department was unfamiliar with the origins of the plan.
Griffen waded into county business to criticize the zoning plan before he won the Democratic primary in March, and he later to criticized the county for trying to approve payments to nonprofits.
There is also the ongoing budget fight raging in the county between Hyde and longtime Pulaski County Treasurer Debra Buckner. After several years of county overspending, Buckner warned in March that the county could not meet payroll without an infusion of cash. The Quorum Court voted to move some money from the reserves into the general fund to tackle the shortfall during a special meeting on April 6.
A week later, Hyde held an improvised press conference in which he and his appointed comptroller, Michael Hutchens, blamed Buckner for the crisis and explained that money was earmarked for other purposes. That, Hutchens said, was the reason for the shortfall, not any mismanagement on Hyde’s part. In that same press conference, Hyde called for Bucker’s resignation, though she had just won her own Democratic primary over former county attorney Adam Fogleman.
Since the election, Fogleman has resigned, according to the county judge’s office. McClendon did not return a request for comment from the Arkansas Times, but Fogleman responded by saying he wanted to seek opportunities in the private sector after coming up short against Buckner. He said his decision had nothing to do with Hyde, and that after he conceded to Buckner, he knew he would be pursuing opportunities outside county government.
Buckner called Hyde’s demand that she resign “laughable” and refused. The county plans to bring in an outside auditor to assess the finances, a proposal that Buckner supports. Hyde downplays any financial mismanagement, and the two most recent audits conducted by the Arkansas Legislative Council show few issues caught by auditors or examples of overspending. Those audits are from 2021 and 2023, respectively.
In the April 6 meeting where Buckner requested the county move money from the emergency fund to the general fund, she said the deficits had been mounting since 2023.
Justice of the Peace Donna Massey, who chairs the budget committee and has served on the Quorum Court since 1999, told the Arkansas Times in an interview that she and other JPs felt blindsided by the huge deficit, and that the audit will be integral for the county to move forward on good financial footing. She said that if the JPs had been approving overspending, it was not intentional but rather because they believed the county had ample revenue for each request, adding that she didn’t believe any intentional financial mismanagement occurred.
At Griffen’s press conference, he reiterated that the “county judge does not hire and cannot fire the county treasurer,” and said he believed the issue was a management problem, not a budget problem.
Emails obtained by Arkansas Times’ resident sleuth Matt Campbell, through the Freedom of Information Act, show that Buckner did indeed warn Hyde and Hutchens as early as January that the general fund was running a deficit that was only growing deeper. Hutchens said he was expecting certain revenues to come in that were late, but Buckner continued to press Hyde and Hutchens to deal with the deficit in the meantime.
A spokesperson for Pulaski County’s government responded to questions from the Arkansas Times, writing that Hyde and Hutchens did not attempt to place blame on Buckner for the deficit, but rather wanted to emphasize the deficit was caused by outstanding revenues that had yet to come in. The spokesperson said that Hyde called for Buckner’s resignation over her causing “unwarranted alarm and disruption among employees” after she said she would be unable to issue paychecks without more cash in the general fund. However, in the impromptu press conference, Hyde denounced Buckner for a “lack of understanding of how money flows through the county budget, or a willful disregard for that process.”
The county will accept submissions for an auditor until May 12.
