FL SB 484 / signed May 7 / effective Jul 1 2026 / utility cost-shift prohibition / local-government veto preserved / mandatory water + utility public hearings / foreign-ownership bar / first state-level statute of its kind

Plain-English version of what SB 484 does. On May 7, 2026, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 484 at a ceremony in Lakeland, calling it the 'first of its kind in the nation.' The law has four operative provisions, and unlike most data-center state legislation that hides operative language inside revenue or tax-incentive bills, SB 484 is a stand-alone data-center statute with all four provisions on the surface: 1. **Utility cost-shift prohibition.** Florida utilities are prohibited from passing any data center costs — including electricity costs and any transmission or distribution upgrades caused by data center load — onto residential or small-business customers. Hyperscale data centers must pay the full cost of their own grid service. This is the same operative principle Texas Gov. Abbott codified administratively via his June 10 directive and that North Carolina's SB 730 codifies (still pending Senate concurrence) — but Florida got it on the books FIRST. 2. **Local government veto authority preserved.** SB 484 explicitly preserves the authority of Florida county and municipal governments to reject major data center developments via standard land-use and zoning processes. This is the provision every county commissioner this week is citing when justifying a moratorium — the law isn't just permissive, it's prescriptive about local control. 3. **Mandatory public discussion of water and utility impacts.** The bill REQUIRES public hearings on water and utility impacts before any hyperscale data center project can be approved. This effectively bars the 'NDA-shielded fast-track' deal structure (like the so-called 'Project Tango' that triggered earlier Florida legislative interest) where county commissioners approved a project before residents knew its name. 4. **Foreign ownership prohibition.** Utilities are barred from providing service to any data center owned or controlled by 'foreign countries of concern' as defined by Florida statute — which currently includes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria. This is the first state statute explicitly addressing the data-center-as-national-security overlap, and it shows up in the diligence stack for any Florida project with non-U.S. equity in the cap table. Effective date: July 1, 2026 — seven days from this newsletter — so every Florida hyperscale developer is either accelerating permitting to lock in pre-SB-484 treatment or restructuring to satisfy all four provisions post-July 1.

Primary source · Office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Law to Protect Floridians from Subsidizing Data Centers (May 7 2026) ↗