Cities did the writing this summer. Coachella’s council adopted a citywide ban on data centers, Ordinance No. 1231, which was set to take effect on Friday, September 25, thirty days after its final vote on August 26. It covers server farms, AI training and processing, cloud computing and email servicing, and exempts server rooms that are incidental to a permitted business. Palm Springs, Indio and Desert Hot Springs chose pauses instead. Palm Springs adopted its 45-day pause the same day Coachella took its final vote.
The View this week asks who writes the rules above the city. It draws on NPR’s reporting that chatbot bills in at least ten states carried similar language, modelled on a 2025 California law that consumer advocates already called industry-friendly, and that some of the bills already signed will exempt the most popular chatbots. Its point is that a city can write a rule with a few months of public meetings and a vote, and that on the larger rules nobody from here is in the room.
Put the two side by side and you have the week: the part of the rulemaking anyone here can reach, and the part that most of us never see.