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> A lot of the communities that had datacenters built in them ended up getting steamrolled in negotiations by the tech companies because you had the local government (in small towns, this is people who work part time making a few thousand dollars per year) negotiating a deal with the Google/xAI/Oracle/etc corporate lawyers.

I think the immediately preceding sentence pretty clearly laid out their rational. (Not saying I agree or disagree, just that I think your question was already answered).

Because the tech companies operate at the national level and individual communities are at a massive disadvantage if they just negotiated individually.

People are clamoring to control what others can do on their own personal property, and then people would complain they are banned from fixing their car in their backyard. Why do people want to make their own lives worse? Do they think these laws only apply to some "other" group?