Rose visits Johnson City, presses Blackburn on ethics documents

JOHNSON CITY — U.S. Rep. and gubernatorial candidate John Rose, R-Tenn., said during a campaign stop in Johnson City he still wants to see a full release of documents related to a Senate ethics investigation into his opponent Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn. Washington County, Johnson City and Jonesborough officials met with Rose for lunch at The Firehouse Thursday. Rose is running against Blackburn, R-Tenn., and state Rep. Monty Fritts, R-Kingston, in the race for the Republican nomination for governor. Rose published an open letter to his campaign site on July 16 calling on opponent Blackburn to release all findings and documents from a 2025 Senate Ethics Committee investigation into the senator's campaign spending. Rose said he still feels the documents should be released for public awareness. "If her contention is that there's nothing to see there, then let's see it and we can all decide," Rose said. "Let's let the press see all that information and they can dig into it and understand fully, you know, what has transpired there." At a recent campaign event in Williamson County, Rose said he believes local governments should be given a structure to make the right decisions. Rose said Thursday, while he believes development is a "local issue," the state should take the lead on setting ground rules. Data centers in particular, Rose added, are where these guardrails are needed. "I think if the state takes the leadership in developing a framework, you know, what are the issues that we should be thinking about," he said. "With respect to data centers in particular to help guide county governments, not take the decision away from them, but to just say 'hey here are things that you should think about.'" Seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of AI data centers in their area, according to a May Gallup poll. In Tennessee, several municipalities, including Johnson City, have implemented moratoriums or effective bans on data centers to revisit zoning regulations. Rose said he doesn't support an all-out ban on data centers but thinks the decision should be left up to local governments. "Local communities should consider where do we want data centers in our county [or] if we want them," he said. "We should maybe have some zoning restrictions that specifically answer that question so that developers don't come in and buy land and then say, 'hey we're going to put a data center here' and then the county is like, 'hey, we didn't want it here.'" In Washington County, the early voting period continues through Aug. 1. Early voting sites are open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 9 a.m. to noon. Emma Caskill contributed to this report.