(The Center Square) – Thursday evening, at least 600 residents concerned about a data center proposal packed a middle school auditorium in eastern Pennsylvania – the latest of many local meetings across the state jammed with people worried about such proposals.
Three days later, state lawmakers and Gov. Josh Shapiro celebrated their creation of a state budget that took action on dozens of issues.
Concerns about data center proposals were not among them.
The omission disturbed some observers who put little value on a budget provision related to after-the-fact, post-build data center reports. They are dismayed the Senate and House have left Harrisburg until late September.
Unless lawmakers are recalled, no legislative action will occur in that time on more than a half-dozen data center-related bills. Many have passed the Democratic-controlled state House with some Republican support only to stall in the Republican-controlled Senate, whose top leaders are President Pro Tempore Kim Ward of Westmoreland County and Majority Leader Joe Pittman of Indiana County.
“Both chambers should be ashamed of themselves,” said Democratic state Sen. Katie Muth of Chester County. “It is a joke. I feel so bad for the public.”
Republican Sen. Jarrett Coleman of Lehigh County – whose district includes the township where 600 people came out Thursday night – said lawmakers should be called back to Harrisburg.
Widespread concern about data centers, Coleman said, may be “the single most non-partisan issue I have ever witnessed” and “Republicans, Democrats, independents, and non-affiliated’s are all standing together as a community.” Among bills he has proposed is one that would let municipalities put in place an 18-month moratorium regarding data centers.
Coleman and others were particularly surprised that the Legislature and Shapiro failed to revoke an existing sales tax break on data center equipment. It gives the industry a growing stream of money – estimated at $180 million-plus this fiscal year – and takes it away from state government.
“It seems to me that eliminating the data center tax exemption was a no-brainer,” said Democratic Rep. Greg Vitali of Delaware County, author of one of the bills to end the exemption. “I am mystified.”
That bill passed the House by a 197-5 vote on June 25. The “yes” votes included more than 90 Republicans.
Other data center bills that have passed the House but stalled in the Senate include:
One codifying Shapiro’s proposed standards for data centers passed the House on June 24 with more than 30 Republicans joining nearly all Democrats in voting “yes.”Another that passed the House 171-31 on June 30 stipulated that to get the sales tax exemption, a data center company would among other things have to attest it did not sign non-disclosure agreements with local governments.Still another, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Paul Friel of Chester County, would give municipalities the option of calling a 180-day pause on data center applications. It passed the House on June 24 by a 201-1 vote.
“The Senate may have miscalculated here,” Friel said on Tuesday. “I just think there is public sentiment to do something.”
One piece of data center-related language that made it into the approved budget package – lifted from a bill filed by Democratic Rep. Kyle Mullins of Lackawanna County – does not deal with proposals for data centers. Rather, it calls for after-the-fact, post-build reports to be filed with the state.
Pittman, responding to written questions, called the Mullins provision “an important piece of transparency as these discussions continue.” The Senate majority leader’s district includes what has been billed as the largest proposed natural-gas powered data center campus in the nation, a project valued at $10 billion.
Pittman said the Coleman bill has been positioned to be ready for final consideration by the Senate in the future. And, he said, the bill could be amended by Coleman.
An end to the sales tax exemption, Pittman said, was contained in a budget-related bill that was passed by the Senate but then changed by the House. Pittman said, “The governor has proposed several criteria that could be met to allow the exemption to remain intact, which is something we have been exploring and will continue to examine.”
As far as being called back to Harrisburg, Pittman said, “We are certainly open to further discussions and taking action beyond what has been done, including considering measures to allow for moratorium decisions to be made at the local level.”
A spokesperson for Ward, Erica Clayton Wright, said questions about the data center issue would best be addressed by the office of Pittman. “He manages the legislation that goes to the floor,” Wright said.
Many locales are looking to Harrisburg because of the uniquely complex nature of data center proposals, enhanced by presence of big money.
In one locale in Luzerne County, a data center developer’s offer of $10,000 for every household should the proposal come to fruition has been called “a bribe” by some residents. In another nearby township, residents are being enticed with offers of $250,000 per acre with an additional $1 million per home.
In Lehigh County, a proposal developers have dubbed “Project Atlas” envisions putting three data center buildings of 492,000-square-feet each and two other structures on 411 acres in South Whitehall Township. Video and photos taken Thursday night at Springhouse Middle School show a packed auditorium and huge lines at a township planning commission meeting pertaining to the proposal.
“It was at least 600 people,” said Township Manager Tom Petrucci.
Coleman observed that it was “six hundred people in a relatively small township showing up for a meeting on a weeknight in the summer.”
Many meetings in communities across the state have been attended by representatives of the advocacy nonprofit Food & Water Watch. The fact that lawmakers have left the Capitol for two to three months means “no protections for the communities and the environment from this build-out,” said Ginny Marcille-Kerslake, a senior organizer at Food & Water Watch.
She said, “There is nothing stopping them from doing the work, but they have chosen to be absent from it until the end of September.”
