In broadly bipartisan votes on Wednesday, the state House passed a pair of bills that would condition data centers’ tax benefits and allow municipalities to enact a six-month moratorium on new data center development.
Further, the House is expected to pass a bill Thursday that would completely end data centers’ tax breaks; the bill was voted out of the Appropriations Committee Wednesday evening.
The votes represent a relatively rapid paradigm shift in Harrisburg. Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that Republican lawmakers would be friendlier to data centers, viewing them as economic growth engines and not wanting to impinge on the free market by overregulating them…