What a Data Center Moratorium Can Buy

A Boondoggle newsletter analysis by Pat Garofalo (co-written with Maxine Adelson, an intern at the American Economic Liberties Project) surveys the fast-spreading wave of data center moratoriums as New York's legislature approved a one-year statewide pause (awaiting Gov. Hochul's signature) after Maine's governor vetoed a similar bill. It catalogs roughly 100 municipal/county-level moratoriums already enacted (concentrated in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia) plus state-level tax-break moratoriums in Ohio, Oregon, and Arizona. The piece rebuts industry talking points point-by-point — that opposition is "fear, not facts," that a regulatory "patchwork" scares off investment, and that moratoriums cost jobs and tax revenue — arguing data centers are low-multiplier projects that don't need blanket subsidies, and that a pause simply buys time to get rate design, water/power cost allocation, and public-process rules right before communities are locked into decades of costs.