One year ago, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro stood before a crowd in Berwick, Columbia County, exclaiming that it was a good day.
“I’m here to announce that Pennsylvania has landed the largest private sector investment in the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” he said, as people cheered.
The Governor said that Amazon was planning to invest at least $20 billion to build data center campuses in the state, and the company promised to create more than a thousand high-paying, high-tech jobs.
But the political winds for data centers have shifted since last year. There’s been vocal opposition in communities across the country, and in Pennsylvania, about their impact on energy prices, noise, and other disruptions in neighborhoods where they’re built, along with environmental concerns such as energy and water usage.
The Allegheny Front’s Julie Grant spoke with Jael Holzman, a reporter with Heatmap News, a climate news outlet, who recently wrote a piece about the difficult position this has created for Governor Shapiro, and how he’s been navigating it.
LISTEN to the interview
Julie Grant: In your story, you looked at emails between the Shapiro administration and Amazon and other data center developers. How did you get access to these emails? And what did they say?
Jael Holzman: As I was looking around on the internet one weekend, I found that an activist in rural PA, in one of the smallest counties in Pennsylvania, had actually gotten ahold, through public records requests, of more than 150 pages of correspondence between his office, Amazon and others in tech and in real estate.
[The emails] showed me, for example, that in April, 2025, months before Amazon announced its $20 billion investment, the Shapiro office offered Amazon “exclusive early access” to a permitting program that wasn’t yet even available to the public, a program that other companies didn’t even have the ability to apply for. And this program was also described as like an enhanced coordination process.
So it, in the emails, looked like not necessarily preferential above other people in a literal sense, but if you’re providing access to one company but not to others, it’s pretty easy to say, you’re getting something here.
And of course, what the Shapiro administration was getting in return was considerable economic development, right? A lot of investment: What data centers can hypothetically bring on paper to a rural community is incredible tax revenue. When people are getting less in terms of public programs for healthcare, for disability assistance, for retirement assistance, it makes sense to find new pockets of money.
But an increasing number of communities, in rural PA especially, as well as in very populous areas like the Philly communities, like the suburbs, you’re seeing this pushback against data centers for environmental reasons. Those very same reasons that come up when you’re in a permitting process with the state government.
Note: In response to a request for comment, the Shapiro administration said in an email that the “Commonwealth offered to help Amazon Web Services (AWS) navigate permitting and highlighted the forthcoming SPEED program, but AWS has not used SPEED for any projects.” Permitting decisions continue to be handled by the Department of Environmental Protection.
Julie Grant: Recently, Governor Shapiro released more details of a new plan he says would require data centers to bring their own power or pay for new generation, hire and train local workers and commit to environmental protection standards. But in your piece, you say it’s the governor’s call for transparency that stood out most to you. So what does that mean, and why is it significant?
Jael Holzman: This is, to me, the most important finding in my reporting, is that the memo that I described with the preferential so-called treatment in permitting was labeled ‘subject to a non-disclosure agreement.’ There was a whole brouhaha around the Trump administration and the federal government asking government employees to sign NDAs, right? So the use of a public official signing an NDA in general is controversial because we want our taxpayer dollars, theoretically, to go to people who are accountable; we want our people in government to have to tell us what they’re doing.
However, in this instance, it appears as if some of the conversations regarding a data center development and environmental stewardship and permitting between the Shapiro government and Amazon are labeled “subject to a nondisclosure agreement.’ The Shapiro administration would not answer any questions from me about what the terms of this NDA were, who in the office signed it, or whether the governor himself was bound by an NDA with Amazon.
Note: In response to a request for comment, the Shapiro administration said in an email that the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development “routinely signs non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with companies interested in discussing potential projects” with the state; those discussions “often involve proprietary or confidential information,” and it is “common practice” in business development across the country.
Julie Grant: I referenced earlier Governor Shapiro’s more recent proposal, what he calls the Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development Standards, or GRID Standards, to hold data center developers accountable for their energy use, environmental permits, and workforce development. So how is he navigating this with companies like Amazon that he’s courted to build in Pennsylvania?
Jael Holzman: The question that surrounds the Shapiro administration at this moment is whether or not the governor’s efforts to try to hold the industry accountable are going to be more than the ink they’re printed on. The governor announced the GRID principles in his State of the State address this year. And the emails displayed that as he was giving the address, his team was also telling Amazon, ‘Don’t think that this means we’re gonna ban data centers.’ I mean, that’s not exactly their words, but like they’re saying, ‘You guys, like, we’re not gonna go out of our way to mandate permits around this stuff (GRID Standards).’
And that’s the kind of thing that does engender distrust in people who are already distrustful. When I reached out for comment to the Shapiro administration on that conversation with Amazon, what I heard back was that these principles that ultimately got released, they were going to be robust and really address the concerns.
Julie Grant: So the governor is going to need the legislature to pass laws to enact his plan. Does support or opposition to data center development fall along party lines? Is this a partisan issue in Pennsylvania and other places?
Jael Holzman: The political project of the opposition to data centers is really unclear. So far, very few states have even passed some kind of law dealing with data centers in a comprehensive industry-wide way with the AI data center boom going on. And there are some politicians out there that are campaigning for stuff like a national AI data center moratorium that would pause data center development until there’s some sort of law dealing with them. There’s politicians campaigning in some states for statewide moratoria, just dealing with their state.
Julie Grant: And we should mention that the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Stacy Garrity, recently called for a pause on data center development, but that’s new.
Jael Holzman: The backlash to data centers in Pennsylvania is mostly focused in localities, a city, a county, a town, a river, a dell saying ‘no.’ We haven’t seen legislation on data centers reach an apex in part because the Democratic state legislative leaders and the Republican state legislative leaders couldn’t be any further apart on this issue right now, as far as what I’ve been able to assess. And at least in terms of the Republicans, they’d much rather throw pot shots at the Shapiro administration, while the Shapiro administration doesn’t make any of its base happy on this issue either.
I’m not entirely sure if either party or its politicians will ever coalesce around a particular strategy on this issue because, at the same time, on either side, there are those polls that are deeply opposed. And in the middle, there is this…centrist techno-optimist wing of politics that’s deeply moderate and wants to compromise while being pro-business, navigating the threadiest of needles. This is like, I don’t know where this is going except to say no one knows.
Julie Grant: The Pennsylvania legislature, about five years ago, created tax incentives for data center developers, but bills this year have been introduced in both the House and the Senate by Democrats and Republicans to repeal those tax breaks.
Jael Holzman: It wouldn’t surprise me if there is some momentum in the state of Pennsylvania to amend this tax break. There’s such momentum in many states right now because people are looking at the coffers for their state budgets, and they’re going, ‘Wow, we’re losing a lot of money to this tax break. This industry doesn’t really seem to need it. And there’s so much demand.’ At the same time, independent analyses from watchdog news outlets like Spotlight PA have found billions spent on data center tax breaks. So it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s momentum to change that.
Julie Grant: You’ve mentioned that numerous polls show how quickly public sentiment has changed on data center development. So, what did you find in your reporting about opposition from citizens in Pennsylvania?
Jael Holzman: Right now, one of the biggest concerns people have about data center development in their communities is how hard it is to get information from their local governments when they sign non-disclosure agreements or other kinds of pacts to secrecy with developers. I wrote in my story about this instance where residents in the surrounding community of Hazle Township learned that a data center campus was going to be coming to their community.
Julie Grant: I’ll mention that Hazle Township is in Luzerne County, in the northeastern part of the state.
Jael Holzman: And when a reporter reached out to Amazon asking whether or not they were behind the project in that community, the Shapiro administration had a bit of a freak out internally. I chronicled this in my story using the emails.
The reason why that’s the case is because if there’s questions being raised about officials potentially signing NDAs with the tech company, and then there are questions inside of the state government about whether or not they accidentally made public information about the tech company, and then you publicly lay out in your standards that you want developers to be transparent. There’s a question about consistency and about hypocrisy raised by activists.
Julie Grant: What is it that you’re hearing from people, and what does the Shapiro administration plan say in terms of transparency?
Jael Holzman: You know, does transparency mean developers have to simply tell people that a development is coming or do companies have to specifically disclose to their communities if a data center is going to ultimately go to Amazon or Microsoft or someone else? And I still don’t entirely know if that is going to be compelled under these standards.
Julie Grant: Beyond Governor Shapiro, how are the politics shaking out around data centers?
Jael Holzman: I have not seen any example where a politician is adequately, or even in a significant measurable way, capturing the sheer anxiety and angst around AI data center development that we’re currently seeing in our surveys and polls. Like this is a very clear, sudden shift in public opinion, and how politicians navigate that is going to be really tricky.
Note: After the interview, we reached out to Governor Shapiro’s administration, and received an email response. In addition to the comments above, the administration said that “Governor Shapiro has heard directly from Pennsylvanians who are concerned about data center development, and he is committed to ensuring AI and data center growth strengthens communities, protects consumers, and puts Pennsylvanians first while taking advantage of the Commonwealth’s strengths for economic growth.”
