Pennsylvanians use town hall meeting to oppose data center expansion

“If you have bad laws in your town, and you add a bad place, what do you think?

The increase in data center jobs in Pennsylvania has been driven by taxes on builders, as allowed by a 2021 law that lawmakers must repeal, said Republican State Rep. Jamie Walsh, who spoke at the town meeting. In VirginiaAs a state with more data centers, developers should pay sales and use taxes, but Pennsylvania doesn’t want that, he said.

“This has made Pennsylvania a target.” In Virginia, they have to pay taxes on the property’s contents. Pennsylvania will not recognize that. That’s why we’re zero,” said Walsh, who represents Luzerne County in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Governor Katie Muth, a Democrat who represents part of Philadelphia’s communities, is planning to introduce a law to establish a three-year development period for the development of data so that governments and governments can begin to study and plan for companies. He announced the bill in the legislative list in February and hopes to bring it soon, the spokesman said.

Muth told the town’s activists that the data processing company has not done enough to disclose its plans to the public. He said: “That was planned long before we knew it, so don’t think you missed all these things. “You should have; nobody wants you to know about this.”

Michael Sauers, a retired school teacher from Bloomsburg, southwest of Scranton, called on officials to change the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, a law first published in 1970.

“This should be strengthened to empower people to resist the unnecessary development that is being shoved down their throats,” he said. “Localities should be given the power to reject high-rise development that will no longer benefit them in the future.”

This article appeared first Inside Weather News.