Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has recently claimed that “too many” data center developers don’t care about the communities where they are building, which could cause issues. The governor’s remarks were met with a mixed response from Pennsylvania residents, as many believed that he had gone back on his previous pro-data center stance only to get re-elected.
In a recent interview with CNBC, Shapiro claimed that he wants more developers to actually care about the regions where they are developing data centers, as most of them do not. So, Pennsylvania only wants to work with companies that care about and respect the people in these locations.
Earlier this year, Shapiro signed an executive order removing all AI data center projects from a fast-track approval program and establishing additional requirements before projects can be approved. The change comes as Shapiro seeks re-election, and data centers have become increasingly contentious across the country.
Pennsylvania Reacts to Shapiro’s Latest Opinions on Data Centers
Many residents were not entirely convinced by Shapiro’s changing stance on data centers. On r/Pennsylvania, one of them wrote: “He spent the last six years trying to get Pittsburgh to be a center of AI and robotics development, then comes election season turns out Pennsylvania doesn’t actually like that, so he has to pretend that that isn’t what he’s been doing for six years.”
Others continued criticizing the governor: “The same guy who is going to be presenting at an AI symposium with two hyperscaler developers in Pittsburgh later this month. He’s just trying to find a new, clever way to repackage selling it to Pennsylvanians.” Someone else added: “His back-tracking on this is comical. He’ll probably win re-election, but that’s only because of the lousy challenger.”
One resident also argued that the plan to look for developers who would care about communities was somewhat naive: “Developers in general don’t care about their communities, and that’s to be expected. Their whole industry revolves around building “stuff”; doing so invariably ticks off someone. Don’t expect developers to care.”
Overall, most residents seemed skeptical in the thread and did not want half-measures, but rather wanted no more data centers to be constructed in Pennsylvania.
