Shapiro’s Data Center About-Face
Tuesday, Shapiro found a way around Harrisburg's gridlock: he signed Executive Order 2026-05, turning the voluntary data center GRID Standards we've covered since May into an enforceable requirement. Why it lands here: this is the same fight Smithfield, Pocono, and Tobyhanna townships have been having block by block for a year, just with Harrisburg finally attaching teeth.
Developers now have to sign legally binding consent orders (cover their own energy costs, hit water-conservation benchmarks, run real community outreach, and get local sign-off) before the state's Department of Environmental Protection will even review a permit. Every AI data center project got pulled off the state's Permit Fast Track Program on the spot, and nondisclosure agreements between developers and state agencies are banned outright. The sales-tax break we told you about (worth $517M a year to the industry by 2030) is now contingent on the same compliance.
Shapiro had sharp words for data center developers: “We will not be bullied by these developers. We will not be bulldozed by the lawyers for these Big Tech companies.” He was just as blunt about what happens to developers who skip the process: “If you can't agree to our strict requirements and get the community where you want to build to say ‘yes,’ you're not going to have the Commonwealth's support either.” It's also a sharp about-face for a governor who spent the past year personally courting a $20 billion Amazon data center buildout and championing the industry as an economic engine.
Republican challenger Stacy Garrity, who's made data centers the centerpiece of her campaign, called it “playing CYA” and said Shapiro “lit the fuse on the chaos,” a notable pivot from the same candidate who was complaining on talk radio last summer that Ohio was “kicking our butt” on data center count.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Shapiro is up for reelection against Garrity this fall, and data centers are the exact issue where he's underwater. That Quinnipiac poll has only 24% of Pennsylvanians, and just 40% of his own party, approving of how he's handled it, even as he still leads Garrity 53%-40% overall. And it's landing at a moment when the talk of Shapiro running for president in 2028 keeps getting louder. He's making the media rounds more than a governor focused purely on Harrisburg usually does, most recently yesterday on CBS Mornings, making his case directly to a national audience.
