Four things this morning. A Reuters investigation went out across the USA Today wire today, naming a state-by-state mechanism that lets utilities charge customers for power plants and transmission lines years before those projects come online. In Oakland County, Michigan, a township board facing a recall over an approved 1.8-million-square-foot data center used a different lever — an easement vote — to block the project on May 4. The Ohio Capital Journal recirculated last week's Scioto Analysis survey of 14 Ohio economists, this time stacked alongside AEP CEO Bill Fehrman's $37 million 2024 pay and a Policy Matters Ohio estimate that some Google and Meta tax breaks come out to $1 million in public money per job created. And in Pennsylvania, six municipalities in four counties — and two state senators of opposite parties — are converging on the same procedural answer: a 180-day pause under the state's Municipalities Planning Code while local governments write data-center zoning ordinances from scratch.
Tim McLaughlin's Reuters review, datelined Boston and running across the USA Today Network this morning, found that at least 40 U.S. states now have some form of “construction work in progress” provision in their utility rules — more than twice the fewer than 20 states a Brattle Group survey identified a decade ago. The mechanism lets utilities pass the cost of large infrastructure projects on to customers before those projects are operating; Reuters reports that U.S. power prices have risen about 40% over the past five years, per the federal Energy Information Administration, with double-digit increases over the past year in what the piece calls “data center hot spots like Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.” In Virginia, Dominion Energy has already collected about $2 billion from ratepayers for an $11.5 billion offshore wind farm still under construction — a peak charge of $11.23 on an average monthly bill, per Dominion's regulatory disclosures.
Paul Cicio, president of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, on the mechanism: "All this does is shift the financial risk to the ratepayer. The average ratepayer has no idea this is happening." Patty Durand, director of Georgians for Affordable Energy, on the Vogtle nuclear cost overruns that ran the project $20 billion past its original $14 billion estimate and contributed to the November 2025 ouster of two Republican Georgia Public Service Commissioners: "Georgia ratepayers were severely harmed, and any electeds that support these high-risk, expensive projects may suffer the same fate from consumer outrage as the two commissioners who lost their seats did."
Source: Tim McLaughlin / Reuters, via USA Today and Gannett's national network.
In Oakland County, Michigan, the Lyon Township board of trustees — facing a possible recall from residents angry over a data center the planning commission approved last fall — voted unanimously on May 4 to deny easements on township-owned property that Walbridge needed in order to install a drain bypass. The six-building, 1.8-million-square-foot project, called Project Flex, sits on 172 acres in the South Hill Business Park West. Township Engineer Leslie Zawada testified that the drain bypass is required to develop the parcel for any purpose, not only for the data center; without the easement, the parcel cannot be built on. Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Jim Nash's office confirmed in a statement: "A private developer has offered to fund the drainage improvements. If the Lyon Township Board does not grant the requested easement, the improvement project cannot move forward at this time."
The board did not vote on the data center directly — it voted on a drainage easement. Trustee Sean O'Neil's motion to deny: the easements "are not currently in the best interests of the township." Amanda Shaughnessy, general counsel for Walbridge, in a closing email to the paper: "a chilling signal to every developer and future development in Lyon Township that the rules can change without warning. The Township has told us we cannot use our property for any purpose until these drain improvements are completed, and this easement was the means of completing them. With that path closed, we are left with no choice but to exhaust every avenue available to us for resolution."
Source: Susan Bromley / Hometownlife.com / Detroit Free Press.
The Ohio Capital Journal recirculated the Scioto Analysis survey of 14 Ohio economists today — ten of them disagreed that data-center tax incentives are an efficient use of public funds; seven of them said the costs of the proposed Ohio constitutional ban on new data centers above 25 megawatts would outweigh the benefits. What's new in today's piece is the framing around the survey. The OCJ paired the economists' answers with three other Ohio numbers: AEP CEO Bill Fehrman's $37 million 2024 pay (about $12,000 an hour); a January 2026 Policy Matters Ohio estimate that some Google and Meta tax breaks in Ohio amount to $1 million in public money for each job the data centers create; and a target of 413,000 signatures the petition committee behind the constitutional ban is trying to gather to put the question on the November ballot.
Albert Sumell, an economist at Youngstown State University, in the survey's comment section: "I can't think of a worse use of public funds than to incentivize data centers. They are associated with very few permanent jobs and high external costs." Michael Jones at the University of Cincinnati, on the constitutional ban itself: "It should be up to the market to pick winners and losers; and Ohio should not be targeting a particular industry. If there are concerns about energy use or land use, then data centers should internalize and pay the real costs of their deployment."
Source: Ohio Capital Journal, via the States Newsroom feed.
Center Square reporter Ford Turner walked through the procedural mechanism Pennsylvania municipalities have begun using to pause data-center proposals while they write zoning from scratch. The Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code lets any local government without “data center” wording in its existing zoning ordinance trigger a 180-day pause from considering proposals while it adopts that language. Six entities have already started the clock: East Whiteland Township and West Whiteland Township (both Chester County), Madison Township and Pine Township (both Columbia County), Montour County (which started its pause in November 2025), and Limerick Township in Montgomery County, which is handling two separate data-center proposals at once. East Whiteland triggered its clock in March even though it already has an approved 250,000-square-foot data-center plan on a former lithium-chemicals Superfund tract; the developer briefly proposed a change to the plan, ran into community opposition, and reverted.
Steve Brown, East Whiteland Township Manager: "It gives you time to write a zoning ordinance in peace. If a second, separate data center proposal should come in, we wanted to be ready for that." Rebecca Dressler, chair of the Montour County commissioners: "We wanted to make sure that we had a data center ordinance that provides guidelines to any developer coming in with a data center." State Sen. Katie Muth (D-Chester), whose district includes East Whiteland, plans to introduce a bill setting up a statewide three-year moratorium on hyperscale data-center development. State Sen. Jarrett Coleman (R-Lehigh) plans to introduce a separate bill formally authorizing municipal moratoriums; his chief of staff Leo Knepper told Turner the existing curative-amendment authority "might not withstand a challenge in court" and that Coleman wants "to make sure that there is a law in place that clearly defends their ability to have a moratorium."
Source: Ford Turner / The Center Square, via The Sentinel (Lewistown, PA).
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