The Pennsylvania order works by sequence. Governor Josh Shapiro's guardrails are not a moratorium, but they make local approval a precondition of a state permit [6][7], and data centers came out of fast-track review at the same time [8]. Spotlight PA reported that rolling permit review is available to developers who agree to follow Shapiro's power generation and transparency guidelines [8]. Community opposition now counts as a gating item on the construction schedule, not just a public relations cost.
The portable piece of New York's action is its threshold. Because Governor Kathy Hochul's one-year ban applies to data centers needing 50 megawatts or more [2], anything specified below that line sits outside it [19], and another governor can lift the same number into an executive order without reopening the argument about local control. Hochul's separate condition, that data centers either build their own generation or pay a premium into the grid [3], is the one that lands in a pro forma rather than a permit file.
The three governors who acted are all Democrats, and on the Republican side the record here is thin. Business Insider's tally names Greg Abbott of Texas, a state already home to hyperscale projects [16], and Florida's GOP gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds, who may inherit a pipeline of proposals [17], but the measures actually on paper belong to Hochul, Shapiro and Katie Hobbs. Several officials in that count told the publication they had not changed their minds at all [15], which limits how much the record can show. Still, each of the three moved from an earlier position: Shapiro had called Amazon's $20 billion plan the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania history [9], Hobbs voted as a state lawmaker for the Arizona exemption she later moved to end [13], and as recently as May, Hochul was describing siting as a local land use matter outside her purview [4].
Duration is where the two kinds of risk separate. Arizona's pause on new data center sales tax breaks runs three years, three times the length of New York's moratorium [12][18]. A year of delay is a schedule cost that a large balance sheet absorbs; three years without the sales tax exemption is a returns question for any project whose model carried that line. Hochul's stated reason for taking the decision up a level, that municipalities lacked the clout to negotiate their own terms [5], is the part that travels to other states, and it aims the risk at the state permit rather than the town hall. A siting team picking a shortlist this quarter is picking a political counterparty for several quarters after, which was not the job when statewide officials were competing to announce these projects [14].
