ALBANY, N.Y. (NEXTAR) \u2014 With the New York State Senate and Assembly officially concluding the 2026 Legislative Session, regulations on corporate technology, digital stalking, and retail prices were among the high-profile proposals to advance. But legislators abandoned more controversial environmental, housing, and entertainment measures that could have benefited regular New Yorkers at the expense of business interests.<\/p>\n
The following three bills passed both houses of the legislature and will become law if signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).<\/p>\n
Data centers<\/p>\n
The Responsible Data Center Development Act, S10642<\/a>\/A11560<\/a>, defines a data center<\/a> as a facility with a peak demand of at least 1 megawatt of electricity for computing, data processing, web hosting, or streaming. It includes a yearlong pause on any new permits for data center computing facilities<\/a> requiring 20 megawatts or more. In the video above, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins acknowledged concerns from construction unions, but maintained the freeze is necessary to evaluate the environmental impacts.<\/p>\n There are 28 data center projects on the waitlist to connect to the state\u2019s power grid, according to Democratic State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, who estimated that these facilities will demand an additional 9,682 megawatts of power from New York\u2019s aging infrastructure. She sponsored the moratorium in the State Senate, and in a statement on Friday argued, \u201cTechnology should improve peoples\u2019 lives, not drive up our energy bills or exhaust our natural resources and increase pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n The legislation requires the Department of Environmental Conservation to study how data centers affect public water supplies, agricultural land, and electronic waste levels. It also makes utility companies create a separate billing category\u2014a distinct set of rates and rules\u2014specifically for facilities requiring a peak demand of 20 megawatts.<\/p>\n That way, corporations pay for any new power lines or water pipes they require. Otherwise, lawmakers and advocates have said, they\u2019d be able to pass those costs to upgrade that infrastructure onto their residential ratepayers.<\/p>\n The regulations are supposed to prevent corporations from draining public resources without benefiting the locals, despite claims of widespread job creation. \u201cWe saw $77 million of tax subsidies that went to this data center [in Rockland County] for one job,\u201d said Democratic Assemblymember Dr. Anna Kelles\u2014who had cosponsored a version the moratorium in the Assembly\u2014on Monday. \u201cThat is the greatest amount of subsidies per job of any facility in the country, in the history of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n The moratorium itself applies to larger 20-megawatt-plus facilities, but the bill also has new labor standards for data centers with peak demand of over five megawatts. Construction projects at this level have to use only iron and steel manufactured in the U.S., transition to renewables by 2040, and pay prevailing wages, meaning the standard local union rate.<\/p>\n The environmental justice group NY Renews hailed the bill\u2019s passage. \u201cData centers represent a nexus of environmental and social harms: they use huge amounts of fresh water, dump tons of pollution into our air (at times exceeding the pollution emitted from entire cities), threaten our jobs, and raise our electricity bills,\u201d said Executive Director Stephan Edel in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n According to a statement from Liz Moran at Earthjustice, \u201c[One in four] New Yorkers already can\u2019t afford their energy bills, and that\u2019s without the rapid buildout of [artificial intelligence] data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n Plus, according to Gonzalez, \u201cToday, data centers make up 4% of our country\u2019s energy demand, and are on track to triple this amount in the next three years.\u201d<\/p>\n But Republican Assemblymember Matt Simpson opposed the bill. \u201cCommunities in the North Country don\u2019t want massive data centers,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we also don\u2019t want clear-cut forests, prime farmland covered in solar panels or new transmission lines forced on us without real input.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, the moratorium had some bipartisan support. \u201cOver the past several months, I heard from hundreds of residents at town board meetings, public hearings, rallies and in conversations throughout the district about concerns regarding the rapid expansion of data centers,\u201d Republican Assemblymember Anil Beephan, Jr. said on Thursday. \u201cThat is why I was proud to vote in the affirmative.\u201d<\/p>\n Surveillance pricing<\/p>\n Legislators also approved the One Fair Price Act<\/a> to ban surveillance pricing<\/a>. If signed by the governor, it would prevent retailers from using consumers\u2019 private, personal data to generate custom prices. S8623B<\/a>\/A9349B<\/a> outlaws any price set by an algorithm using a consumer\u2019s data to calculate and charge different customers different prices for the same item.<\/p>\n Today, corporations can exploit those personal details \u2014 including location, income, browsing history, or family size \u2014 to charge as much as it is possible for a given customer to pay. But as the bill sponsor, Democratic State Senator Rachel May, said on Friday, \u201cNew Yorkers shouldn\u2019t have to wonder if the price they see is based on who they are instead of what they\u2019re buying.\u201d<\/p>\n The attorney general would be responsible for enforcement, with civil penalties reaching up to $5,000 for an initial violation and $20,000 thereafter. But lawmakers removed the private right of action from the bill, which would have let New Yorkers directly sue businesses themselves.<\/p>\n Pat Garofalo from the American Economic Liberties Project criticized that removal, arguing it makes consumers depend on the state or private arbitration, \u201cwhich will leave fewer opportunities for robust enforcement and undermine the intent of the bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Consumer Reports supported the bill by highlighting the financial stakes on Friday, citing their own findings from a December 2025 investigation. According to the organization, \u201cAlgorithmic pricing experiments could result in price differences as high as 23% for certain products and could cost families more than $1,200 a year at checkout.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Food Industry Alliance of New York State President Mike Durant, a critic, \u201cThis legislation risks hurting the very New Yorkers it aims to protect by eliminating everyday discounts while creating significant compliance chaos for the retail food industry.\u201d But the bill includes carve outs for standard loyalty and rewards programs, if the business clearly discloses the terms and offers the discount uniformly.<\/p>\n CREEP Act<\/p>\n The legislature also passed the Ceasing Repeated and Extremely Egregious Predatory Behavior Act<\/a>, which, if signed by Hochul, would create a new class of civil orders of protection in stalking cases. Current law says that people can only seek civil protective orders from family members or intimate partners, leaving the victims of coworkers, strangers, or online harassers unprotected.<\/p>\n Under the CREEP Act, S3394A<\/a>\/A3226A<\/a>, civil courts could issue prompt orders of protection in cases of digital harassment, unwanted contact, or threats. \u201cThis new order of protection would allow courts to more quickly and easily protect victims of digital harassment, [and] provide faster support for victims without the need for an arrest,\u201d according to a joint statement from the bill\u2019s sponsors\u2014Democratic State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Democratic Assemblymember Jessica Gonzales-Rojas\u2014after it passed in the legislature. They said it \u201cgives survivors more, better options to stay safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Bills on plastic packaging, upstate rent stabilization, and concert ticket fees all died without any floor votes. The following bills failed to advance in either chamber.<\/p>\n PRRIA<\/p>\n The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, S1464A<\/a>\/A1749A<\/a>, again didn\u2019t advance<\/a>. It sought a 30 percent reduction in single-use corporate packaging over 12 years, proposing a total ban on toxic chemicals like PFAS, lead, and mercury in shipping and wrapping material.<\/p>\n The bill would have also stopped companies from using \u201cchemical recycling\u201d to meet the state\u2019s recycling targets. Groups like Beyond Plastics have argued that the process, melting plastic into fossil fuels using heat and chemicals, is \u201ca pseudo, greenwashed-solution to our waste crisis that\u2019s allowing companies to exponentially increase the amount of plastic\u2014and greenhouse gases\u2014they put into the world under the guise of recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n Supporters like New York City Sanitation Commissioner Gregory Anderson argued that the PRRIA would protect taxpayers by shifting the costs of plastic disposal and pollution mitigation to the corporations that produce that pollution and use that plastic. And NAACP New York State Conference Executive Director Chris Alexander argued the bill would stop companies from burning hazardous waste in communities of color, which usually bear the brunt of the burden from pollution.<\/p>\n As Beyond Plastics President Judith Enck said on Wednesday, \u201cNew Yorkers didn\u2019t vote for more plastic in their bodies, beverages, or food packaging.\u201d Either way, the bill stalled even after lawmakers softened the proposed regulations<\/a> to win over the business community. Indeed, representatives of that community, like the Business Council of New York State, never got behind it.<\/p>\n \u201cThese recent amendments do not reflect a balanced, consensus-based program, nor does it reflect a compromise with business,\u201d Business Council Vice President Ken Pokalsky said in May.<\/p>\n Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie didn\u2019t bring the bill to a floor vote, he said on Wednesday, because it didn\u2019t enough votes to pass. But the legislation listed 79 cosponsors out of the 150-member Assembly.<\/p>\n REST Act<\/p>\n The Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants Act<\/a> similarly collapsed in the legislature despite significant lawmaker support. As with PRRIA, the REST Act was amended to target a \u201cmissing middle\u201d of low-rise rentals. It would have allowed local rent stabilization to apply to buildings with four or five units that were built at least 15 years ago.<\/p>\n The bill, S4659C<\/a>\/A4877C<\/a>, would have let upstate municipalities cap rent increases without having to conduct expensive and ineffective vacancy studies. Under the failed measure, local governments could rely on public data on homelessness or rent burdens to declare housing emergencies that expand tenant protections.<\/p>\n But the group called Homeowners For An Affordable New York resisted the bill. \u201cIt will mean less housing, less investment and higher costs for everyone,\u201d the coalition said in May.<\/p>\n \t Tenant advocates roasted the legislature and governor as session ended. \u201cNew Yorkers are facing a historic housing crisis and poll after poll has shown that housing affordability is a top issue for New Yorkers,\u201d said Housing Justice for All Director Sumathy Kumar, who blamed the failure on a broken legislative process<\/a>. \u201cThe REST Act did not get a vote as legislators ran up against the end of session clock after Governor Hochul held up the budget for months<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the state-level failure, 22 upstate municipalities\u2014most recently the Village of Monticello\u2014have adopted local \u201cGood Cause Eviction<\/a>\u201d protections.<\/p>\n Ticket sales, scalping, and monopolies<\/p>\n Finally, lawmakers also abandoned reforms for live event ticket sales<\/a> in favor of a one-year extension of current laws. They never voted on a bill\u2014S8221B<\/a>\/A8659<\/a> from Democratic State Senator James Skoufis and Democratic Assemblymember Andy Kim\u2014that would have capped ticket service fees at 25 percent, required transparency about tickets withheld for promoters or industry insiders, and banned hidden delivery fees for electronic tickets.<\/p>\n It was supposed to have helped minimize scalping without banning all for-profit resale by letting performers opt into a system that would have required reselling tickets to their shows at the original purchase price.<\/p>\n The Coalition for Ticket Fairness opposed any such restrictions, arguing that caps on resale prices would just limit competition and empower monopolies. But they praised a related ticketing bill that both houses of the legislature did pass successfully, S10640<\/a>\/A11558<\/a>. That bill\u2014again from Kim in the Assembly but sponsored by Democratic State Senator Mike Gianaris\u2014will instead keep current regulations on the industry intact through June 2027.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen time and again how efforts to restrict resale backfire\u2014strengthening the monopoly, reducing consumer choice, and making it more difficult for independent businesses to compete,\u201d said Coalition for Ticket Fairness spokesperson Geoff Vetter on Friday.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALBANY, N.Y. 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\n\t\tNYS budget updates Foundation Aid as school budgets get 96% approval\t<\/a><\/p>\n