As data center developers increasingly sue municipalities to try to gain court approvals of individual projects, one local councilman thinks communities should go on offense and file a joint lawsuit \u2014 against the state of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Jessup Borough Councilman Curt Camoni recently raised the idea of his borough reaching out to neighboring municipalities to see if there\u2019s any appetite for banding together to sue the state over how data-center development plays out at the municipal zoning level with little regard for cumulative impacts, and how seemingly every decision a municipality makes puts it on defense in court from developer lawsuits or appeals.<\/p>\n
Camoni views existing state law as stacked against municipalities when data center developers come to town with their plans. Jessup so far has received two data-center proposals from one parent-firm developer and both currently are the subjects of appeal lawsuits pending in Lackawanna County Court.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can either say yes or get sued into oblivion \u2014 multiple lawsuits per projects. The entire system is broken and it\u2019s rigged and it\u2019s certainly not in favor of the residents,\u201d Camoni said during a council meeting Thursday, according to the borough\u2019s video simulcast and recording of the meeting. \u201cI would like our solicitor to reach out to our neighboring communities and their solicitors and see if we can\u2019t get several municipalities in our immediate area together, and instead of just getting bludgeoned to death by all of the lawsuits that we get, let\u2019s sue the state and try to get some action or some fix.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jessup faces legal challenges regarding a Breaker Street Associates project of six data centers along Breaker Street, and a Sunnyside Road Associates project for one data center next to Lackawanna Energy Center. The Breaker Street lawsuit challenges Jessup\u2019s zoning rejection of an electrical substation in a residential area. Sunnyside\u2019s suit challenges a height variance, in which the firm sought a 70-foot height of the building but the borough capped it at 50 feet.<\/p>\n
Archbald and Olyphant also face pending lawsuits from developers seeking court approvals of numerous data center propsals in those boroughs.<\/p>\n
Camoni likened data center development to \u201cprospecting for gold\u201d under law that starts an approval-process clock ticking and vests developers with certain rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can put in an application that\u2019s basically complete nonsense and doesn\u2019t comply with anything, but then amend that and amend that and amend that, and never have to update and come under our new zoning with our new restrictions and our better safeguards,\u201d Camoni said. \u201cWe can just keep giving them 47 bites at that apple and every step along the way they threaten to sue, or actually do. Every step of it is rigged against the residents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noting his remarks are not critical of local state legislators who have been \u201cterrific\u201d on data-center issues, Camoni said generally municipalities are on their own, outmatched and outgunned in the face of an onslaught of data center proposals.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the cavalry is coming,\u201d Camoni said of the state. \u201cWhat I\u2019m suggesting is we try to play offense a little bit \u2026 if we don\u2019t do it and nothing gets done, it\u2019s going to get done to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear if the borough would follow through with such a lawsuit against the state, either alone or jointly with others; or in which court (county or state level) a case would get filed; or what legal form it would take; and on what grounds. Camoni said such a suit might claim \u201cgross negligence of the state for not looking at this in a cumulative fashion \u2026 I don\u2019t think we can sit back and wait anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n
Council President Gregg Betti said, \u201cI\u2019d have to think more about it, to see if it is a go with the other boroughs and how a lawyer would handle that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saying it might be a good idea to pursue, Councilman Ronald Kordish said, \u201cI think we should extend that invitation to all of the communities in Lackawanna County, because you know the more the better. What\u2019s that clich\u00e9 \u2014 there\u2019s strength in numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Councilman Robert Martin Rob agreed, noting Jessup could end up surrounded by data centers in neighboring towns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to do what\u2019s best for the residents,\u201d Martin said. \u201cSome people are just trying to sue us into submission because they think we\u2019re just going to lay down and die, and I\u2019m not willing to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As data center developers increasingly sue municipalities to try to gain court approvals of individual projects, one local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[2116,2119,201,182,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-231306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-data-centers","tag-jessup","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}