(The Center Square) \u2014 State lawmakers who are associated with a taxpayer-funded agency gathering information on the controversial data center issue showed up Tuesday for a prearranged look at a high-profile site \u2014 and weren\u2019t allowed in the data center.<\/p>\n
One of those refused entrance, Democratic Rep. Eddie Pashinski of Wilkes-Barre said lawmakers who are board members of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania were in a larger group that met at the Amazon site in Salem Twp., Luzerne County on Tuesday. They got to see open ground, partly constructed buildings, and ones that appeared to be finished.<\/p>\n
When it seemed to be time to enter one of the finished buildings \u2014 to see the sort of data center operation that is a research focus of the Center for Rural Pennsylvania \u2014 they were refused.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to go inside the ones that were complete,\u201d Pashinski said. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t allow us in.\u201d<\/p>\n
His own reaction, he said, was, \u201cHey, what\u2019s the deal? We came down here so we could go inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rejection came to light on Wednesday during a public hearing held in Bloomsburg by the center, which has a long history of researching and publicizing dynamics shaping life in rural parts of the state.<\/p>\n
The Wednesday hearing held by the center on the campus of Commonwealth University-Bloomsburg was no exception.<\/p>\n
One testifier said Pennsylvania, with its current tax structure, must make major tax law changes or it will never come close to reaping the amount of revenue from data centers being seen in Virginia. Another \u2014 a codes official in Salem Twp. \u2014 suggested the state Department of Environmental Protection should start being more open with the public about its permitting processes.<\/p>\n
The site in Salem Twp. where lawmakers were declined access on Tuesday is on Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s \u201cfast track\u201d list for getting state permits.<\/p>\n
Republican Sen. Gene Yaw of Lycoming County, chairman of the center\u2019s board, said after the hearing on Wednesday that the site will be used by Amazon. He said he understood, to an extent, the facility\u2019s approach to security.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is standard in the industry. You can\u2019t get in these buildings,\u201d Yaw said. He added, \u201cIt is private business, and they said, \u2018No.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, though, the Center for Rural Pennsylvania claims on its website to be a bipartisan, bicameral agency that is \u201ca resource for rural policy with the Pennsylvania General Assembly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yaw, asked about the frustration of not getting inside, said, \u201cI don\u2019t know. I want to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic Sen. Judy Schwank of Berks County, another center board member, said prior commitments made her unable to attend this week\u2019s gatherings. But, she said, \u201cI certainly think they should have been let in.\u201d<\/p>\n
She called the prohibition on entering the building a \u201cmistake\u201d by whatever entity was controlling the site.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a testifier at the Wednesday hearing, Fayette County Commissioners\u2019 Chairman Scott Dunn, shared findings based on an in-depth look at the data center situation in Virginia. That state is home to a county sometimes referred to as the \u201cdata center capital of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pennsylvania and its current tax structure cannot come close to replicating the tax haul in Virginia unless the General Assembly makes radical tax law changes, Dunn said. Virginia law, he said, lets government tax the guts of a data center \u2014 the servers, racks, networking equipment, advanced cooling systems, and the like \u2014 while Pennsylvania can tax only real estate.<\/p>\n
That, he said, means everything but the land and buildings are exempt from taxing in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Another testifier, codes officer Brian Rhone of Salem Twp., described the overwhelming amount of work placed on the local government by the presence of the under-construction data center site and two other major data center initiatives in the same area.<\/p>\n
Local residents, he said, bombard local government with questions whose answers are tough to get because they are rooted in the state-run permitting process. Rhone suggested the Department of Environmental Protection hold meetings with residents in a Salem Twp. building in order to answer questions in person.<\/p>\n
Rhone said the data center boom \u201cis taking its toll on little rural America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2014 State lawmakers who are associated with a taxpayer-funded agency gathering information on the controversial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[182,803,28,30,29,802],"class_list":["post-255996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-top-stories-cvc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255996","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=255996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}