Hochul previews data center fees after campaigning with AOC in Hudson Valley

Gov. Kathy Hochul signaled this week that new rules for data centers are coming once New York’s one-year moratorium ends, rolling out the pitch alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Hochul appeared in Dutchess County with Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Pat Ryan, joined by state Sens. Kristen Gonzalez and Michelle Hinchey at a roundtable in East Fishkill. Nearly three months after she signed an executive order pausing hyperscale data center development statewide, Hochul said she is working on a framework to follow the freeze.

She suggested companies pay $1 million per megawatt to the communities where they plan to build. Under her plan, data centers would go only where residents want them, and developers would pay a premium. She said such mega corporations should not be asking for “a single tax break” or property tax abatement, as has happened in the past.

Ocasio-Cortez said the push grew from the bottom up in East Fishkill, where the town board passed a moratorium in June. That preempted what would have been the state’s largest data center, a project that had appeared in the grid operator’s interconnection queue. She said it would have used nearly a million homes’ worth of power and strained electric bills.

Residents cite environmental impact, farmland loss and rising energy costs. Josh Morgenthau, owner of Fishkill Farms, said the aquifer his farm relies on has run dry in past years, forcing him to truck in water.

Asked about campaigning with Ocasio-Cortez, Hochul said there was no calculation behind it and urged reporters not to read more into it than a shared focus on affordability. Hochul recently worked with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to pass a new tax on homes worth over $5 million whose owners do not live in the city, a law now being challenged in state court.

Hochul faces Republican Bruce Blakeman on Nov. 3. She has not said when the framework will be released.