Over the past several weeks, some have reached out to share concerns about data center development, and some have said plainly they do not want these facilities here. I listened and heard you. Those concerns are real, they are reasonable and they deserve a straight answer from the person who represents you. So let me be clear about where I stand.

I am not advocating for or against data center development. I am advocating for one thing above all: the right for residents and communities to make this decision for themselves. I am advocating for planning boards, zoning boards and local governments to be allowed to do their job, that's it! My job in Albany is to help set a fair regulatory framework and to protect ratepayers, our water and our farmland. It is not my job, and it is not Albany's job, to decide for a town or village whether it wants one of these projects. That decision belongs at home, and I will defend your right to make it, whether for or against development.

It helps to understand what we are actually talking about. Data centers are woven into nearly every hour of our day, whether you like them or not. The phone in your pocket, your email, text messaging, the photos you keep, the shows you stream, the apps you use to shop or order food, the video doorbell camera for your house, home automation like Alexa or search engines like Siri or Google, the navigation and safety systems in your car, social media and how you read or watch your news all run on this infrastructure, and it is ever-increasing. That is precisely why the question of how to treat these facilities is so pressing. But in the end, you are right to raise concerns about noise, water, farmland and your electric bill; those are serious issues that deserve serious answers.

A piece of legislation on this subject, A11560, is now headed for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk, and I have asked her to veto it for a number of reasons, not only because it calls for a moratorium on development. I want to explain that honestly, because I know how it might sound. I do not oppose this bill because I am eager to see data centers built. I oppose it because, for all its good intentions, it moves these decisions toward Albany rather than keeping them with you. It dictates from the New York State Capitol what the host community benefits should be if a community chooses to host a facility, instead of letting your own local officials, the people who actually know what the community needs, sit across the table from a developer and decide that for themselves. When Albany writes a single template for every town in the state, the places that tend to lose the most are small upstate communities like many of ours.

Consider what the St. Lawrence County Board of Legislatures recognized with respect to this very question. If a local government wants to place a moratorium on data center development, that option belongs to them, but the county is in no position to enforce one county-wide rule, because that decision rightly rests with each community. The same principle should guide Albany. The state should not hold the authority to impose a statewide moratorium that every community must then live under. Too often, home rule is overshadowed by the state, and this is exactly the kind of decision that belongs to the people who live with the outcome.

There is also a quieter fact worth knowing. The protective work many of you are asking for is already underway. At the Public Service Commission, the state is already reforming how large energy users connect to the grid, the tariffs they pay and who pays for it. Those policies are being built using a simple principle: the facility, not your household, should carry its own costs. And the existing process is not quick. Between the grid studies, engineering and construction, no large facility can be built and run here in less than three years. That is years of review and public input already built into the process. No one is going to wake up one morning to find one of these has appeared overnight.

And no community is left to evaluate these projects on its own. A data center of any real size triggers review from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation and a long list of other agencies, each offering oversight and guidance to the locality. That review is no formality. These projects also move through the local and, in many cases, the county planning process, where professional staff shares its technical expertise. A town board has considerable support and information at its disposal before it ever casts a vote.

The largest issue, though, is power. We could see a dozen of these projects proposed across a single county and still watch very few, if any, win approval from the New York Power Authority, simply because of the limited generation we have today. My priority, and it should be the state's, is delivering affordable, reliable and stable power to the residents, businesses and communities already here. Keeping the lights on and the bills manageable for the people of the North Country has to come before siphoning off scarce supply to a handful of high-consumption users.

I want to be just as clear about farmland and the environment. I will always stand up for our farmland, and I support guarding against the environmental harms these facilities can bring. One of my frustrations with this bill is that it works against itself on that very point. It addresses losing prime farmland to these facilities and then requires them to power themselves with on-site renewables, which could pave over hundreds of acres of the same farmland it sets out to protect. The legislation contradicts itself! Good intentions can still produce bad results, and protecting our land deserves better than that.

I will not pretend there is never an upside. If any community decides it wants one, a project like this can bring real local revenue to help pay for local services and good-paying jobs, including work for our trades and union halls. But that is an analysis and decision for that community to make. It is not my job to push development onto a town that does not want it.

It is my job to give you honest facts so you can decide for yourselves, and one of those facts is this: Not every data center is the same. Many are associated with ordinary economic development projects, no different from other economic development projects we have hosted for years. The concern most of you are voicing is more about the largest hyperscale campuses, and they are fair and worth addressing directly, rather than with a single blunt rule and generalization for everyone. Our college campuses in St. Lawrence County depend on data centers somewhere and someplace, or they would not run as we know them to operate today.

I have introduced my own legislation, the High-Energy User Act, to address concerns raised. It makes these facilities pay their own way, so the costs never land on your bill. It requires closed-loop cooling to protect our water. And most important to me, it keeps siting authority where it belongs, with your local government and with setbacks that protect nearby property. It addresses every legitimate concern with a firm regulatory standard while allowing local control rather than top-down directives.

You elected me to represent your voice, not to override it, which I will not do. On this issue, that means making sure the decision stays in your hands. I will keep doing exactly that, and I will keep showing up to give you the facts so the choices our communities make are informed ones. The debate is not over a moratorium; it is about protecting local voices.

Scott Gray represents the 116th Assembly District in the New York State Assembly   and serves as Ranking Member of the Assembly Standing Committee on Energy.