Fourteen states are now weighing some form of data-center moratorium, and on Friday the U.S. House passed a bill aimed at stopping data centers from pushing up electricity bills for everyone else. That is not a New York story by itself — but it is the weather system New York's own pause is sitting inside, and it tells you Executive Order 62 was not a one-state overreaction.

Ohio, for comparison, now has more than 125 active local moratoriums on data centers, according to News From The States. New York's version is a single statewide order rather than a patchwork of town-by-town votes, but the instinct behind it — stop building until someone can say what this does to the grid and the bill — is the same instinct showing up in Woodburn, Oregon, in West Virginia, and now in a federal bill that cleared the House.

Here in New York, the fight has moved from whether to pause construction to whether to subsidize it once the pause lifts. NY State of Politics reported this week that critics are going after Governor Hochul's push for sales-tax exemptions on data centers even as Executive Order 62 keeps new 50-megawatt-plus facilities on hold pending the Department of Public Service's environmental review. That is two fights running at once: one over whether the projects get built, one over whether the state pays part of the freight when they do.

None of this changes the mechanics on our own board. Executive Order 62, signed July 14, still pauses new data centers of 50 megawatts or more until DPS files its final Generic Environmental Impact Statement — no fixed end date. The exemptions still stand: DEC applications deemed complete before July 14, manufacturing/research/education/medical facilities, and anything already under construction. Local approvals aren't touched by the order at all.

For a contractor sizing up whether to chase tri-state data-center work, the read is this: the industrial and electrical trade base that would build these campuses is now a live political target in more places than New York, and every added state weighing a freeze makes the eventual demand backlog bigger once reviews clear — but also makes the timeline harder to promise a client. If your estimating team is holding capacity for a hyperscale job anywhere in this region, the DPS review calendar is now the actual schedule, not the developer's press release.

Watch the sales-tax fight specifically. If Albany trims or kills the exemption push while the moratorium is still in effect, the economics of restarting construction here get worse before EO 62 even lifts — worth tracking alongside the DPS filing timeline for anyone bidding electrical, mechanical or sitework scopes tied to this sector.