BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Framing Effect, with Post Hoc (False Cause) as the most egregious example at 9.4% saturation with 90 hits. Analysis detected 711 faulty-reasoning hits from 962 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 23.2% and a BS Rank of 13% (25,070 of 28,818 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 87.00% of the article peer group.
Hochul addresses local officials at a roundtable event in Kenmore on July 20, 2026.
Photo by J.
Dale Shoemaker.
Governor Kathy Hochul on Monday said wants to see a ban on tax breaks for large data centers in New York, including those issued by local industrial development agencies.
The governor proposed last week “an end to all tax subsidies for data centers,” referring specifically to a 2000 law that authorized state and local sales tax breaks for all “internet data centers.”
On Monday, Investigative Post asked Hochul whether her proposed ban also applied to IDAs, which have been subsidizing data centers at the local level for years.
Hochul’s answer: Yes.
The governor said she doesn’t “want to tie the hands of the local IDAs” but that she supports “a narrow exclusion” that blocks the 106 IDAs from issuing property, sales and mortgage tax breaks to so-called hyperscale data centers.
New York defines hyperscale data centers as those requiring 50 megawatts of electricity or more to run.
That amount of electricity could power 25,000 to 50,000 homes.
Hochul said a ban on subsidies for data centers could come in next year’s state budget and that she plans to work with lawmakers in the coming months.
Should such a measure become law before her one-year moratorium on data centers is up, it could block subsidies for the proposed Stream US Data Center project in Genesee County and the proposed Riverview Innovation & Technology Campus in the Town of Tonawanda.
Stream has requested $1.46 billion in tax breaks from the Genesee County IDA.
The Riverview project has not yet requested subsidies, but Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has said previously that he would not support the county IDA awarding tax breaks to the project.
The measure could also prevent a third proposed data center in Chautauqua County from seeking tax breaks.
“I would say I would limit this [restriction] to the AI data centers, the hyperscalers,” Hochul said Monday.
“That would be my recommendation.”
That would mean no state and local sales tax breaks, no property tax abatements and no reduction of the mortgage recording tax.
“There should not be any tax breaks.
These are very successful, very profitable companies.
New York is very attractive.
They will still come without getting $1 million per temporary job,” the governor said.
“That’s just not right.”
“They want something that we have.
We should be able to have more leverage over that process instead of [it being] automatic.”
Hochul’s comments came during a roundtable discussion on the executive order she signed last week that places a ban on state permits for new data centers for the next year.
She was joined by Deputy County Executive Lisa Chimera, state Sen.
Jeremy Zellner, state Assembly members Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Bill Conrad, mayors from several towns home to data centers, and several local residents.
To date, tax breaks issued to two local data centers — the H5 Data Centers facility in Lockport (formerly Yahoo!)
and TeraWulf’s Lake Mariner installation in Barker — have cost Niagara County millions in potential tax revenues.
The Yahoo!
project received some $478 million in property and sales tax breaks, plus low-cost hydropower from the New York Power Authority.
The TeraWulf facility, meanwhile, is not paying state or local sales tax on multi-billion dollar expansion.
It also receives discounted electricity from NYPA.
Niagara County officials are currently investigating how much annual revenue they’re missing out on.
The Genesee County IDA has not yet voted on the requested $1.46 billion subsidy package requested by Stream US Data Centers but is poised to do so soon.
Hochul said Monday that she believes her moratorium on state permits for new data centers applies to that project, putting it on pause for now.
Officials with the Genesee County IDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
Despite the massive subsidy package, the IDA has said the data center would generate hundreds of millions in payments and taxes that Genesee County would use for a needed overhaul of its water system.
That project would be paid for with rate increases without the data center, officials have said.
Data center developers have said Hochul’s crackdown on their projects will likely push them to build in other states.
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Critics of subsidies for data centers praised Hochul’s plan to ban them.
“We strongly support a prohibition on IDAs allocating taxpayers subsidies to hyperscale data centers,” said Sarah Howard, head of the group Allies of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, which is opposed to the proposed Genesee County data center.
“Data center developers like Stream US Data Centers and their private equity backer, Apollo Global Management — they don’t need our support.”
John Kaehny, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Reinvent Albany, said Hochul “ is on the right track.”
“ State taxpayer money should be spent through the constitutional budget process, not by some county IDA controlled by local politicians abating state sales taxes,” he said.
Kaehny, though, pushed Hochul to go further.
“The governor should ask her appointees to the NYPA board to stop giving out super-low cost power to data centers and other high-load, low yield businesses that get an incredible amount of valuable state electricity per job,” he said.
At the roundtable event, Conrad, the state Assembly representative for the Tonawandas, said New York has resources data center builders want, and that the state should recognize that.
“This is where they want to be,” Conrad said.
“[We have] a cold climate, plentiful access to water, plus cheap land.
They’re going to want to come, so you have to have those guardrails.”
“Let’s not be a cheap date.
Let’s make them pay.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
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100%flagged-word coverageofficials
16 attributed words2.6% of attributed speech38% writer coverage
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