ICYMI - CALMATTERS: HOW PROP. 45 COULD RESHAPE CALIFORNIA’S FIGHT OVER DATA CENTERS

USC Professor adds to Spectrum News 1: “it is going to make it easier to build data centers.”

SACRAMENTO – In-depth reporting released today by the state’s leading nonprofit newsroom, CalMatters, confirms Prop 45’s high stakes for data center regulation in the state:

“California voters considering Proposition 45 will decide the fate of a sweeping infrastructure measure that opponents warn could render the state’s brand-new data center laws virtually toothless.

That would make it far easier for developers to force unwanted facilities into local communities, potentially undermining a growing wave of bans, moratoriums, and anti-data-center resolutions at the city and county level.

…

Julia Stein, a legal scholar and deputy director at UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, warns that the measure acts as a “blunt force instrument when it comes to streamlining” because of how wide its secondary umbrella extends.

What Prop. 45 does is designate an entire class of projects that would be subject to streamlining, and then it also says that projects ancillary to those projects — so something that you might need to do in the course of the development of the project that’s exempted itself — would fall within that same streamlining bubble,” Stein said.

Telecommunications projects are explicitly streamlined under the proposition, “and there’s an argument that the development of data centers might be necessary for projects like that,” Stein added.

Other projects, like high-speed rail, are explicitly excluded from streamlining under the proposition — but data centers are not on that list, either. Stein and three other environmental law scholars told CalMatters that this opens the door for legal challenges.”

Read the full article here.

Separately, Spectrum News 1 today released an interview on Prop 45 with the Director of the USC Democracy and Fair Elections Lab, Christian Grose, who said “Yes, this ballot prop, if it passes, will make it easier to have development. That development could include data centers. So, this would actually make it easier to build data centers. It would also make it easier to do other development projects. And so, is it going to mean data centers everywhere? Not necessarily. But it is going to make it easier to build data centers.”

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