A Pennsylvania House committee voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would prevent data center developers from using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies.
The House Energy Committee moved forward House Bill 2359 in a 23-3 vote. The legislation is sent to the full House for consideration.
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Sponsored by Rep. Joe Ciresi, a Democrat from Montgomery County, the bill comes after instances like Amazon Web Services’ development of a data center at the Keystone Trade Center in Falls Township. During that process in 2024 and 2025, the company required municipal officials to sign an NDA.
Ciresi said the legislation stems from a real situation in his Montgomery County district where municipal officials were barred from sharing key details with residents.
“One of my board of supervisors came to us and said, ‘We can’t hear everything that we need to hear. How do we really do the right thing by our community?’” Ciresi said. “They couldn’t share who the developer of the land was because the people that were presenting it were under an NDA.”
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Ciresi said the bill is a matter of basic community rights rather than an attempt to halt development.
“I’m not sitting here saying don’t let them do it,” Ciresi said. “I’m saying that they can’t put something in that stops us from knowing what’s being built.”
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The committee adopted an amendment by Chairwoman Elizabeth Fiedler, a Democrat from Philadelphia, tying community protection eligibility requirements to Pennsylvania’s existing computer data center sales and use tax exemption program.
Under the amended bill, developers seeking the tax break must notify local governments, host meetings with community members, consult with local officials, and provide details regarding a project’s footprint, energy use, and water consumption.
Fiedler said the new rules do not block data centers from being built.
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“It simply requires developers to notify local governments, meet with community members, consult with local officials, and provides basic information about a project’s footprint, energy use and water consumption,” Fiedler said. “All pieces, important pieces, fundamental pieces, I think that folks, individuals, local elected officials and small businesses might want to know and certainly should know.”
The bill faced pushback from several Republicans on the committee.
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Rep. Eric Nelson, a Republican from Westmoreland County, said the measure creates an uneven playing field for an industry actively investing in the state.
“We are repurposing thousands of blighted acres of abandoned facilities, restoring taxes for our schools, building and extending water lines, repurposing acid mine drainage to be able to use for cooling systems,” Nelson said. “These data centers are doing in our communities things that we were never able to achieve at all.”
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Nelson also questioned whether it is appropriate to hold data centers to a transparency standard that the House itself does not always meet.
“This chamber has continuous meetings behind closed doors. We do not disclose to the public the business of the state,” Nelson said. “And we are targeting a given industry and trying to create a situation where they have a standard not to be able to operate.”
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Rep. Craig Williams, a Republican who represents parts of Chester and Delaware counties, raised different concerns, stating that large hyperscale data companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft spend hundreds of billions of dollars on facilities and are unlikely to be influenced by a modest state tax break.
“We’re putting a bunch of requirements on data centers in a tax bill as a prerequisite for them getting a tax break, which I believe they’ll say, take your tax break, we’re good, we’re just not going to comply with any of your requirements,” Williams said.
The legislature should instead focus on requiring large-scale data centers to bring their own power generation capacity to the grid rather than competing with existing ratepayers for baseload power, Williams said.
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Rep. Joshua D. Kail, a Republican who represents parts of Beaver and Washington counties, raised constitutional concerns regarding the NDA provision. He noted that NDAs in large-scale developments often serve legitimate purposes to protect companies from competitors and preventing insider trading.
“The Shell petrochemical facility was built in my district and there was a lot of early on NDAs,” Kail said. “It’s not about keeping information away from the community. It’s about keeping information away from competitors.”
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Kail also questioned why the bill targets data centers instead of other large development projects.
Ciresi responded that the bill applies only moving forward and will not affect existing NDAs, but he acknowledged the scope could widen in future discussions.
“I don’t think it should be allowed anywhere on any development in any community,” Ciresi said. “Every one of us who lived in a community should have a right to know who’s building next to us.”
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Rep. Martin T. Causer, a Republican who represents Cameron, McKean, and Potter counties, the highest-ranking Republican on the committee, voted to advance the legislation and said that it remains a work in progress.
“I know that there’s a difference of opinion amongst the members, and I appreciate the gentleman bringing the bill forward,” Causer said. “I’m going to support the amendment and the bill to move it along. But I’m hopeful that we can address some of the concerns that have been voiced.”
State Rep. Rep. Jim Prokopiak, a Democrat from Falls Township, is a co-sponsor of the bill.
