Sacramento lawmakers are facing an aggressive lobbying push from technology giants as they weigh new rules for the artificial intelligence data centers spreading across California, even as public opposition to the facilities continues to build.
Several bills moving through the Legislature this session would require data center operators, rather than everyday ratepayers, to shoulder more of the cost of the electrical infrastructure needed to power the massive facilities. Other measures would force companies to disclose or estimate how much water their data centers consume and would require environmental review for all such projects going forward.
Tech companies have pushed back hard, arguing the proposed regulations would slow innovation and put California at a competitive disadvantage. That opposition has come with a hefty price tag. Amazon alone spent more than $1.7 million on state lobbying last year, while AI firm Anthropic spent $90,000. The Data Center Coalition — whose membership includes Google, Microsoft and OpenAI — spent roughly $60,000 fighting nearly every bill aimed at regulating the industry.
The strategy has paid off before. Last year, four bills that would have imposed limits or additional oversight on data centers were either killed outright or significantly weakened before reaching the governor’s desk.
But the political landscape has shifted since then. A Gallup poll conducted in March found that seven in 10 Americans oppose having data centers built in their communities, and survey data from the Public Policy Institute of California suggests a similar level of unease among state residents.
Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat who authored two of the bills under consideration, said the growing public frustration is impossible for lawmakers to ignore.
“When you’re looking down the barrel of public outcry that says we don’t want (data centers) at all, and you’ve got localities that are saying they’re going to ban them, then you know the atmosphere has changed,” Papan said.
Whether that shift in sentiment will be enough to overcome the tech industry’s deep pockets remains an open question as the legislative session moves toward its conclusion.
OTHER STORIES WORTH KNOWING
A new statewide report suggests that a decade-old criminal justice reform may have contributed to California’s homelessness crisis. Researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California found that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified certain low-level drug and theft felonies as misdemeanors, likely drove a roughly 10% increase in street homelessness between 2015 and 2019 — adding an estimated 7,000 people to the ranks of Californians sleeping outside, in cars or in parks.
The measure was originally intended to ease prison overcrowding, and the findings arrive as many voters have grown skeptical of past efforts to reduce incarceration — sentiment reflected in the passage of the tougher-on-crime Proposition 36 in 2024. Still, the report has drawn criticism over what some see as an uncomfortable implication: that jails effectively served as a form of housing for some vulnerable residents. Margot Kushel, director of the UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, pushed back on that framing, noting that “criminal legal systems were not designed to be places for people to live.”
Meanwhile, Democratic legislators are fast-tracking a bill that would ban the use of electric shock gloves by federal immigration agents, along with state and local law enforcement. The move comes after the federal government announced plans to spend up to $20 million on thousands of the taser-like devices for use by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Civil rights advocates back the ban, pointing to cases such as a Kentucky man who died last year after reportedly being shocked roughly 40 times while in custody. Law enforcement groups oppose the measure, arguing it would limit officers’ ability to safely de-escalate confrontations. Legal experts have also raised doubts about the bill’s enforceability, since states generally cannot dictate how federal agents perform their duties — a limitation UC Davis law professor Vikram Amar says makes the legislation “more performative than real.”
In other Capitol news, lawmakers reached a compromise on legislation addressing sexual abuse claims against California schools. The deal reduces some of the financial exposure school districts face and raises the evidentiary threshold for older claims, though it stops short of capping payouts as some public agencies had hoped.
Original source: CalMatters
