The package of laws requires data center operators to shoulder more of the costs tied to their operations, rather than passing them along to everyday ratepayers. Three of the bills redirect electric infrastructure expenses away from residential customers and onto the companies building and running these facilities. Another three require data center operators to disclose how much water and other resources their operations consume. The seventh law strips data centers of automatic environmental review exemptions, though it does offer a faster approval path for projects that meet the state’s water and energy conservation benchmarks.

In a statement announcing the signings, Newsom drew a sharp contrast between California’s approach and that of the Trump administration, which has largely encouraged unchecked data center expansion nationwide.

“We know that we don’t have to sell out Californians or sacrifice our well-being to innovate and succeed,” Newsom said. “California has proven that time and time again. With these laws, we are ensuring that Californians remain in the driver’s seat — and that those profiting from data centers aren’t doing so at our expense.”

President Trump, for his part, has been an outspoken champion of rapid data center growth, calling the sector the “oil of the next 20, 25 years” during remarks last week at the All-In Summit, a business leaders’ conference.

The move represents a considerable reversal for Newsom, who last year vetoed a bill that would have required water usage disclosures, citing worries that added regulation might slow the growth of artificial intelligence. At that time, he approved only a single, watered-down measure calling for environmental studies.

Lawmakers and environmental groups say the change in course reflects a surge of public opposition to data center construction that grew too loud to ignore — even as tech companies poured money into lobbying efforts to blunt the legislation.

“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,” said Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat who authored two of the bills Newsom signed Monday.

California isn’t alone in this reconsideration. Other state legislatures, along with Congress, are weighing similar restrictions. A Gallup poll from May found that seven in 10 Americans oppose having data centers built in their own communities, while a July survey from the Public Policy Institute of California found comparable resistance among state residents. Across the country, hundreds of cities — including Monterey Park locally and Pittsburg in the Bay Area — have either banned data centers outright or reversed prior approvals after residents pushed back.

Arnab Pal, executive director of the clean-energy nonprofit Deploy Action, called the new laws a meaningful step but said there’s more work ahead to ensure data centers genuinely benefit Californians through grid improvements and clean energy investment.

“I don’t think these bills are the end of this fight; I think we’re gonna have to do a lot of implementation on the back end, and as other states roll out their policies next year, I think California is going to look back and be like, ‘maybe we should have done more,'” Pal said. “I’m interested to see what we do next year on this.”

Industry groups, meanwhile, warn the new rules could drive data center development out of state. The Data Center Coalition — whose members include Google, Microsoft and OpenAI — points to the sector’s economic footprint in California, which it says supported 665,500 jobs, generated more than $159 billion in economic activity, and produced $14.1 billion in combined federal, state and local tax revenue in 2024.

Khara Boender, the coalition’s director of government affairs for the western U.S., said the industry supports responsible growth but cautioned that policymakers need to strike a balance.

“The data center industry shares the goal of ensuring growth of this critical infrastructure is responsible and well managed,” Boender said, adding that more needs to be done “to promote responsible data center growth while maintaining California as a key, competitive market in the global economy.”

The bills Newsom signed include Senate Bill 1168, Senate Bill 886 and Assembly Bill 2383, all aimed at shifting electric infrastructure costs from residential ratepayers to data center operators; Assembly Bills 2469, 1577 and 2619, which require disclosure or estimation of water and other resource usage; and Senate Bill 887, which eliminates blanket environmental review exemptions for data centers while providing expedited approval for projects meeting state conservation standards.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Signs New Restrictions on California Data Centers Amid Growing Public Backlash appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only one in three Americans approves of the current pace of data center construction, and most people say they would oppose one being built near their own neighborhood. That wariness lines up with polling from Gallup showing confidence in Big Tech companies has sunk to historic lows.

These concerns matter, not because the data center construction wave can be stopped, but because it clearly can’t. More than 800 data centers are currently under construction nationwide, and the biggest tech companies are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars a year into expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure. Analysts at McKinsey & Company estimate that global investment in data centers could approach $7 trillion by the end of the decade.

That combination — a massive infrastructure buildout paired with deep public skepticism — creates a real test for the industry. If tech companies want communities, including many across the Inland Empire and greater Southern California, to accept these sprawling facilities, they’ll need to change how they operate: opening up their planning processes, making sure host communities actually benefit, and speeding up the shift to clean energy instead of leaning harder on fossil fuels.

As USC engineer Charles Zukoski, who hosts the “Electric Futures” podcast, puts it, “Social license isn’t free.” Communities don’t automatically sign off on massive infrastructure projects just because a company wants to build them.

Yet that’s often exactly how it plays out. Developers frequently spend years quietly planning projects behind nondisclosure agreements, and residents only learn what’s headed their way once plans are already far along — at which point opposition tends to flare up fast. From a resident’s point of view, those NDAs might as well stand for “No Data centers Allowed.”

Earning real trust means bringing communities into the conversation well before permit applications hit a planning commission’s desk. People deserve straight answers about how much electricity and water a project will use, what it will mean for local traffic, what tax revenue it might generate, and what jobs — if any — will actually materialize.

Microsoft has already dropped its practice of requiring NDAs from local government officials during parts of its site-selection process. Other tech giants would do well to follow suit.

Transparency alone isn’t enough, though. Host communities also deserve a fair share of the economic upside these projects promise.

Tom Steyer, who once ran for California governor, has floated a “token tax” on corporate AI use, with revenue funding direct payments to residents and job training — modeled loosely on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which distributes oil revenue to residents. That idea remains theoretical in California, but Virginia has already moved in a similar direction: since July 1, it has taxed electricity used by data centers at 1.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, a policy expected to bring in as much as $600 million a year. For now, that money goes into Virginia’s general fund rather than directly to residents, so it remains to be seen whether local communities will actually feel the benefit.

Then there’s the energy question. The International Energy Agency projects that global electricity use from data centers will more than double between 2024 and 2030 — an increase roughly equivalent to Japan’s entire current electricity demand. Right now, more than half the power running U.S. data centers comes from fossil fuels, with natural gas as the single biggest source.

That same surging demand, though, could become one of the most powerful forces pushing clean energy forward. Long-term power purchase agreements tied to data centers can help finance new wind, solar, geothermal, advanced nuclear and battery storage projects that might otherwise have trouble finding investors.

If tech companies pair their AI infrastructure buildout with investment in transmission upgrades, energy efficiency and carbon-free power generation, data centers could end up strengthening the nation’s electric grid rather than simply straining it.

This moment offers the tech industry a genuine chance to repair its standing with the public. By engaging communities early, distributing the benefits of growth more fairly, and driving a real transition to clean energy, the industry can prove that technological progress and community wellbeing don’t have to be at odds.

There’s still time to get this right — but not forever.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Aims to Rebuild Public Trust Through a New Approach to Data Centers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Speaking on the Sources Podcast with Alex Heath this week, Altman claimed it takes 38,000 ChatGPT queries to use as much water as growing a single almond in California. He compared a large modern data center’s water footprint to that of an ordinary office building, saying it’s roughly equivalent to what people use running sinks and toilets.

But experts who study the industry say Altman’s comparison is nearly impossible to verify, largely because tech companies release so little information about their operations.

“The information we have is so limited,” said Shaolei Ren, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside who has researched data center water consumption extensively.

Ren said there are simply too many variables to reduce data center water use to a single, tidy statistic. Location, outdoor temperature, cooling technology, the length of a query, and how much computational reasoning a task requires all shape how much water is consumed. Boiling that complexity down to a comparison with almonds, he said, oversimplifies a much murkier picture.

Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy, and the Environment, agreed that the lack of public data is precisely why lawmakers are pushing for more transparency.

“There’s no published data — certainly not for California — and what is public seems all over the place,” Kiparsky said.

Two bills addressing that gap, authored by Assemblymember Diane Papan, D-San Mateo, cleared the Legislature in recent weeks and now await the governor’s signature. One would require data center operators to disclose their water sources and consumption levels when applying for business permits. The other would prevent local governments from approving new data center projects unless developers reveal their water usage plans and cover the cost of any necessary upgrades to local water infrastructure.

This marks Papan’s second attempt at requiring greater disclosure. Newsom vetoed a similar measure last year, saying he wanted more clarity on how such requirements might affect businesses and consumers before signing rigid reporting mandates into law.

Tech and business groups have again lined up against the proposals. But with communities across California increasingly clashing over proposed data center projects — and some cities moving to ban them altogether — pressure is mounting to get a clearer picture of their true water footprint.

“If we know what an almond uses, maybe we can figure out what a data center uses,” said Alex Biering, a policy advocate focused on water issues for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Whatever the precise ratio between ChatGPT searches and almond production — a figure that fluctuates significantly depending on time and location, according to a 2019 study — federal researchers say one thing is clear: data centers are consuming far more water than they used to.

One study found that data centers directly used about 17 billion gallons of water in 2023, up sharply from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014. Another industry report projected that so-called hyperscale data centers could consume as much as 150 billion gallons of water between 2025 and 2030 — roughly equivalent to the annual water use of 4.6 million American households.

Ren cautioned that annual totals don’t tell the whole story. His research, currently under peer review and available as a preprint, found that data centers require significantly more water for cooling during the hottest days of the year, straining water systems at their most vulnerable moments.

“For community water systems, the peak capacity is more important because they need to be designed and built to accommodate the peak demand at all times, similar to our power grid,” Ren said.

His team estimated that data center cooling needs could add between 697 million and 1.45 billion gallons of peak daily water demand — a volume comparable to New York City’s average daily water supply. Unlike agricultural irrigation, which often relies on untreated water, most data centers draw from treated, drinkable municipal supplies, the researchers noted.

That distinction matters because many water systems, particularly in California, are aging, underfunded, and already stretched thin, according to the study, leaving them ill-equipped to absorb sudden surges in demand from large data centers. Ren’s team cited real-world examples in Georgia and Virginia, where local water utilities have warned they may not have enough supply to meet peak demand if multiple data centers draw from the system at the same time.

Ren noted that data centers could cut their water use by as much as half by switching to less water-intensive cooling technology, such as dry cooling systems. But that trade-off often comes at the cost of higher energy consumption — which, in turn, requires its own water resources to generate.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Fact Check: Do Almonds Really Consume More Water Than ChatGPT Queries, as Sam Altman Claims? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The governor faces a Sept. 30 deadline to sign or veto bills sent to his desk, and among them are a handful of measures with familiar storylines — ones Newsom rejected in previous years that lawmakers have revived, sometimes with tweaks, sometimes not.

One of those is a proposal allowing students without legal immigration status to work campus jobs at California’s public colleges and universities. Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2024 after the University of California warned it could provoke retaliation from the Trump administration, potentially putting federal research dollars and financial aid funding at risk. Democratic lawmakers have sent him a new version anyway, hoping the political landscape has shifted enough to change his mind.

Water use at data centers is also back on the table. Two bills would force developers of these energy- and water-intensive facilities to disclose how much water their operations actually consume. One of the measures closely mirrors a bill Newsom vetoed last year under pressure from tech industry lobbyists, when he said he didn’t want to saddle the sector with “rigid reporting requirements.” Since then, opposition to data centers has grown louder across the state, with several California cities moving to ban new projects outright or impose moratoriums while they sort out the environmental and infrastructure costs.

Firefighters, meanwhile, are making a second attempt at securing better pay and retirement benefits from Cal Fire. Last year, Newsom vetoed a bill that would have established a new formula for raises. This year’s ask is even bigger: legislation that would let firefighters and police officers retire earlier with larger pensions. The state Senate passed that measure unanimously Sunday night, adding fresh pressure on the governor to finally deliver for public safety unions.

Special Treatment for San Diego, Bay Area Projects

Two other bills headed to Newsom’s desk would fast-track major redevelopment efforts in San Diego and the East Bay.

In San Diego, a last-minute legislative maneuver would clear the way for a contentious development that includes a sports arena backed by a billionaire investor, thousands of new housing units built atop a long-vacant arena parking lot, and nearly 15 acres of new public parkland. The project would also be shielded from environmental lawsuits — a provision that drew sharp criticism from some lawmakers who opposed the bill. Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego argued that carving out special legal protection for a politically connected developer sends the wrong message to the public.

Up north, budget legislation moving through the Legislature would redirect $125 million toward purchasing Golden Gate Fields, the shuttered horse racing track along the East Bay shoreline, with plans to convert it into a public park. The money would come from Proposition 4, the $10 billion climate bond voters approved in 2024. Newsom backs the idea, but some lawmakers have questioned whether such a large expenditure on one project could crowd out other climate funding priorities.

Salton Sea Lithium Projects Stall

For years, state leaders — Newsom among them — have talked up the economic potential of extracting lithium from deposits beneath the Salton Sea, envisioning a homegrown supply chain for electric vehicle batteries and consumer electronics. But legal challenges are keeping much of that lithium in the ground.

The Salton Sea region is believed to hold enough lithium to produce roughly 375 million EV batteries, more than the total number of vehicles currently on U.S. roads. Yet one major extraction project, designed to generate enough lithium annually to supply tens of thousands of homes with power, has been tied up in lawsuits alleging the company behind it failed to adequately address environmental concerns.

An Imperial County supervisor noted that delays are somewhat expected given the technical complexity of lithium extraction. But local tribal representatives, community organizations and environmental groups are pushing officials to slow down and take a more careful look at the long-term impacts. Kwaaymii tribal elder Carmen Lucas summed up the sentiment: she isn’t against development, she said, but wants it done responsibly and with balance.

911 Calls at ICE Detention Centers

The Legislature has also passed a bill requiring government agencies to release information about 911 calls placed from immigration detention facilities. State Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Long Beach Democrat, introduced the measure after reporting revealed rape investigations tied to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Rejected These Bills Before. Now They’re Back for Another Look appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The legislation, both authored by Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat, arrives as communities from the desert to the Central Valley grapple with the rapid spread of data centers built to power artificial intelligence. Lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 2469 on Monday, which would prohibit local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless developers disclose their water usage plans and agree to cover the costs of any necessary water infrastructure, including new pipes, treatment systems or storage.

That bill joins Papan’s Assembly Bill 2619, which cleared the Senate last week on a lopsided 30-9 vote. That measure would require data center operators to report, under penalty of perjury, how much water they expect to use or have used when applying for or renewing business licenses and permits.

Both bills now await Newsom’s signature — or veto. The governor rejected a nearly identical version of the reporting bill last year after intense lobbying from the tech industry, saying he was hesitant to impose “rigid reporting requirements” without a fuller understanding of the impact on businesses and consumers.

Papan said she’s frequently asked whether her second attempt stands a better chance this time around.

“To which I say, the opportunity for leadership has not gone away. If anything, it has been amplified,” she told CalMatters.

Much has changed since last year’s veto. Public unease over data centers has grown sharply, with a recent Public Policy Institute of California survey finding that most residents oppose new facilities in their communities and worry about their environmental toll.

Iris Stewart-Frey, an environmental science professor at Santa Clara University who authored a study this year on the industry’s water disclosure practices, said the backlash reflects both the pace of the industry’s expansion and its habit of operating behind closed doors.

“We currently are seeing a phase of heightened concern because of the rapid evolution of the industry — and the lack of transparency,” Stewart-Frey said. “I think that’s where these bills can really make some progress in getting the sides back to the table and conversation, and also recreate some of this public trust.”

Cities take matters into their own hands

With state oversight largely absent, cities and counties have started acting on their own — often by saying no. Monterey Park voters approved a permanent ban on data centers in June. The Coachella City Council followed suit last week, passing its own ban to applause from residents. Tulare County supervisors have paused new approvals while they consider a longer-term moratorium.

The trend isn’t limited to California. New York recently enacted a yearlong moratorium on new data centers, and a Gallup poll found 70% of Americans oppose the facilities in their communities.

A high-profile dispute over a proposed data center in Gilroy recently drew national attention, something Stewart-Frey said reflects rising public suspicion of an industry that has largely kept its water usage under wraps.

“It’s also emblematic of the fact that the data center industry in California has not been releasing actual water use data, right?” she said. “This lack of transparency is also biting them in the back here.”

Papan said that’s precisely the problem her bills aim to fix.

“I don’t think we should be eliminating anything without sufficient knowledge about what their needs are, and then how can we meet those needs,” she said. Addressing data center developers directly, she added: “Help us help you — because if you go into an area that doesn’t have sufficient water supply for you, it’s not going to work.”

Familiar battle lines, new complications

The debate has drawn the usual opposing camps. Environmental advocates and community groups support the bills as a step toward greater transparency, while tech and business interests are pushing back hard.

Khara Boender, western government affairs director for the Data Center Coalition, said her group worries the legislation unfairly singles out data centers compared with other major industrial and commercial water users. She said any new reporting requirements tied to permits or licenses “should apply to other similar commercial and industrial users, as that would provide context and a holistic view of water demands.”

Adding to the complexity, several influential local government groups — including the League of California Cities, the California State Association of Counties and the Rural County Representatives of California — have come out against AB 2469, arguing in a July letter that it “undermines local governments’ ability to protect and represent their communities through established permitting mechanisms and community engagement processes.”

Most water agencies have stayed on the sidelines, raising only technical concerns. One notable exception is Santa Clara Valley Water District, which serves a region already dense with data centers and has thrown its support behind both bills.

“Despite local efforts to mitigate the impact of data center water demand, more information on water use could help local water agencies, such as Valley Water, plan for actual needs,” Joshua Golka, the district’s state government relations lead, wrote in a letter to Papan.

A step forward, but not a complete fix

Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment, described Papan’s bills as “necessary, but not sufficient.”

He warned that even with new water-use data in hand, smaller cities and counties with limited staff and technical expertise may still struggle to evaluate the risks and benefits of hosting a data center. An earlier version of AB 2619 would have directed state agencies to develop guidance for local governments, but that provision was stripped out before the Senate vote.

Papan acknowledged the guidance would have been useful but said it came with a hefty price tag — an Assembly analysis pegged the cost of developing water-use and technology guidelines at $2 million in the first year and $1 million annually thereafter.

“The main goal has been transparency. Let me give you the data, and let’s go from there,” Papan said. “I just didn’t want anything to divert from that main goal.”

Kiparsky argued the state should go further, proposing a dedicated strike team to help smaller communities interpret the new data and a centralized public database so officials, researchers and residents can track the cumulative impact of data centers statewide.

“To be really clear, data centers are not bad or good … we use them every day for just about everything we do involving technology,” Kiparsky said.

The real question, he said, is whether a particular community — given its available land, water and energy resources — is actually a suitable place for one.

“You can’t answer those questions just with what’s required from this bill — you need to have the understanding that comes from experts looking at it,” he said. “The state, in my opinion, can and should provide that.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Newsom Rejected a Data Center Water Bill Last Year — Will He Approve It This Time? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Several high-profile measures remain unresolved as of this week, while others have already cleared both chambers and are headed to the governor.

Among the unfinished business: state officials and legislative leaders are still at odds over how to allocate California’s primary climate fund, which draws revenue from the state’s carbon-trading program. New rules adopted by the Newsom administration this year could cut that funding pool roughly in half, threatening a range of climate initiatives lawmakers had hoped to bankroll.

Late Sunday, the Legislature approved a fiercely debated antitrust bill that would allow Californians to sue large corporations accused of using monopolistic tactics to squeeze out competitors. Labor unions have championed the measure, while business groups have fought it hard.

Lawmakers also passed a deal Sunday night addressing how much financial exposure schools face when settling sexual abuse lawsuits. The compromise has drawn criticism from some victim advocates, who argue it would make it harder for survivors with older claims to meet evidentiary standards and are pushing Newsom to reject it.

Still pending are several bills aimed at regulating data centers, including proposals that would shift the cost of electric grid upgrades onto data center operators rather than residential ratepayers, along with a measure requiring environmental review for new data center projects.

In a last-minute push to aid California’s film industry, legislators are also negotiating changes that would ease the impact of a $5 million cap on annual tax credits — a limit studios say makes it harder to justify filming in the state.

Other measures have already been finalized and sent to the governor. One would establish a “fast-pay” system for victims of utility-caused wildfires and bar utility executives from receiving bonuses in years their companies are responsible for fatal fires. Newsom had initially pushed to reduce how much utilities pay insurers, survivors and local governments after wildfires, but dropped that idea amid heavy pushback.

Another bill headed to Newsom would scale back which manufacturing facilities qualify for exemptions under the California Environmental Quality Act. Environmental advocates call it a workable middle ground, though business groups maintain that regulatory hurdles continue to choke off economic growth.

Lawmakers also passed a measure barring law enforcement from using undercover operatives to elicit confessions from certain in-custody suspects under age 26, a practice critics say can be coercive and lead to false confessions.

In other news, more than a dozen California colleges and universities have lost upwards of $6 million after the U.S. Department of Education pulled funding from outreach programs designed to help students prepare for and succeed in college, according to reporting from CalMatters’ College Journalism Network. As part of a broader effort to dismantle diversity-focused initiatives, the federal agency eliminated over $40 million nationwide for more than 100 TRIO programs — resources that have historically helped low-income and first-generation students navigate college applications, financial aid and campus visits.

The cuts are expected to affect roughly 7,000 California students, with rural communities — already among the least likely to enroll in or complete college — bearing much of the impact. Sofia Santos-Arriola, a former TRIO adviser at Cal Poly Humboldt, said the cuts felt deliberately aimed at vulnerable students. “This does seem like it was so directly targeted against poor people, against first-generation immigrants, against first-generation college students,” she said.

Meanwhile, CalMatters has welcomed a new class of student journalists into its College Journalism Network fellowship program. The 12 fellows, representing community colleges, Cal State campuses, UC schools and private universities across the state, recently gathered in Sacramento for a two-day orientation that included meetings with campus officials, student leaders and higher education experts. Over the coming academic year, they’ll report on issues ranging from artificial intelligence and student privacy to housing, transfer pathways and college affordability.

And in a separate development, Newsom signed legislation expanding privacy protections for people who provide legal or counseling assistance to immigrants — a move that has drawn sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers, who argue the law threatens First Amendment rights.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Governor’s Desk Awaits: Final Bill Deadline Arrives Today for Newsom appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

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

The post Lawmakers Face Pressure to Soften Proposed Data Center Regulations appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Public Policy Institute of California polled 1,578 adults and found that 73% oppose constructing data centers where they live. The sentiment cuts across party lines — both Democrats and Republicans disapprove by wide margins, though Republicans showed slightly more openness to the facilities than Democrats did.

The resistance isn’t unique to California. National polling has found similarly lopsided opposition to data centers, suggesting the pushback reflects a broader unease with the physical footprint of the AI industry rather than a distinctly Californian concern.

That presents a real problem for the tech sector, which has become a driving force behind the Bay Area’s economy. Industry estimates put the number of California jobs tied to AI and data center operations at 665,000, with billions of dollars flowing into state and local tax coffers as a result.

Opposition proved strongest in the Inland Empire and Los Angeles County, two regions that have seen a wave of proposed data center projects in recent years as companies search for available land and power capacity outside the coastal core. Meanwhile, 63% of all respondents voiced concern about the environmental toll of these facilities, with Bay Area residents expressing the most worry of any region surveyed.

The findings arrive amid a string of real-world clashes over data center development. San Francisco recently saw a public protest against the industry’s expansion, the city of Monterey Park moved to ban data centers outright, and residents in Imperial Valley have filed lawsuits challenging a proposed facility there. Together, these flashpoints paint a picture of a state where local resistance to data centers is hardening into organized opposition, even as the industry continues to expand statewide.

Despite that apparent unity on data centers, the same survey revealed cracks in Californians’ support for environmental policy more broadly, driven largely by concerns over cost of living.

Opposition to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mandate ending sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 has climbed sharply, with 66% of respondents now against the policy — up from 49% back in July 2021. Republicans overwhelmingly reject the rule, with 91% opposed, while Democrats are now nearly evenly split, with half expressing opposition.

A similar tension showed up around renewable energy. While 62% of those surveyed still back California’s mandate requiring all electricity to come from renewable sources by 2045, almost the same share of respondents said their gas and electric bills are already too expensive. Only 38% said they’d be willing to pay more to support wind and solar power — a gap that suggests affordability concerns may be catching up with the state’s climate ambitions even as its residents hold the line against unwanted data center development in their backyards.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Poll Finds Most Californians Wary of New Data Center Development appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision, reached earlier this month, made Monterey Park the first city in the United States to prohibit data centers outright. The vote followed months of neighborhood opposition to a proposed facility that drew protests, lawn signs and public pressure on City Hall.

In March, the Monterey Park City Council voted unanimously to send the ban to voters while also extending a temporary moratorium on data centers. Within weeks, the developer behind the proposed project withdrew its plans.

Mayor Elizabeth Yang said residents who campaigned against the project were pleased with the outcome after months of organizing.

“They spent a lot of time door knocking, putting up signs, fundraising, campaigning,” Yang said. “So it was a lot of community effort.”

The Monterey Park vote comes as communities across California and the country weigh the economic promise of data centers against concerns about power consumption, water use, noise and environmental impacts. A March Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans surveyed opposed having data centers built in their area.

Industry representatives, however, warn that bans could discourage investment. Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said Monterey Park’s decision sends a message that the area is “closed for business.”

Data centers are the physical backbone of cloud computing and artificial intelligence systems, housing servers that process and store enormous amounts of digital information. California already has at least 287 such facilities, according to the Data Center Coalition. The group says data centers supported more than 665,000 jobs in the state in 2024 and generated $14.1 billion in state and local taxes.

Major technology companies are also pouring unprecedented sums into the sector. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet are expected to spend a combined $700 billion on data centers worldwide by the end of this year.

Peter Leroe-Muñoz, senior vice president and general counsel for the Bay Area Council, argued that communities risk cutting themselves off from the infrastructure needed for modern business, research and innovation.

“Data centers make modern lives possible,” he said, calling them a platform for “play, productivity and potential” in the current economy.

Still, Monterey Park is not alone in taking a cautious approach. Local governments around California are considering how to regulate the industry as demand for AI-related infrastructure grows.

In Imperial County, supervisors are weighing a temporary moratorium on data center projects after residents criticized the county for moving forward with a proposed facility. In San Jose, where at least 40 data centers already operate, the City Council recently directed the city manager to draft new guidelines for future projects. Some critics remain wary, especially after the city last year promoted a partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric intended to streamline data center development.

For Southern California communities watching the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, Monterey Park’s vote may serve as a test case for how far local governments are willing to go in pushing back against one of the technology industry’s fastest-growing sectors.

Original source: CalMatters

The post City Draws the Line on Data Centers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The maker of ChatGPT put out a request for proposals for land, electricity, engineers and architects and began visiting locations in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week.

Trump touted Stargate, a newly formed joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, shortly after returning to the White House last month.

The partnership said it is investing $100 billion — and eventually up to $500 billion — to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration, though the first project in Abilene, Texas, has been under construction for months.

Elon Musk, a Trump adviser and fierce rival of OpenAI who’s in a legal fight with the company and its CEO Sam Altman, has publicly questioned the value of Stargate’s investments.

After Trump’s announcement, a number of states reached out to OpenAI about welcoming additional data centers, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, told reporters Thursday.

The company’s request for proposals calls for sites with “proximity to necessary infrastructure including power and water.”

AI uses vast amounts of energy, much of which comes from burning fossil fuels, which causes climate change. Data centers also typically draw in large amounts of water for cooling.

OpenAI’s proposal makes no mention of whether it intends to prioritize renewable energy sources such as wind or solar to power the data centers, but it says electricity providers should have a plan to manage carbon emissions and water usage.

“There’s some sites we’re looking at where we want to help be part of the process that brings new power to that site, either from new gas deployment or other means,” said Keith Heyde, who directs OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy.

The first Texas project is in a region Abilene’s mayor has described to The Associated Press as rich in multiple energy sources, including wind, solar and gas. Also describing it that way is the company that began building the AI data center campus there in June — the same two “big, beautiful buildings” that Altman showed off in a recent drone video posted on social media.

Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller said that wind power is central to the project his company is building, though it will also have a gas-fired generator for backup power.

“We try to build data centers in locations where we can access low-cost, clean and abundant energy resources,” Lochmiller said. “West Texas really fits that mold where it’s one of the most consistently windy and sunny places in the United States.”

Lochmiller said he expects the Trump administration, despite the president’s opposition to wind farms, to be pragmatic in supporting wind-powered data centers when it is “actually the cheapest way to access energy.”

The other states where OpenAI is actively looking include Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. Heyde said the company only plans to build “somewhere between five to 10” campuses in total, depending on how large each one is.

OpenAI previously relied on business partner Microsoft for its computing needs but the two companies recently amended their partnership to enable OpenAI to pursue data center development on its own.

The post OpenAI looks across US for sites to build its Trump-backed Stargate AI data centers appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.