This month, Prince George’s County imposed a two-year moratorium on new data center development. This week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a one-year statewide pause on environmental permits for new hyperscale data centers requiring at least 50 megawatts of power. Different jurisdictions. Different measures. The same underlying conclusion: governments should not keep approving increasingly large and resource-intensive data centers before they have enforceable rules gove

Why Performance Standards Matter In this series, GCHIC has evaluated the Qualified Data Center Task Force’s recommendations against Smart Digital Growth —a policy framework developed to help Prince George’s County harness the fiscal benefits of data centers while avoiding the land‑use, infrastructure, and community harms seen elsewhere. In Part 1 , we explained why the Task Force was created, how it operated, and what its report sets in motion. In Part 2 , we examined the Ta