PHOENIX — Gov. Katie Hobbs and her Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, have one thing they can agree on: data centers.

Both reject calls for a moratorium on new data centers proposed by Attorney General Kris Mayes, with Hobbs saying it’s not the right approach.

“I think there are places where data centers make sense, and they’re an important part of the high-tech economy that we’re growing here,” she told reporters last month.

Biggs agrees. After last week’s gubernatorial debate, he said local communities should have the final say.

“There are many who don’t want them at all, and others that are willing to investigate and are thinking about getting them,” he said.

He pointed to Marana’s decision to approve a data center after Tucson’s city council rejected a proposal for a Project Blue facility, saying “the company’s moving to Marana.”

However, the Marana facility is one of up to three sites Project Blue’s developer, Beale Infrastructure, is working on. The company moved the proposed Tucson facility to just outside the city, in an unincorporated part of Pima County, after the city rejected the project.

Biggs and Hobbs both say Arizona needs state standards for water and power use at data centers.

“That data centers pay for themselves,” Hobbs said. “That they’re not raising utility costs on Arizonans. That they’re using water sustainably, and that they’re addressing real and valid community concerns about data centers in neighborhoods.”

She pushed for the repeal of state tax incentives for data centers – a tax break she voted for when she was a lawmaker in the state Senate. Hobbs negotiated a three-year moratorium on the incentives in this year’s budget with legislative Republicans.

“We landed in a good place, and we can still have conversations about the water use, the energy use,” Hobbs said in July.

Biggs, who voted against the incentives when he was in the Senate, said he wants to get rid of them permanently if elected governor.

“Well, the first thing we’re going to do is, we’re not going to provide taxpayer subsidies or incentives for data centers to come in here,” he said.

Biggs said he’s met with industry leaders and told them they don’t need the incentives.

“I haven’t had anybody say that they would leave without those incentives or with the constraints that I’ve proposed,” he said.

Biggs has proposed developers pay for all the needed infrastructure and that data centers not “encroach on current and future natural growth of water and energy policy.”

Hobbs, who has said she still supports a repeal of the tax breaks, said the current three-year freeze on new applications is an opportunity to craft a data-center policy.

“I understand that many Arizonans are worried about data centers, and we want to make sure we’re addressing those concerns in the right way,” she said.

Meanwhile, Mayes is holding a town hall in Mesa on Oct. 14 to discuss her proposed statewide moratorium on new data centers.

“We need a temporary ban,” she told reporters after last month’s attorney general debate. “We need a pause so that we can get our hands around this situation.”

Mayes said she’s working on a plan for a new approval process that would allow communities to vote on data center projects and create a commission to review proposed data centers like the Arizona Power Plant and Transmission Line Siting Committee does for energy projects.

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