Development Becomes a Flashpoint in a Key New York House Race

NY-17: The third in a series on the environmental stakes behind one of the nation’s most fiercely contested congressional races.

At 8, on her walk home from elementary school, Sylke Jackson would drop sticks, leaves and nut shells in Nyack Brook. They would soften and float along beside her, as if companions.

At 10, as Nyack Plaza was built to provide low-income housing, she remembers how the stream disappeared into a pipe. Her companions were replaced by the acetone fumes out of a budget cosmetics factory nearby. So, as a child, did she watch development force a change to her local landscape. 

Today, at 56, she said years of large development projects, benefiting from tax exemptions while impacting the local environment, have fatigued residents and bred mistrust. 

Now, in the closely watched U.S. House race in New York’s 17th Congressional District, which includes all of Rockland and Putnam counties and parts of Westchester and Dutchess counties, data center development has become a political flashpoint between U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, Rockland’s Republican native son and a former New York state GOP leader, and his Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a decorated Army combat veteran who served on the National Security Council during the Biden administration. 

Jacqui Drechsler, a Clarkstown resident, thinks industrial development is out of hand. “We’re sick of it,” she said. “Many of us feel our taxes are being abused.” 

With Republicans controlling the U.S. House of Representatives by a narrow 218-213 margin, Democrats see the district—one of eight held by Republicans that Democrat Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential election—as one of their best opportunities to flip a seat.

Lawler, a former New York state assemblyman, lives in Orangetown, home to the Orangeburg data center hub. In the 2024 election, Lawler won Rockland County by an 18-percentage-point margin, crucial in helping offset his Democratic opponent Mondaire Jones’ margins in Westchester. Harris beat Trump by less than a point in the district. 

Now, as Rockland residents contend with the consequences of development and question who benefits from it, the issue could shape how they view Lawler and his party this November. Healthcare, government ethics and reform, and cost of living—with data centers clearly linked to energy affordability—are top of mind for voters heading into the midterms, according to polling. 

Data centers have become a leading issue in this race, with both Lawler and Conley mining each other’s remarks, campaign donations and records for political ammunition.

Lawler has sought to position himself as a check on the costs data centers impose on ratepayers and a supporter of local control over their development. He was a sponsor of the Ratepayer Protection Act, which passed the House last month before falling short in the Senate, and would require states to consider making data centers bear the full cost of any infrastructure upgrades needed to meet their growing energy demands. 

Conley, meanwhile, blames Lawler for the growth of Rockland County as a data center hub and supports Gov. Kathy Hochul’s one-year statewide moratorium on new data center development. 

“Unlike Mike, I support a data center moratorium. In Congress, I’ll ensure these companies don’t pass utility costs on to families, harm our environment or exploit our communities,” she wrote on X.

For Lawler, the politics are not straightforward. His labor coalition includes particularly strong backing from the building trades, whose members can benefit directly from the construction jobs generated by new development. Seven building-trades unions have endorsed his re-election campaign. He has noted that the county’s data-center industry predates his tenure, with many facilities serving financial services rather than AI.

In this critical midterm election year, moratoriums on development have taken effect across Rockland County.

In August, Lawler’s hometown imposed a six-month moratorium on new data centers and battery-energy-storage systems. Orangetown hosts four data centers, with one, a 20-megawatt facility owned by DataBank, seeking expansion. The 30-megawatt expansion was exempt from the town’s moratorium but has been paused after the local Planning Board voted unanimously to subject it to a more extensive environmental review, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation determined that the project is subject to Hochul’s statewide moratorium.

Clarkstown, north of Orangetown, has taken a broader approach, recently announcing a six-month building moratorium that temporarily halts certain major development applications, such as AI data centers, while officials assess the effects of future growth on infrastructure, transportation, the environment and public safety.

The backlash that prompted that moratorium has centered in large part on Cedar Corners, a proposed warehouse complex on a 41-acre forested site in Congers, one of several hamlets that make up the town. The site lies within a state-designated disadvantaged community, an area identified as facing environmental, public health and economic burdens.

The project would clear 27.6 acres of woodland, shrubs and groundcover, and create 627 parking spaces around the warehouses, with an additional 72 loading bays for commercial trucks. Brooklyn-based Vanta Developers has already secured $6 million in sales and mortgage tax exemptions for the project from the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency.

Mistrust has grown as public financial records show the campaign to re-elect Supervisor George Hoehmann received upwards of $8,500 from parties associated with the Congers project. The Clarkstown Planning Board is appointed by Hoehmann, who is effectively the town’s chief executive and has served as Supervisor since 2016.  

In response to a request for comment, Clarkstown said the Supervisor and Town Board do not vote on the project and cannot comment on its merits or seek to influence the Planning Board’s decision.

Jackson, who is now running as a Democrat for a seat on Clarkstown’s town council, remains skeptical, calling Clarkstown’s moratorium a political maneuver ahead of the November election. “They see that people are upset about what they are doing, and they want to win the election,” she said.

The Battle Over the Congers Warehouse

The proposed Congers warehouse offers a case study in the tensions surrounding the development boom in Rockland County, a GOP bastion where local races could nonetheless turn on the strength of Democratic turnout in midterms driven by opposition to President Donald Trump and the GOP, which has often moved in lockstep with Trump at the state and local levels.

The Congers project is one of several large warehouse projects currently under review or recently approved by local planning boards across Rockland County.

In Haverstraw, just north of Congers, developers have proposed the construction of a truck distribution center on 30 acres atop a closed, uncapped landfill. In Suffern, southwest of Congers, a warehouse complex totaling 1.2 million square feet was recently approved by the town. The project received more than $6 million in state and local tax exemptions. And in 2022, the Clarkstown Planning Board greenlit a 220,000-square-foot warehouse in Valley Cottage.

“This fight is a rinse and repeat of Valley Cottage, but on a bigger scale, with more damage potential,” said Drechsler, referring to the Congers warehouse.

In late July, a public hearing on that proposal in Clarkstown was held in the Town Hall, where residents could provide comments on the developer’s lengthy draft environmental impact statement, which reviews the extent of the project’s impact and proposes mitigation measures. Once the review process is complete and required approvals are granted, construction can begin. 

Jackson stood outside Clarkstown Town Hall among two dozen mostly older residents, along with activists, school board members and other town council candidates. 

When the large Fender speaker lost power, an attendee ran an extension cord to his electric vehicle, drawing cheers. A few residents had prepared lines; others were coaxed to speak. They questioned the need for the project and its proposed location, urging the Planning Board to deny the application.

“We’re not doing it right,” said Greg Sheehan, who worked on the construction of the Valley Cottage warehouse, and is a candidate for Clarkstown clerk.

Once inside the hearing, a much larger crowd of residents delivered hours of public comment before the hearing was adjourned and rescheduled to continue on Sept. 30. With the moratorium in place, the meeting was later cancelled. 

They cited numerous environmental concerns associated with the project.

Forest removal is estimated to release more than 5.2 million pounds of CO2, as carbon stored in the trees is released through decomposition or burning. These emissions are equivalent to 4,000 round-trip flights from New York to London for one passenger, or the annual energy use of 318 homes. This does not account for the loss of trees, which absorb carbon. 

The developer promises to plant 528 trees to offset carbon loss, but the full offset would take more than 40 years. 

Residents also noted that the project would increase traffic on an already heavily traveled Route 303, contribute to noise pollution and harm local air quality. 

Dr. Erik Larsen, a resident who trained as a physician at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, which has some of the highest asthma rates in the United States, warned that increased truck traffic would raise local asthma rates. The project’s proximity to Lakewood Elementary School concerned him. 

The project is projected to increase peak water runoff during a 100-year storm by 23 percent, but the developer said that mitigation will ensure a net-zero change. The company has also proposed a bio-filter system for its treatment. Still, residents living near the Valley Cottage site, which was approved following the same environmental review, remain wary.

“Valley Cottage should serve as a warning. During construction, little was done to prevent debris from entering storm drains. No one came to clean them out, and the road flooded,” said Drechsler. 

“Rockland County has a major flooding issue, and they are destroying land that provided a natural buffer,” she added.

Lawler has sought to demonstrate that he is attuned to these concerns. He recently secured $2.5 million in federal funding to address chronic flooding in Clarkstown. But for some residents, the funding addresses the symptoms rather than the cause.

Neither the Valley Cottage nor the Congers warehouse developers responded to requests for comment.

The Tax Breaks Behind the Project

Every county in New York is served by an industrial development agency, or IDA, which is authorized to use tax incentives to encourage private investment, promote job creation and preserve the county’s economic health and quality of life. 

The company behind the Congers project secured $1.2 million in mortgage recording tax exemptions and up to $5.025 million in sales tax exemptions from the Rockland Industrial Development Agency. 

According to the company, the project will create 250 new full-time jobs and generate roughly $3 million in annual municipal tax revenue. But some residents have questioned those projections, noting that no tenant had been publicly identified when the incentives were approved. They also question the project’s necessity; the Valley Cottage site still had approximately 66,000 square feet of unleased space as of June. 

According to agency records, projects assisted by the Rockland IDA in 2025 represented approximately $4 billion in investment, with more than half involving warehouses. 

The incentives awarded to the Congers project come at a time of growing scrutiny over New York’s industrial development agencies.

“The unfortunate reality is that IDAs, despite the enormous power vested in them, operate with very little public scrutiny,” said state Sen. James Skoufis, a Democrat.

Skoufis has pushed for tighter oversight of the agencies, arguing that billions of dollars in corporate subsidies are often approved with too little transparency and too little accountability when companies fail to deliver on projected economic benefits. 

“Time after time we see situations where the staff bring decisions to the board, and the board simply rubber stamps them,” he added.

“More times than not, the staff feel their job is to roll out the red carpet to developers that walk through their doors. That is not how this process is supposed to work.” 

Rockland County’s IDA has drawn particular attention following reporting on large subsidies awarded to several data center projects in Orangeburg. One project, a JPMorgan Chase data center, received $77 million in tax incentives while projecting only a single permanent job, prompting renewed questions about how the agency weighs public costs against economic benefits. Data center approvals transformed the agency’s finances, increasing its revenue nearly sevenfold.

During a livestreamed IDA meeting on the Congers project, agency executive director Steven Porath said that Clarkstown officials were “supportive of the project, subject to ongoing approvals.” 

At a later meeting he added, “This is exactly what they want to see up there.”

Responding to Porath’s comment, Jackson sighed at what she sees as a disconnect between town officials and residents.

“I can’t think of a single resident who would say that’s exactly what they want. I’m not sure whose interests they are talking about, besides their own,” she said.

The IDA did not respond to a request for comment. 

A growing distrust in Rockland Republican officials, and the divide between residents and their elected officials over the future of the county, could influence the November race. With Trump’s favorability ratings at all-time lows, 2026 is shaping up as a disastrous year for Republicans—and there could be a significant ripple effect.