No. Executive Order 658 does not change the Massachusetts data center sales tax exemption. The exemption was already paused on June 25, 2026, when the Healey administration stopped taking applications, and the order signed on September 8, 2026 leaves that pause exactly where it was. The order mentions the pause once, in its preamble, and then moves on to permits. The order of operations now runs through the host community, which is the work The PR Bunker's data center community relations practice exists to get done.
That does not make the two unrelated. The order decides whether a large project gets built at all. If there is no state permit, there is nothing to buy tax free, so the community benefits agreement the order demands is now the first thing a developer has to secure, incentive or no incentive. Here is what the exemption is, what happened to it, what the order says, and what you have to show.
The Legislature created the exemption in November 2024 in the economic development law known as the Mass Leads Act. It added Section 70 to Chapter 23A and Section 6(zz) to Chapter 64H of the General Laws. A certified qualified data center pays no sales or use tax on eligible equipment, computer software, electricity used to run the facility, and the materials and labor that go into building or refurbishing it. The exemption runs 20 years from the certification date.
EOED certifies, in consultation with the Department of Revenue, under its regulation 400 CMR 9.00. The facility has to be new or substantially refurbished and total at least 100,000 square feet on a single or contiguous parcel. The owner has to spend at least $50 million in qualified costs within 10 years and create or maintain at least 100 permanent full-time Massachusetts jobs within five years. EOED has 60 business days to decide a completed application. Certified owners file annual reports, and EOED can decertify for material noncompliance after notice and a hearing.
Notice what is not on that list. No energy requirement, no water requirement, no community engagement requirement, no labor requirement. That gap is what the administration went after in June.
The regulation that runs the exemption is 400 CMR 9.00, Qualified Data Centers, issued by the Executive Office of Economic Development under Chapter 23A, Section 70 and Chapter 64H, Section 6(zz). EOED held its public hearing on the proposed rule on August 21, 2025 and took comments through August 25, 2025, according to the notice of proposed regulation, and the official regulation page on mass.gov carries a date of March 27, 2026. The pause stopped applications, not the rule, so these are still the tests a project would face if the door reopens.
None of those seven items mentions energy, water, noise, labor or community engagement. That is the gap the June 25, 2026 Framework and Executive Order 658 were written to fill, and if EOED reopens applications you should expect the Framework showing to be added to this list in some form.
EOED finalized 400 CMR 9.00 and opened the exemption in the spring of 2026. On June 25, the Governor shut the door. EOED will not be accepting applications from entities seeking certification to claim the Qualified Data Center Tax Exemption until further notice. No applications had come in. The Governor put it plainly: I am halting any tax incentives for data centers until we have strong protections in place.
The same day the administration published its Statement of Expectations for Responsible Data Center Development and Operations, now called the Framework. It says that data centers receiving public incentives from the sales and use tax exemption should provide demonstrable public benefits and avoid potential public harms. It then lays out eight areas: bring your own clean energy, efficiency and grid support, air quality and noise, water, responsible labor practices including project labor agreements, community benefit and engagement, local economic development, and transparency with no nondisclosure agreements.
So June did two things. It paused the incentive, and it told developers what they would have to show to get it back. No reopening date was set then, and none has been set since.
The order came on September 8, 2026. It covers data center projects with peak electricity demand above 25 megawatts. Section 1 tells state permitting agencies, including MassDEP, the Energy Facilities Siting Board, and the MEPA office, not to issue permits for those projects unless the applicant does two things. First, demonstrate conformance with the Framework. Second, submit a community benefits agreement, reviewed by the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity, that is consistent with OEJE's March 2026 Standards and Guidelines for Community Benefit Plans and Agreements. OEJE alone decides whether it meets the standard. The order text calls it an agreement with key stakeholders. The Governor's release calls it an agreement with the host municipality: unless a community says yes to a data center, we are saying no. Section 1 also bars nondisclosure agreements between state agencies and a project. The whole order is in our plain-English guide to Executive Order 658.
The rest of the order fills in the Framework. MassDEP has until December 31, 2026 to set protocols for covering a project's annual consumption with new clean generation, and an alternative compliance payment that flows into a Ratepayer Protection Fund. The Department of Public Utilities is told to keep grid upgrade costs off other ratepayers. Municipal guidance is due by the end of 2026 and annual reporting starts in 2027.
Now the tax question. The preamble recites that on June 25, 2026, Governor Healey paused the acceptance of applications for data center sales and use tax exemptions, as established by Section 6(zz) of Chapter 64H of the General Laws. That is the only mention. No section reopens applications, makes Framework compliance a condition of certification, or directs EOED or the Department of Revenue to do anything about the exemption. Asked on September 8, the Governor said the exemption was not her idea and declined to say when applications would resume.
The practical reading: the Framework is now written into permitting by executive order. It is not yet written into the exemption by statute or regulation. If EOED reopens applications, expect it to ask for the same showing the permit agencies ask for. That is a forecast, not a rule on the books today.
Start with the host community. The permit depends on a CBA that OEJE accepts, and OEJE's standards define a CBA as a legally binding agreement between the developer and the community, often through a coalition or the local government. The local conversation has to be real, early, and on the record before you file anything at the state level. Towns will have state guidance by the end of 2026, so expect them to arrive with a checklist.
Second, build the Framework file. Air and noise, including backup power that is not diesel where you can avoid it. Water, including proof of capacity and closed loop cooling. Energy, including how you will cover your load with new clean generation or what you will pay into the Ratepayer Protection Fund until you can. Labor, including whether you will sign a project labor agreement. Transparency, including public disclosure of location, size, energy and water demand, and jobs. A town will ask about every one of these at the first public meeting.
Third, take the permit. With a signed CBA and a Framework showing, the EFSB, MassDEP, and MEPA processes can move.
Fourth, and only fourth, the incentive. If EOED reopens applications, the statutory thresholds still apply: 100,000 square feet, $50 million, 100 jobs, plus annual reporting and the risk of decertification. A project that has done the Framework work will have its application mostly written. A project that skipped it will be starting over.
The hinge is the community benefits agreement. No CBA, no state permit. No permit, no project. And the incentive is worthless without the project. Community relations is no longer a line item for a Massachusetts data center. It is the gating item on the critical path.
A CBA that OEJE will accept is not a check written to the town. The March 2026 standards ask for a documented engagement summary, locally identified priorities, benefit commitments with measurable milestones, and a monitoring and accountability framework. Those are community relations deliverables. They get built by showing up in the neighborhood for months, listening, and putting the answers in writing a select board or city council can sign. We lay out the sequence in how to get a community benefits agreement done for a Massachusetts data center, and our data center community relations service is built around it.
Massachusetts keeps no public list of pending data center projects, so the pipeline you can read is the one that shows up in local permits, court dockets, and the press. Three projects left enough of a record in 2026 to check against the paused exemption's thresholds of 100,000 square feet, $50 million in qualified costs, and 100 Massachusetts jobs, and each one tells you something about how the state's new order of operations plays out on the ground. Operating colocation buildings around Boston are not on this list, because an existing facility is not a proposal.
Servistar Realties held a special permit from October 2021 for a hyperscale campus on more than 150 acres, priced at $3 billion at full buildout. On October 14, 2026 the Westfield Planning Board voted unanimously not to extend that permit, finding the company had never bought the land, let its LLC lapse in late 2024, and never recorded the permit at the registry of deeds, according to WBUR on October 14, 2026. The developer blamed the frozen state tax incentive and tariffs. The City Council had already passed a one year moratorium in July 2026 that exempted Servistar. On the thresholds, a $3 billion campus projecting 500 permanent jobs, as the Boston Globe reported on June 6, 2025, would have cleared the cost and jobs tests. Square footage was never published, and whether Servistar appealed inside its 20 day window is not published in the sources we found.
Markley Group runs a 352,000 square foot data center in Lowell's Sacred Heart and Back Central neighborhoods, built in 2015 and described as roughly 50 megawatts by Bisnow on March 11, 2026. The expansion adds diesel backup generators toward a total of 27, plus 16 cooling towers, some within 100 feet of homes. The City Council imposed a one year moratorium on new data center development on March 10, 2026 and let work already underway continue. Residents sued MassDEP in Superior Court on April 30, 2026 over the air permit, and on August 10, 2026 a judge paused installation of four generators not yet built while the case proceeds, according to the Conservation Law Foundation on August 10, 2026. Because this refurbishes an existing building, the square footage test is met on paper, but the qualified cost and jobs figures that would decide eligibility are not published.
Chestnut River Power and Infrastructure pitched a $200 million, 20 megawatt adaptive reuse of the vacant Hampden Papers mill complex at 100 Water Street in the Flats, with power from Holyoke Gas and Electric, a preliminary water estimate of 250,000 gallons a day, and about $2 million a year in new property tax. It never filed permits or bought the property. On June 16, 2026 the City Council voted 9 to 4 to ban data centers above 12 megawatts citywide, the first ban of its kind in the state, after more than 100 residents rallied at City Hall over water, noise, air and grid strain, according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette on June 17, 2026. The $200 million budget clears the $50 million cost test. Square footage and a jobs count were not published, and at 20 megawatts the project would have sat below Executive Order 658's 25 megawatt line.
The state publishes no count. No agency keeps a public tally of data centers permitted, proposed, or under review, and the numbers you see in circulation come from private trackers and campaign claims that don't agree with each other. The Energy Facilities Siting Board's permitting dashboard, updated October 9, 2026, reports zero applications for a consolidated permit as of August 10, 2026, and the EFSB's own September 17, 2026 siting and permitting briefing describes its jurisdiction as clean energy infrastructure, meaning generation, large storage, and transmission, not data centers as such. The board's open dockets list shows twelve matters, all of them substations, transmission lines, battery storage, or gas projects, and none of them a data center.
The closest thing to an official number is a demand figure, not a project count. State officials told the Boston Globe in a June 6, 2025 story that the investor owned utilities had received interconnection requests from proposed data centers totaling about 2 gigawatts of new load, and that figure left out municipal utility territories. On September 24, 2026 the Department of Public Utilities directed Eversource, National Grid and Unitil to file, by October 23, 2026 in docket D.P.U. 26-DC, a list of every load project above 25 megawatts in their queues and every data center request above 1 megawatt, with queue position, status, cost and timeline. Those filings are the first place a real count will exist, and as of this writing the DPU had not published a summary of them in the sources we found.
Private counts of existing facilities range widely. The Globe cited 44 operating data centers drawing about 188 megawatts, from DC Byte. One tracker counts 46 as of November 2026, with 44 operating and two proposed, and another tracks 18 projects. A gubernatorial candidate's claim of 39 was reported by WBUR on September 8, 2026 without verification. When the count of buildings already standing varies by a factor of two, treat any count of proposals with the same caution.
Executive Order 658 changes the record keeping going forward. A project above 25 megawatts now can't get a state permit from MassDEP, the EFSB or the MEPA office without a Framework showing and a community benefits agreement, so from 2027 the projects that matter will surface in the EFSB and MEPA dockets they trigger, in the D.P.U. 26-DC queue filings, and in the annual reporting the order starts that year. Until then, the named proposals we could verify from a fetched source are these.
Read that list for what it is. Of the three named projects, one was denied, one was banned before it filed, and one is in court over an expansion of a building that already exists. Nothing in the state record we fetched shows a new large data center permitted in 2026, and the towns moved before the Governor did.
EOED, Massachusetts Qualified Data Center Sales and Use Tax Exemption, with the criteria and the pause notice. EOED, 400 CMR 9.00 Qualified Data Centers, the certification regulation. Massachusetts Legislature, Chapter 238 of the Acts of 2024, the Mass Leads Act. Governor's Office, June 25, 2026 release announcing the pause. Healey-Driscoll Administration, Statement of Expectations for Responsible Data Center Development and Operations, the Framework. Executive Order No. 658. Governor's Office, September 8, 2026 release on the order. OEJE, Standards and Guidelines for Community Benefit Plans and Agreements, March 2026. Mass.gov Data Centers hub, where new guidance gets posted.
Don Martelli is the founder of PR Bunker, a Boston communications firm. He leads community relations for contested energy and data center projects in Massachusetts, chairs the Revere Public Library board of trustees, and is president of the Revere Chamber of Commerce. If you have a project that needs a community benefits agreement a town will sign and OEJE will accept, read about our data center community relations work, email don@prbunker.com, or book a call.
No. The order signed September 8, 2026 does not lift, extend, or add conditions to the exemption. It notes in its preamble that the Governor paused applications on June 25, 2026 and then sets permit requirements for projects over 25 megawatts. The pause continues on its own terms, and the Governor has not said when applications will reopen.
Yes. On June 25, 2026 the Executive Office of Economic Development stopped accepting applications for the Qualified Data Center Sales and Use Tax Exemption until further notice. The state said no applications had been received before the pause. As of late September 2026 the pause is still in effect, and EOED offers an email address, datacentertaxexemption@mass.gov, for updates.
Under Chapter 23A, Section 70 and 400 CMR 9.00, a facility must be new or substantially refurbished, total at least 100,000 square feet, involve at least $50 million in qualified costs within 10 years, and create or maintain at least 100 permanent full-time Massachusetts jobs within five years. EOED certifies the facility in consultation with the Department of Revenue, and the exemption then runs for 20 years. Those thresholds have not changed, but no new applications are being accepted.
For projects with peak demand above 25 megawatts, state permitting agencies may not issue permits unless the developer demonstrates conformance with the administration's June 25 Framework and submits a community benefits agreement that the Office of Environmental Justice and Equity finds consistent with its March 2026 standards. The order also bars nondisclosure agreements between state agencies and the project. Clean energy procurement protocols and an alternative compliance payment into a Ratepayer Protection Fund are due from MassDEP by December 31, 2026.
Not today, because applications are closed regardless of what a developer signs. A CBA is required for the state permit, not for the exemption. If EOED reopens applications, a project that has already met the Framework and secured an accepted CBA will be in the strongest position, because the Framework says incentive recipients should meet the same expectations.
No project is caught mid-review, because there was nothing to catch. When EOED stopped accepting applications on June 25, 2026, the state said it had not received a single application for the Qualified Data Center Sales and Use Tax Exemption, so no certification is pending and none was interrupted. What does apply today, pause or no pause, is Executive Order 658. Any project with peak demand above 25 megawatts needs a Framework showing and an accepted community benefits agreement before any state permit issues.
The state publishes no count. The Energy Facilities Siting Board dashboard showed zero consolidated permit applications as of August 10, 2026, and no open EFSB docket is a data center. From 2027, projects over 25 megawatts covered by Executive Order 658 will surface in EFSB and MEPA filings, in the DPU 26-DC utility queue reports, and in the order's annual reporting. The named 2026 proposals we verified are Westfield, denied October 14, Lowell, an expansion in court, and Holyoke, banned June 16.
Updated November 9, 2026. The pause, the thresholds and the pipeline entries above were re-verified against mass.gov, the EFSB dashboard and local press on that date.
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