Josh Shapiro gets stuff undone

Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) built his brand on GSD: getting stuff done. But these days, he seems more interested in the exact opposite.Rather than building on the policies he has spent years touting, Shapiro is increasingly reversing course on them. Call it the Shapiro U-turn — and nowhere is that reversal clearer than on data centers.Shapiro has spent years promoting Pennsylvania as a destination for major investment. In 2024, he created the PA Permit Fast Track Program, promising to speed up permitting for major economic development projects. His administration later celebrated Amazon’s planned $20 billion investment in Pennsylvania AI infrastructure as “the largest private-sector investment in commonwealth history.” While the program was inadequate and allowed political favoritism by the governor himself, the stated goal was correct: Pennsylvania will be more competitive when government gets out of the way of investment.Now, he is moving in the opposite direction.After ushering data center projects through the process and campaigning on the investments they brought, Shapiro now wants to prevent data centers from using the very process his administration created.That is not, as Shapiro routinely boasts, “moving at the speed of business.” It is changing the rules after businesses have already started moving. If Pennsylvania is open for business one year but then rewrites the rules the next, employers will notice.The contradiction goes beyond permitting. Shapiro has criticized practices surrounding individual data-center projects, calling them “greedy and predatory.” But these are the same projects his administration had been working behind the scenes to advance. He has criticized nondisclosure agreements while having used them himself.Shapiro’s economic message also brims with hypocrisy.He repeatedly boasts that Pennsylvania has the “only growing economy in the Northeast.” That claim isn’t accurate and overstates Pennsylvania’s performance. The commonwealth continues to lag nationally on important measures of economic growth.But Pennsylvania does outperform nearby states, such as New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, which have struggled with weak growth and persistent outmigration.That makes Shapiro’s next move especially puzzling: He wants Pennsylvania to mimic the worst policies of those failing states.On minimum wage policy, for instance, Shapiro regularly points to New York and New Jersey as models Pennsylvania should follow. Yet these are the same states he implicitly contrasts with Pennsylvania while touting our relative economic performance.You cannot credibly say, “Look how much better we are doing than our neighbors,” and then conclude, “Let’s adopt their policies.”The same problem appears in Shapiro’s support for higher taxes, energy mandates, and other policies that would raise the cost of doing business and living in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth has an enormous opportunity to attract jobs, investment, and residents fleeing high-cost neighboring states — not imitate the states that people and businesses are leaving.Then, there is educational choice.While campaigning for governor, Shapiro supported tax-credit scholarships, saying he wanted to “protect what we have on EITC and add more on those scholarships.”Thanks to the Republican-led state Senate making educational choice a top priority, we have expanded educational options, with more than 100,000 students now benefiting from tax-credit scholarships.But in a stunning reversal, Shapiro proposed cutting the program in his 2026–27 budget proposal — not only denying new opportunities to thousands of students on waiting lists but also taking scholarships away from low-income children who already receive them.State House Democrats subsequently doubled down by advancing legislation that would have cut 30,000 existing scholarships. Even after amendments to restore those scholarships, their proposal would reduce tax-credit levels, eliminate supplemental scholarships, restrict student eligibility, and impose new taxes and regulations on scholarship organizations.That is a particularly remarkable retreat for a governor who once tried to position himself as a different kind of Democrat on school choice.A politician flip-flopping on a position is nothing new. But this is no longer an isolated event. It is a well-established pattern for the governor. Shapiro promises less red tape, then adds it. He brags about outperforming New York and New Jersey, then wants to copy them. He promises more scholarships, then tries to cut them.WANT LOWER ELECTRIC BILLS? LET UTILITIES BUILD POWER PLANTS AGAINFor a governor who brags about “getting stuff done,” he seems more inclined to undo everything he’s promised.At this rate, he should rebrand: Shapiro is the GSU — get stuff undone — governor.Nathan Benefield is the chief policy officer for the Commonwealth Foundation, Pennsylvania’s free-market think tank.