Hermantown / tabled

Why it matters

Two structural updates worth adding to byog-byong-state-patchwork.md and to a new 'data-center-litigation-tracker.md' page if it wasn't created yesterday: (1) the Hermantown sequence is now the cleanest test case of the litigation-pause mechanism overlapping with the moratorium-pause mechanism — opponents filed suit five days before the council vote was scheduled, the suit didn't formally enjoin the council from acting, but the legal-uncertainty + public-comment combination produced a tabling that's functionally identical to a moratorium without any board needing to vote one in. The 'NDA without council approval' procedural angle is also new — if it survives motion-to-dismiss, that procedural defect cuts at every hyperscaler / city pre-deal in Minnesota state law and is likely to spread to other Midwest states' open-meetings statutes. (2) The $80M / 28-year / $33.5M PV abatement structure is the kind of negotiated tax-incentive package that NC HB 1004 (today's bill section below) would explicitly outlaw — meaning Hermantown is currently negotiating the exact-shape deal that the most aggressive state-level data-center bill would prohibit. Worth tracking: if NC HB 1004 passes, MN legislators have signaled they may follow with a parallel bill (the 2026 MN session ended with no data-center law; carryover is on the table). For Cliff's submission validator product surface: tabling-after-litigation is now a discrete pre-decision risk state that submission-readiness needs to model, distinct from approved / denied / moratorium. The 'sue-then-table' play is replicable and has now succeeded in MN, OH (Wilmington), and IL (Yorkville) — three different states inside ~30 days.