Ohio Suspends Data Center Tax Break as Opposition Grows (apnews.com) 36
The state of Ohio — one of America's hot regions for data center construction — "is suspending a tax break that has been critical to its competition with other states," reports the Associated Press.
The move "comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets," the article points out. But they also note the expanding data center industry "is under pressure to pay the full costs" The size of Ohio's tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact. In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November's midterm election ballot that's designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S... The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported...
State tax breaks for the massive data center industry are facing growing criticism by governors and lawmakers... Thirty-eight states have some form of a sales tax break for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures... [Though many were passed before 2022, when data centers were smaller.] Ohio's exemption is fairly broad, applying not only to construction materials, but to the expensive equipment — such as server racks and cooling systems — used in data centers. Operators might buy new server racks every couple of years as the technology improves.
The move "comes as tax breaks for energy-hungry AI data centers are increasingly playing a role in state budgets," the article points out. But they also note the expanding data center industry "is under pressure to pay the full costs" The size of Ohio's tax break skyrocketed, dwarfing previous projections, as opposition to data centers is sweeping through cities, suburbs and towns there and prompting lawmakers to form a committee to study the impact. In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature and get a referendum on November's midterm election ballot that's designed to permanently ban hyperscale data centers, likely the strictest such statewide ban under consideration in the U.S... The state, in 2024, had used previous history in projecting that the exemption would total $136 million in fiscal 2025 and $142 million in fiscal 2026. It was $554 million in 2024 and nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, the state reported...
State tax breaks for the massive data center industry are facing growing criticism by governors and lawmakers... Thirty-eight states have some form of a sales tax break for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures... [Though many were passed before 2022, when data centers were smaller.] Ohio's exemption is fairly broad, applying not only to construction materials, but to the expensive equipment — such as server racks and cooling systems — used in data centers. Operators might buy new server racks every couple of years as the technology improves.
Huh (Score:4, Insightful)
In the meantime, residents are trying to bypass the GOP-controlled Legislature
Too much democracy going on?
You do know how it became "GOP-controlled", right? By voters actually voting for representatives?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Come for the voting, stay for the gerrymandering!
But yes, quite a few Ohio folks (and other Americans) are getting the day they voted for.
Re: (Score:2)
This video always makes me giggle https://youtu.be/oZzgAjjuqZM?s... [youtu.be]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember when local control was a critical, important, defining issue for Republicans?
Re: (Score:1)
The people who were yelling DRILL BABY DRILL suddenly take issue when fracking starts in their neighborhood. Fuck ‘em. They learned nothing and would fall for it all over again.
Re: (Score:2)
Amen, Pastor, amen!
(extra credit if you say that like James Brown in Blues Brothers)
Make everything electrical 1,000%, even though we don't have the infrastructure to generate enough power (even without all the data centers being built... figure them in, and you're still gonna need the nuclear plants and every other potential source of power.)
Best thing would be fund fusion R&D to get it to be a full-time power plant sooner.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Going around the legislature is only the beginning of democracy. The next step is actually changing the legislature. That's expected to happen at the next opportunity, barring armed intervention at the polls.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who lives in Ohio, you couldn't be more wrong. While yes, the state is slightly conservative, the GOP has gerrymandered the state to the point they can't lose. While the state votes overall around 57% conservative, the GOP somehow miraculously has a veto proof majority in the state. The concept of democracy has gone out the window here and been replaced with win at all costs.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd like to see a mathematical standard enacted for district boundaries, something like: A district's border cannot be more than 6x its area.
This is daydreaming because it will never happen, but only such a rule would make a real dent in gerrymandering.
Re: Huh (Score:4, Interesting)
No that's not how it became GOP controlled (Score:2, Insightful)
In the last election they were over 3 million illegal challenges to signatures and registrations. Every single one of them requires someone to drive down to the courthouse on a weekday during business hours and prove that they are who they say they are even though there is virtually no fraud except from Republican
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are no red states. There are some States where people are allowed to vote in some States where people aren't.
Oh, my, you've never been to a "red state," have you! These people are very, very all-in with their Republican ideas. You deceive yourself if you think that people don't actually believe in their MAGA ideas. They absolutely do.
By the way, 90% of *all* businesses are owned by rich people. It's one of the primary ways people *get* rich.
And also by the way, billionaires are both Republican *and* Democrat. https://theweek.com/politics/u... [theweek.com]
You're making excuses and coping (Score:2)
Honestly I can practically smell the fear on you.
Anyway if you look at the elections and supposed red States there are still one by microscopic margins well within the margin of error. Meanwhile we all damn well know what voter suppression is because we all got taught about the civil Rights movement. Not so sure about kids these days but us old farts could not escape it and it's one of the reasons the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Look again. https://www.cnn.com/election/2... [cnn.com]
Many of the "red states" were won by Donald Trump by more than 30 percentage points. That's not within any kind of margin of error.
- Oklahoma 66%-32%
- Kansas 57%-41%
- Wyoming 72%-26%
- Idaho 67%-30%
Go ahead, click the link. The margins were not small in most of the red states.
I do agree that many states are attempting to suppress votes through new ID requirements or gerrymandering.
Huh? Your rambling about billionaires makes no sense. I linked to a list of literal
Why would you want to attract them? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Why would you want to attract them? (Score:4, Informative)
They don’t pay taxes is the problem and other than trade workers during the construction process you’ll be lucky if the payroll breaks a dozen. All people do there is swap hardware when it fails.
Re: (Score:3)
And, even if there are property taxes paid by whichever AI company, it probably won't add up to more than like a few cops salaries, or repaving 1/4 of the street in front of your house.
It's not about the benefit to the people, it's about getting AI into every aspect of our lives to the point where you have your AI assistant in every room (as a little speaker or something) and you can't do anything without it.
In the end, sure... maybe it'll somehow find the cure for cancer (which the AI outfit gladly sells t
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
If they would be so beneficial, then why haven't they built them there?
Oh... the DC supplies it's own water and power? You expect the DC outfits to pay for those? No wonder they aren't being built to pay those few cops' salaries.
The DC outfits don't want to spend a fortune to build all that infrastructure... they wanna mooch off the existing stuff.
Why wouldn't they?
Re: (Score:3)
Property taxes—paying for fire, police, and emergency services that they will never use, plus some high-paying jobs taking care of it.. For poor counties these are giant revenue sources.
They would be giant revenue sources... unless, of course, they are given tax breaks.
Side effects hurt as well (Score:5, Interesting)
The term "datacenter" is also losing much of it's meaning and that is having consequences elsewhere.
For the past 4-5 years a local company has been building a new office/datacenter building as they are growing. Now this isn't some AI company building a multi-hundred-megawatt facility, this is a local company who does colocation, web hosting, servers, you know, all that stuff the term datacenter used to stand for. Doubly so that this company decided to make at least an interesting looking building instead of another flat, windowless white box.
Now on local social media this building has been swept up in opposition with folks repeating boundless conspiracy theories and wanting the whole thing shut down. You try explaining the difference but it's deaf ears. You even try and tell them "hey, their existing datacenter has been like 1 mile away for a decade and there is another, larger datacenter down the block that's been there better part of 3 decades and nobody has complained.
Now on the one hand I also can empathize with them a bit, the layman isn't going to know the difference between those and these new AI centers but people are ready to spike an actual local company, a small business that has grown quite a bit, the exact thing we should be celebrating.
Once again I don't so much blame AI itself but it's proponents and the companies behind them. So far their tech and business is making so many things worse faster than it can do any of it's so called improvements.
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I'm not concerned on Datacenters doing AI. Love it or hate it AI at least has a somewhat constructive purpose. And obviously Cloud Server and storage is useful for businesses that don't want to deal with managing systems on premises or needs an off-site backup solution.
"Datacenter's" doing Bitcoin Mining do not have any purpose other than being a slot machine that eats wattage instead of money. These are usually the ones that give datacenters a bad name and should be either banned or heavily regul
The right wing hates direct democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
One of my favorite TV commercials of all time is a bunch of old people sitting around talking about something scary. They never once say what the scary thing is just that they're very very scared. At the very end it ends with a impassioned plea to vote no on propositions such and such, which was really just net metering AKA paying people for the solar energy they produce in excess. If I remember correctly the proposition passed.
To be fair though that only worked because the concept of net metering is a little esoteric. But something is blunt and obvious as how crappy data centers are now everyone knows we don't want them and it's just a question of whether or not we are still enough of a functioning democracy to stop them.
tax breaks (Score:2)
This is good news (Score:2)
Because tax breaks for companies have shown, forever, that they NEVER make up for the taxes breaks they were given. And they dont' come worse than datacenters - they'll bring in outside contractors (this is if it's not cancelled), who take their money and leave, then the hyperscale datacenter, *maybe*, has three dozen jobs to cover three shifts.