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How a Washington Tax Break for Data Centers Snowballed Into One of the State’s Biggest Corporate Giveaways (www.propublica.org)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

One of Washington’s largest corporate tax breaks has grown alongside a data center boom in Central Washington, including this data center in East Wenatchee owned by the Sabey Corp. Despite forgoing more than $474 million since 2018, the state can’t say how many jobs were created by the tax break. During that same time frame, it also hasn’t evaluated whether the revenue loss was worth it.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Datacenters are absolutely not "job creators." They are necessary for the life we enjoy, they are relatively clean as their major input is electricity and their output is heat. But huge fully functional DCs only need around 20people to run while providing zero local or even state revenue other then property taxes and whatever utility taxes are still applicable to them.

Obviously e-waste is a huge problem, but that is independent of the datacenter itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

DCs do indirectly create/support a lot of jobs, though. Construction is an obvious one, but even running a DC requires lots of additional people that often aren't employed by the DC owner/operator.

I can absolutely attest to the fact that it takes even less than 20 directly-employed people to run an entire DC, including the racks of gear within it. But there are quite literally dozens and dozens more contractors and vendors involved in maintaining the facility and the equipment within them:

Physical security
Fire systems
Building controls
Electrical
- HV and LV can often be separate sets of skills/contractors
Refrigeration
Mechanical
- Critical mechanical - generators, etc
- Regular mechanical - electric gates,etc
Plumbing and gasfitting
Water experts (cooling towers, etc)
Building maintenance contractors
Gardeners

And the list goes on. My point is that DCs can absolutely be a significant driver of employment and economic activity, just not all directly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

Yea I suppose the maintenance of those systems provides some employable benefit. So let's say 1000 contractors, is that worth ~500million in tax breaks over 6 years? I'd say absolutely not. If that number were 100x or even 10x maybe, but ultimately it's 500million stolen by the private entities based on exaggerated employment claims and dubious accounting.