Comment by no_wizard
7 hours ago
They’re an anomaly that benefits from a number of factors like being close to the government for contracting, early data centers built there and they tended to congregate and dumb luck.
They’re an outlier and don’t really prove much of anything.
Oregon has lots and lots of data centers and not much to show for it on any front, other than higher electric prices for consumers
Oregon gave a lot of time-limited property tax breaks. They also don't have a sales tax.
So I would agree that giving away the #1 way that data centers contribute to the government isn't optimal, though you could argue it's a long-term play.
As the tax break terms expire, Oregon will get $450 million in annual property taxes from the data centers, or about 1.4% of the state budget.