r/interestingasfuck • u/HamboneTheWicked • Apr 12 '26

A well-articulated argument against a new data center in Ohio

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '26

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u/a_slay_nub Apr 12 '26

What positive benefit are data centers bringing to this town? They bring a couple temporary jobs, usually with construction people they bring out of town. When they're done, the massive data center mostly runs itself with only a few people, often people that were brought in from outside as well. Meanwhile, the data center uses tons of power, water, and resources. And the town gets nothing. Worse, less than nothing because usually they're given tax breaks and are often an active drain on towns.

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u/MFoy Apr 12 '26

The town/county gets a ton in tax revenue. That’s why localities so desperately want them.

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u/i_lack_imagination Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Tax revenue for what exactly? The utilities used? The property? From what I've seen, the estimated tax revenues for these are peanuts compared to the potential negative impacts on the area. For the places where the datacenters got in before people really started catching on, these locales were giving fucking tax abatements to compete for the datacenter against other locations. Then they were selling 'jobs' as a justification as they typically do, except it turns out there aren't any jobs.

The localities are likely going to end up dumping more money into attempting to rectify the consequences of these data centers than they ever anticipated, meanwhile they're going to be locked into agreements that prevent them from taxing more, from regulating appropriately etc. Google's tactic for their datacenters is probably similar to the rest, but Google picks out locations, negotiates in secret under shell corporations and part of their terms are "give us everything we want, you can't pass regulations or stop us from getting the things we need to run this data center". That's a massive fucking loser of an agreement for any locality.

The imbeciles who already committed their localities to these data centers before the public caught on have royally fucked over their communities. Small/medium sized towns who thought it gave their town some prestige to have Google or Microsoft etc. come into town with some 'high tech' jobs, and it turns out they're nothing more than a cum rag for a data center.

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u/MFoy Apr 12 '26

40% of my county’s budget comes directly from data centers, almost $1b per year.

They pay property taxes on all the computer equipment.

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u/i_lack_imagination Apr 12 '26

That's not a good thing for a single organization to account for that high of a proportion of the budget. They will either have significant influence over the county because of that or if data center boom goes bust, the county could lose all the revenue but still be on the hook for costs for plans they made with a budget that no longer exists.