Jefferson Forum’s President Derrick Max puts out a Sunday morning summary that only some of you probably see, and I cannot really link to it for you. But today’s email had a useful and entertaining riff on the ongoing efforts to demonize Virginia’s data center industry, a clearly coordinated hit job from the left and its media allies. The following is useful to consider as the Democratic Trifecta in charge of Virginia continues to fight over how to (not whether, but how to) punish the data centers for their unforgiveable success in meeting market demands…
14.) Data Centers don’t damage schools. The Virginia Education Association, argues that the state’s aggressive tax incentives for data centers are draining vital resources from the K-12 education system by “costing” $212 per student because of the school’s loss of $267 million — their portion of the tax incentives granted to this industry. The authors fail to understand that data centers are one of the most significant positive revenue sources for Virginia localities. While the authors focused on the state sales tax exemption, they failed to understand that data centers contribute hundreds of millions to local budgets annually, which are the main funder of our schools. They also fail to understand that the revenue from data centers does not require expenditures for new schools and roads and other public services as data centers are a relatively low employment sector. The teacher’s union also failed to mention the investment the data centers make to improve local power grids, roads, and fiber-optic networks, providing public benefits that would otherwise have to be funded by traditional taxpayers. Give it to the left, when they hate an industry, they can count on the teachers to do their bidding – even with false data if necessary.
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