Data centers located near O’Hare International Airport, Illinois, have recently been criticized by locals for receiving nearly $100 million in tax breaks. These tax breaks angered Illinois residents, who believed that the tech industry was benefiting from the move while locals had to cover the gap.
As reported by The Chicago Tribune, more than a dozen data centers near Chicago are receiving massive local property tax breaks. These tax incentives are said to benefit the developers, while suburban homeowners bear the financial burden of the construction.
The report also states that local homeowners could save “more than $2,000 on their annual tax bill” if these enterprises were not receiving the breaks, which mostly come from local councils. Locals also reported complaining that some of these tax breaks were granted during hearings with almost no one present and were not widely publicized.
Figures such as Brad Tietz, Midwest director of government affairs for the Data Center Coalition, argue that data centers still pay a “significant share in property taxes” even with the cuts.
Illinois Residents Are Not Happy With Data Centers
Illinois residents on r/Illinois were not happy to discover these massive tax breaks, either. According to one of them, “I’m tired of these corporate and billionaire handouts when we have dire problems to solve for working-class locals. We need to stop funding incredibly unproductive and wasteful things like this.”
Someone else said: “Is it me, or does paying taxes on billionaires’ behalf just not make sense?” Another person responded: “The economic system in the USA is designed only for the benefit of the billionaire class. Just about everyone else is a dairy cow being milked dry, then it’s off to the slaughterhouse.”
Some folks also had harsh words for how these projects currently work: “Data centers need to be fully powered by renewable energy with battery storage on site, no diesel backup allowed, no gas pipeline power. No amount of money is worth polluted air and the health of local citizens. If there is a power outage, AI data centers are out first; we don’t need it.”
It’s uncertain whether public outrage against data centers will continue to rise. Still, the sentiment has clearly turned increasingly negative over the last couple of years, and these widespread tax breaks contribute to that.
