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Oregon Residents Riled Over Virtually Staff-free Data Centers Getting Tax-breaks

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The population of Hillsboro, Oregon is becoming vocal about the state's enterprise zone program offering enormous tax concessions to companies setting up data centers in the region — even though the five-year deals on offer only require data center operators to employ one person. That's exactly as many people as one DC plant, Infomart Portland, employs full-time, yet it gets more tax relief than highly-staffed enterprise zone neighbor Solarworld. The current influx of data centers to Hillsboro have only generated seven jobs to date. More installations are coming, and all Hillsboro residents are seeing is space taken up that might have gone to businesses that give something of benefit to the community.

29 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. And so it begins ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Finally people are waking up to the fact that the digital revolution doesn't necessarily create jobs, jobs, jobs.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re:And so it begins ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      I hear that it frees up people to do more creative things though. ;)

    2. Re:And so it begins ... by rogoshen1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      as a resident of Lane County OR, I'd say we have faaaaaaaaaaar too many under employed creative types.

    3. Re:And so it begins ... by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There are certianly hundreds, maybe thousands, of jobs in businesses that utilize the gear in that data center.

      Which doesn't help the community unless those jobs are paying in tax revenue to Hillsboro to offset the tax breaks. You're clearly being intentionally dense if you don't understand the complaints.

    4. Re:And so it begins ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      Many of these data centers are run dark - no lights on. Couple that with high security hardware and software, and there's no need for an on-sight security force. And of course there's that data center that is flooded with nitrogen - no oxygen to breathe means no quick smash-and-grab.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    5. Re:And so it begins ... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      the 67 THOUSAND page tax code needs to be scrapped and simplified.

      Except this is about Oregon state tax, and has nothing to do with the federal tax code.

    6. Re:And so it begins ... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, and then you'll have a bunch of out work accountants in addition to everybody else.

      The unemployed accountants could be paid to throw rocks at windows to generate jobs for glaziers.

    7. Re:And so it begins ... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      As long as people are stupid enough to give megacorporations tax breaks for nothing in return ...

      It is really a prisoner's dilemma. The states would all be better off if there were no tax breaks. But if the other states defect, they win unless you defect too. So everybody loses, as it turns into a race to the bottom. The states would all be better off if they had a mutual agreement to stop the preferential subsidies.

    8. Re:And so it begins ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      Construction creates temporary jobs. The workers work for a few months on a building that can last for decades. And the digital revolution is no longer creating more jobs than it destroys.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    9. Re:And so it begins ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      Building like that are built in a few months, and most of the workers only do a part of the job, and then move on to the next job.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    10. Re:And so it begins ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      That is, unless you are a software engineer.

      Hahahahahahahahaha ... guess you didn't follow all the links in all the articles to supplementary material. One makes a darned good argument for the elimination of writing software by having computers do it. And why not - a computer can mix and match billions of code snippets already written and brute-force the "creativity" out of creating software by testing each one. I give it 20 years.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    11. Re:And so it begins ... by robbiedo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hillsboro, Oregon is not some small town.

    12. Re:And so it begins ... by Shalian · · Score: 2

      Hey funny you mention that, There was this article earlier that said selfish extortion is the best way to win the prisoner's dilemma. That sounds like modern corporations dealing with local governments in a nutshell1

    13. Re:And so it begins ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I see what you did there... but no one has really made any convincing argument that the tax code should be scrapped. It got to 67,000 pages (if that's even a real statistic) for a reason. How many man-hours of work does that represent? It reminds me of young cowboy programmers who always want to chuck the whole thing and start over, actually believing they can single-handedly replace 1000s of man-years of work, because everyone who came before them was an idiot.

      You could make the exact same argument about the entire legal system. How many pages is the criminal code? Way too many, right? Sure there were centuries of debate and millions of man hours put into it, but it's just too complicated. It'd be faster to just rewrite it from scratch in Java than to fix all the issues with it.

    14. Re:And so it begins ... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2

      Security is increasingly automated. I've seen estimates that 19/20 security jobs will be replaced with robots. Humans will only handle exceptions.

      They are testing a security robot now which patrols the grounds, record everything, and call for human backup if something unusual happens. It can't do steps but that's about the only limitation.

      At the level 3 data center in houston, there are no security guards anyway. A double airlock style door which requires a card and password at each door to get in the center.

      I think people somethings think they "won" and push their advantage too hard. Bad things could happen to the data center. The police might happen to be on the other side of town dealing with a call. Then perhaps human security will be required.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
  2. Re:indirect jobs by laurencetux · · Score: 5, Informative

    and i can counter with just about that many MORE indirect jobs that the place employing say 25 people would generate (added to your list).

    Food delivery folks
    Supplies delivery folks
    Clothing shops
    car dealers
    Entertainment venues
    Schools (wanna see if you can make a team of folks that DON"T have kids without doing something actionable??)
    Food shops

  3. 1 employee? Not the entire story. by tehSpork · · Score: 5, Informative

    I live in Hillsboro and have no complaints, though I have hardware in one of those datacenters so I may be biased. I think these articles are failing to account for the jobs created indirectly. I know a few folks that work for companies that have hardware in one of these local datacenters, in addition to traditional sysadmin jobs their duties include being on-call for hardware failures and the like. A at least one of these companies is fairly large and chose to come to Hillsboro and hire techs here because of the space available.

    1. Re:1 employee? Not the entire story. by thogard · · Score: 2

      That was true before the days of disposable servers. Today, when it breaks, drop it from the pool of working systems. The HVAC is on a lease contract which makes them far more reliable as the manufacture no longer gets s cut by selling parts that used to be used for maintenance. The same is true with power systems but the electrical wiring is massively overbuilt between the stuff under contract and the racks. I have a rack in a recently built data center and they have an electrician on site less often than some small companies I work with.

  4. It could be worse... by oneiros27 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've actually lost count how many megachurches have been built on farm land in Upper Marlboro, MD. I assume the land must be cheap, as we have The First Baptist Church of Glenarden, which was built just 1.2 miles from Riverdale Baptist Church. And it's not to be confused with the First Baptist Church Upper Marlboro, which is about 8 miles away as the crow flies.

    All of these are non-profits, so there will likely never be any more tax revenue from them, and unless they also have a school (which Riverdale does), it sits nearly empty for most of the week.

    --
    Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
    1. Re:It could be worse... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

      This is nothing compared to what University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is doing. It calls itself a non-profit and pays no taxes. Classified all its employees as contractors and dodged pay roll taxes too,. With such inherant cost advantages, it has driven all competition out. It also is fully vertically integrated. From general practioners to specialists to pharmacies to ambulances to parking garages to ...

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Free heat please by Cow007 · · Score: 2

    If they want to put a rack in my flat in Beaverton this winter I would love the free heat

    --
    411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
    1. Re:Free heat please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A "flat" in Beaverton? You should really re-evaluate your vernacular... primarily because you live in Beaverton, Oregon where the only "flat" you're gonna find is of fruit or a pickup truck.

  6. Re:indirect jobs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The question isn't whether ANY economic benefit is brought to the community, but whether that benefit exceeds the ~750k per year of tax reduction given to the company mentioned in the article. Some people seem to think so, some not. Hard to tell who is right, but it deserves to be highlighted that communities simply paying corporations to establish isn't automatically a great deal.

  7. The problem is... by fhic · · Score: 3, Informative

    ... these local governments are still of the mindset that "industrial/technology" means factories, which means jobs. But as we all know, everybody that builds a datacenter wants as little staff as possible. A datacenter full of staff is seldom a good thing. When I walk past our datacenter on my way to work, if I even see the lights on or more than one car in the parking lot, I clench up, because I know it isn't going to be a good day when I get to my office on the other side of the campus.

    1. Re:The problem is... by Moof123 · · Score: 2

      Living here I can say I am frustrated by how much the local big businesses get big tax breaks simply by occasionally threatening to leave now and then. Nike, Intel, and now these datacenters. The rest of us, and other employers foot the bill to cover their shirked responsibilities to their communities.

  8. Re:indirect jobs by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

    and i can counter with just about that many MORE indirect jobs that the place employing say 25 people would generate (added to your list).

    Food delivery folks
    Supplies delivery folks
    Clothing shops
    car dealers
    Entertainment venues
    Schools (wanna see if you can make a team of folks that DON"T have kids without doing something actionable??)
    Food shops

    Versus how many people would be doing the above jobs if instead of a 25-person data facility, an old-time 1500-person factory was located there?

    It's like the old trickle-down fallacy. If a CEO earns 400 times what the other employees do and lays them off, is he going to buy 400 times as much toilet paper?

  9. You call this a winter? by Radical+Moderate · · Score: 2

    Looks like summer around here.

    --
    Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
  10. Re:indirect jobs by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Food delivery/shops -> with only 25 jobs and thousands of unemployed I can pay those 25 people subsistence wage. They won't be buying food from restaurants. They can barely feed themselves. Same goes for clothing and entertainment. As for cars, hah! They can walk. Meanwhile we're cutting funding to schools. And besides, once they have kids they're dead weight. I'll just fire 'em and hire more young single people from the local tent city.

    See, once you start racing to the bottom there's no end in sight. And all the trickle down (voodoo) economics in the world won't save you.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  11. Sure it can. by tlambert · · Score: 2

    Instead we must think of population control. this planet can't susta more than 2.7-3 billion Homo sapiens any way.

    Sure it can.

    It *does*, therefore it can. Proof by example.