In Independence, Missouri, a vote for a data-center deal helped cost a councilmember his seat. In Virginia, data centers provide a major share of one county’s budget, while state auditors found that a tax incentive did not pay for itself.
Those different outcomes frame the question facing communities here: what do residents receive in exchange for the land, infrastructure and tax breaks a data center requires?
Coachella had adopted a permanent ban by the time of this September 10 report. Indio, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs had approved temporary pauses. In Adelanto, a proposal to allow consideration of data centers in industrial zones had drawn opposition and been paused.
The national examples show why the details matter. A large investment figure does not, by itself, establish how many permanent jobs a project creates or how much revenue reaches local government.
A tax deal became a recall
On September 1, Independence voters recalled Councilmember John Perkins with 68.05 percent voting for his removal, according to KCTV5. It was the city’s first successful council recall.
Perkins was one of five councilmembers who voted in March to approve incentives for a Nebius AI data center—a proposed $150 billion project on 400 acres. The council approved the package 5–2.
KCUR reported that the deal waives roughly 90 percent of property taxes for 20 years, more than $6 billion in all. The company would pay about $651 million in fees instead.
Residents organized the recall around the vote. Two other councilmembers who supported the deal had already lost their seats in April.
A day before the recall, President Trump argued for data centers in an August 31 post. He wrote that “the only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” and said communities accepting them receive “far lower taxes and jobs all over the place.”
The revenue and employment figures show a more complicated picture.
State tax breaks and local revenue are different
Thirty-eight states offer dedicated tax incentives for data centers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The incentives typically exempt servers and construction materials from sales tax. Fourteen states extend the exemption to electricity, and eleven offer property-tax relief. Eighteen states set a term, most often ten years and as long as fifty.
Virginia has the country’s largest data-center market. In a 2024 analysis, its nonpartisan Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that each dollar abated through the state’s sales-tax exemption generated about 48 cents in new state tax revenue. On that measure, the exemption did not pay for itself.
Local government can receive a different return.
Loudoun County says data centers generated about $1.2 billion in real and personal property taxes in fiscal 2026, accounting for 39 percent of its budget.
The county says that revenue allowed it to lower its real-property tax rate from $1.145 per $100 of assessed value in 2016 to $0.805 in 2026. Rising assessments can still increase individual tax bills.
These findings measure different things. A state can forgo sales-tax revenue while a county collects substantial taxes on equipment, buildings and land. The result depends on what the deal leaves taxable.
Construction jobs are not permanent jobs
Only 23 of the 38 states with dedicated incentives require a specific number of new jobs, NCSL found. The thresholds range from five in Maryland to 100 in Massachusetts.
Virginia’s auditors found that a typical 250,000-square-foot data center employs roughly 50 full-time workers, about half of them contractors.
During construction, that same project can have roughly 1,500 workers on site at its peak. The build usually lasts 12 to 18 months.
Individual incentive deals illustrate the difference:
- A CNBC investigation published in 2025 found that a Microsoft data center in Illinois received more than $38 million in sales-tax exemptions and created 20 permanent jobs.
- New York Focus reported that the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency approved nearly $77 million in tax breaks for an expansion of JPMorgan Chase’s existing Orangeburg data center. The expansion projected one additional permanent job.
The Rockland agency argued that the expansion would generate more than $100 million in local benefit and more than 1,400 construction jobs. Its permanent-job commitment was still one.
Construction work can be significant. It is a different promise from continuing employment after a facility opens.
How the debate reached the valley
The proposed Coachella Valley Technology Campus called for six data-center buildings on 240 acres near Avenue 52 and Fillmore Street, drawing 270 to 300 megawatts.
Following months of public scrutiny, Coachella’s council terminated its agreement with Stronghold Power Systems and imposed a moratorium in June.
On August 26, it adopted a permanent prohibition on large-scale data centers, with exceptions for small-scale server, security, electricity and telecommunications uses. Coachella became the second California city to ban data centers, after Monterey Park voters did so in June.
Other valley cities took temporary steps:
- Indio extended its moratorium in July and was drafting a permanent ban.
- Desert Hot Springs extended its moratorium to two years.
- Palm Springs unanimously approved a 45-day pause on August 26, through October 10, while considering how data centers should fit its zoning code.
These are the actions reported as of September 10. The cities had not all reached the same conclusion.
Adelanto was considering zoning, not a project
Adelanto’s debate concerned what its zoning would allow.
“There are currently no proposals for data centers,” Jim Hersh of the city’s planning division told KVCR.
The proposed text-only amendment, ZTA 26-01, would allow three industrial zones to consider data centers, energy facilities, battery storage, and semiconductor and drone manufacturing through a future permit process.
More than 200 people attended the Planning Commission’s August 19 hearing. About a third spoke, nearly all against the proposal, with most addressing water.
On August 25, the commission voted 3–2 against recommending the amendment. That recommendation was advisory; the City Council retained the final decision.
At the council’s August 26 meeting, Mayor Gabriel Reyes said he was “extremely disappointed with how the business was handled” at the hearing. He asked for the possible removal of Planning Commission Chair Chris Waggener to be placed on the next agenda.
Reyes also asked City Manager Jesse Flores to pause the amendment so the city could conduct more community engagement. Councilmember Stevevonna Evans asked the council to consider removing Waggener from the commission altogether.
The council met again September 9. As of this story’s September 10 publication, the city had not posted a record of that meeting. The amendment remained paused under the mayor’s August 26 request, and the next regular council meeting was September 23.
Six questions for evaluating a proposal
The cases above point to six questions residents and reporters can use to examine a data-center proposal:
- How many permanent local jobs are contractually guaranteed, and at what wages?
- What tax revenue reaches the city, county and schools after every exemption is counted?
- Who pays for the new generation, transmission lines and substations the project needs?
- How much water will the cooling design use, especially during the hottest months?
- What can be enforced if projections change? Can public benefits be recovered if promised jobs or investment fail to materialize?
- What does the project look like financially under a conservative scenario, rather than the developer’s best case?
The answers will differ by project. Some communities have received substantial revenue from data centers. Some states have forgone large amounts of tax revenue to attract them. Construction employment can be substantial while permanent staffing is much smaller.
For the Coachella Valley and Inland Empire, the national debate provides comparisons—not a single answer that fits every proposal.
Update, October 14: Revised the headline and opening, reorganized the article for clarity and added key points. The facts, sources and archive links are unchanged. Local status remains a September 10 snapshot, not a new check of the cities’ decisions.