Sometimes, the Best Offense Is a Good Defense
Oregon’s September legislative days are a lot like a blue box of macaroni and cheese — hard to mess up but never all that satisfying. Today marks the deadline for lawmakers to request bill drafts for pre-session filing — the first concrete step toward the 2027 session — and that minutiae consumed much of the cog-turning work in the building this week. At the same time, the election for voters to determine their representatives for the next session is only 53 days away. It is the interim’s quiet paradox: the work of the next session is always ongoing, even before the voters weigh in on its direction.
Despite lawmakers spending their interim working on the bills defining next year’s session, the campaign season was clearly the feature in committee rooms. Inside and outside the Capitol this week, the politically hot topic of data centers commanded the spotlight, although not quite in the way the national conversation would predict. On Tuesday, during a relatively small rally of data center activists on the Capitol steps, Gov. Tina Kotek (D) announced her support for a moratorium on building new data centers. The governor’s announcement comes after her campaign’s sparring with her opponent, two-time candidate, Sen. Christine Drazan (R-Oregon City), who has accused the governor of “rolling out the red carpet” for data center development.
Meanwhile, inside the building, legislative committees dug into the tax and regulatory environment surrounding the infrastructure behind the Internet. In the House Climate, Energy, and Environment Committee, lawmakers dedicated their entire agenda to data centers, learning about the exhaustive permitting requirements and regulatory monitoring of the facilities.
The House Revenue Committee also dedicated time to the pervasive presumption — repeated in activist talking points and echoed in press coverage — that Oregon showers data centers with “tax breaks.” While some states offer targeted incentives, Oregon is not among them. In fact, Oregon offers very few tax incentives of any kind. The state’s economic development toolkit runs through the property tax, allowing city and county governments to enter into abatement and deferral agreements available to any capital-intensive employer willing to build. For a project like a data center, the appeal is not so much a discount on its taxes for land and buildings but its costly equipment and componentry. And, for local governments, getting the investment in the door sets up a broader tax base in the future.
One of the more revealing takeaways from the discussion on data centers, however, was about the divide over their geographic perceptions. In much of western Oregon, the notion of a data center is a windowless box landing in a suburban neighborhood. In eastern Oregon, however, data centers are restoring pride to towns that once had a mill along its outskirts — an economic driver, a source of well-paying jobs, and a point of community identity. Like so many issues in Oregon politics, the rural-urban divide strikes very much at the heart of data center politics.
At first glance, it might seem like the governor's positioning and the legislature's focus are at a total disconnect — one arriving with the pitchforks, the other offering two cheers for government. Upon closer inspection, however, it seems the two are operating in tandem. Democrats control the gavels and set the agendas, allowing them to illustrate the state’s stringent environmental regulatory regime and limited tax incentives. If the best offense is a good defense, Democrats in the legislature used their influence to give a point-by-point rebuttal of the “red carpet” attack against the governor.
Like many political moments, it is hard to tell whether today’s opposition to data centers has staying power. Is it the next nuclear power that is universally feared over long periods of time or, instead, the next fracking, where the outrage burned hot until cheap gas made the benefits a worthwhile tradeoff? Surveys show voters coalescing around unease with data centers when asked directly about them. But ask voters about the issues top of mind in November and data centers barely register. As Oregon’s own history shows with nuclear energy, a moratorium can be a campaign gesture or a forty-five-year commitment.
