Incentive to encourage data center approvals watered down

Republican lawmakers in Indiana proposed a significant incentive program to encourage cities and counties to approve future data center projects, which initially promised potentially multimillion-dollar payments. The proposal, championed by Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, suggested data centers would pay 1% of their sales tax savings on equipment purchases to local governments. However, in the final days of the legislative session, the incentive was drastically watered down. Private meetings between legislators and lobbyists resulted in rewritten provisions that cut the potential payments based on electricity usage to roughly one-fourteenth of the amount endorsed by the state Senate just three days prior. This outcome means local governments will receive a much smaller fraction of the initial projected funds intended to incentivize data center development.