Indiana taxpayers shouldn't subsidize $168M in data center corporate welfare

Indianapolis Star

01-07-2025

The next time you see a huge data center pop up in your backyard, enjoy it, because you're paying for it.
If the Indiana Economic Development Corp. gets its way, the state will have four new energy-and-water-hogging data centers in high-population areas — all funded by you, the taxpayer.
The IEDC recently approved $168 million in tax incentives to attract four data centers. Hoosiers will be subsidizing these monstrosities for up to 50 years.
Government leaders claim they will create jobs — a total of 180. For those keeping count at home, that's more than $930,000 in taxpayer money per job being "created."
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Indiana has become a haven for data centers because, in 2019, the state government allowed them a 35-year tax exemption to entice them to plop down in Hoosier cornfields.
As Libertarians, we believe in private property rights. You can do what you want with your justly acquired property, as long as you pay for it and you own the property.
However, the line is drawn when governments get involved. Governments should not take land from others, nor should it hand out bags of tax money and incentives to give one business a leg up over any other competing uses for a property.
Nearly all of these data center projects are in high-growth, high-demand suburban areas, where there would be multiple viable uses for the land. Without incentives, the market prevails — and the data centers likely find less populated areas to locate.
We also believe in transparency. These four projects are using code names because they're operating in secrecy to prevent the public from knowing which companies they're throwing your money toward.
One of the projects, in Hancock County (or Project Redline), is being proposed by Surge Development LLC. Its principal, Chris King, just happens to be an IEDC board member. This approval doubles down on a data center plan Surge recently withdrew due to intense public opposition.
The Republican-led state government claims to be pro-business. It needs to embrace the free market instead.
Free markets don't have governments picking winners and losers, nor making deals in secret. Free markets don't use taxpayer incentives to favor one business over another. They don't have governments spending billions to buy land and then turn it over to other private companies, as happened in the controversial LEAP project in Boone County. They don't privatize profits and leave the losses on the backs of the taxpayer.
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For every new state-funded project by the IEDC, taxpayers get the shaft. They have to pay for the road, water and power lines, while the businesses themselves are getting a break from paying sales and property taxes, especially as local governments pile on with tax abatements of their own.
That means residents and small businesses who have been in the community for years get to shoulder more of the burden of paying for roads, schools and public safety.
If Indiana truly wants to be pro-business, it needs to embrace the free market. No tax abatements, no exemptions, no handouts, no special favors that the common citizen or small business doesn't have access to. Instead, focus on keeping taxes low and having a common-sense regulatory environment.
Indiana should abolish the IEDC, as well as local economic development corporations. A business can thrive on its own. It doesn't have to mooch off the taxpayers to do so.