Nov 24, 2025: Citizens are being forced to pay for Big Tech data centers, feat. Pat Garofalo

• Boondoggle newsletter, by Pat Garofalo, “about how corporations take advantage of states, cities, and local communities.”

• American Economic Liberties Project, where Pat is Director of State and Local Policy

• By 2028, a projected 6.7% to 12.0% of ALL electricity in the U.S. will go to data centers.


Source: the 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report (Dept of Energy / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Dec 2024).

• How to Rein in Big Tech’s Secret Data Center Deals (PDF) by Pat Garofalo, Nov 2025:

As [Big Tech data centers] proliferate across the country, their exorbitant power and water needs are straining the capacity of local utility systems. According to Bloomberg, wholesale electricity prices are up 267 percent in the last five years in areas near data centers. Many, if not all, of these data centers will also be subsidized by taxpayers, directly siphoning resources away from local communities.

. . . Big Tech’s building spree will place new strains and costs on local communities, while providing questionable benefits to residents and taxpayers, all under a corrupt regime of secret agreements that excludes the public from participating in any debate.

[Examples:]

- Apple received $214 million for a data center in Iowa in 2017 (Mostly from the city of Waukee) – enough to fund the Waukee Police Department (FY25 budget: $6,681,550) for 30 years.

- Amazon received up to $8 billion in various incentives for a data center complex in Indiana in 2024 – more than the state’s FY24 state funding for health and human services.

• Posted by American Economic Liberties Project (Nov 11, 2025):

Big Tech has secured billions in public subsidies for data centers, promising jobs and growth.

Instead, costs are getting passed onto consumers, barely any jobs are created, and operators often refuse to admit how much water they expect to use.

As for solutions –

States can fight back against these secret subsidy deals:

- Ban NDAs in economic deals
- Abolish data center subsidies
- Require public hearings with full transparency ahead of votes
- Release power and water data to the public

• To land Meta’s massive $10 billion data center, Louisiana pulled out all the stops. Will it be worth it? (CNBC, June 25, 2025):

- Meta is building the largest data center in the Western Hemisphere on a sprawling site in rural Northeastern Louisiana.

- The state offered billions of dollars in tax breaks to win the project, and the local utility will supply three new power plants.

• The Billionaire Boondoggle: How Our Politicians Let Corporations and Bigwigs Steal Our Money and Jobs, 2019 book by Pat Garofalo