Data Centers Plug In The Far Right With The Far Left

Before taking off for Christmas, one of the state Legislature’s most conservative members, Rep. Jim DeSana dropped a bill to end the new universal state tax break the state gave to data centers two years ago.

His first co-sponsor? 

No, not a fellow hard-right conservative. It was the House’s most liberal member, a member who prides himself on being a Democratic Socialist, Rep. Dylan Wegela.

He’s not the only progressive. Lansing’s own Rep. Emily Dievendorf, Rep. Carrie Rheingans, and Rep. Laurie Pohutsky signed their name to the bill, too.

The other name on the bill? The reactionary, anti-gay marriage representative liberals love to hate – Rep. Josh Schriver.

On a growing number of subjects, the political right and the political left are ending up in the same place, even if they take different routes to get there.

In this case, it is data centers: massive computing outfits that perform the seemingly infinite calculations needed to make cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence work. 

Companies have been looking to plop these airport hangar-like structures in Michigan for years. They like our cold winter temperatures and our bountiful groundwater supply because … I’m told … these things run hot.

Up until the last year or so, the data center lobby pushed lawmakers hard for a tax break. They claimed the centers would be economic drivers, even though you only need a few dozen or so people to run them once they’re built.

Gov. Whitmer and the Democratic legislature in 2024 finally gave in to the lobby after intense pressure from organized labor, which wanted the construction jobs. They passed, with some Republican support, a use tax exemption that amounts to a few million bucks a year.

The hope is that data centers will boost property values while kicking property tax dollars up to local schools and local governments.

Now, the worm has turned.

As local communities are presented with these monstrosities, the question isn’t about giving them additional tax incentives. It’s whether they’re wanted at all.

Progressives don’t like all of the energy these things suck up. 

The big “Stargate” facility in Saline proposes to use 1.4 gigawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power a million homes. Can we really trust industry to pick up the whole tab, or will some of those costs roll downhill?

Environmentalists don’t like all the water that’s sucked out of the ground. Where does that come from? How much PFAS and other harmful materials are used in these centers?

Wegela tells me he doesn’t like the idea of Big Technology and artificial intelligence gobbling up working-class jobs. He sees data centers fueling the consolidation of power that squeezes the money out of everyone else.

Dievendorf is sick and tired of “corporate welfare” being put before the needs of people. Are the costs worth the benefit? What are these data centers bringing to a community?

The words “corporate welfare” are a common refrain in conservative circles. The growing conservative position – fueled by think tanks like the Mackinac Center – is that boutique tax cuts to specific industries and corporations are bad.

As far as folks like Rep. Steve Carra is concerned, every other industry shouldn’t pay a little more in taxes, so someone else can pay a little less.

Also, keep in mind that most of the state’s most strident conservatives live in rural areas. They don’t like their farmland, forests or empty land bulldozed for anything, let alone for an ugly warehouse-looking structure that hums 24-7.

It’s a bit like the community’s pushback to aggregate mines or wind turbines or solar farms: The technology is great. Just put this stuff “somewhere else” …  wherever the “somewhere else is.”

I’ve called this fuzzy area where conservatives and liberals meet “the dark side of the moon.” 

It’s a space where principled people come together, regardless of whether they physically touch or not. 

Traditionally, it’s the loyal opposition that sits on the philosophical poles. Maybe their point of view wins eventually, but not immediately. But both philosophical poles moving in the same direction?

That may be a different matter entirely.

 (Kyle Melinn is the editor of the Capitol news service MIRS. You can email him at melinnky@gmail.com.)