By Rob Harris
July 8th, 2006
I gave the following statement at the Hillsboro City Council July 7th, 2026 meeting.
Mayor and Fellow Councilors
As of June this council adopted the most legally enforceable and expeditious path to regulate data center construction and tax incentives for data centers.
Between April 17th, when I first called for reviewing a pause in data center construction and June this council has: completed a review of current city policies and regulations and the problems they raised; heard from experts, our staff and the public; agreed on broad new policies including a moratorium on data center construction and land use code amendments; directed our staff to develop code amendments that would implement our new policies; and ordered staff to take the statutory steps necessary to implement this plan.
In addition of course the legislative moratorium on data center applications for enterprise zone tax abatements has taken effect.
But Last week someone brought to my attention that data centers could still be eligible for tax abatements in Hillsboro through the state’s Strategic Investment Program (or SIP). A small but possible window and one we should close.
While a data center SIP has never been approved in Hillsboro, the SIP Program has been utilized by data centers in other parts of the State. And importantly, those data centers that used SIP’s were the very large facilities owned by traded sector multinational corporations that have most concerned us.
Luckily the SIP program is not as statutorily prescriptive as the enterprise zone program and is not a land use matter. We can address our concerns about data center getting SIP tax abatements through a simple resolution.
Therefore, I’m proposing that at our next meeting we consider a resolution providing that the city of Hillsboro shall adopt a 6 month renewable moratorium on any Strategic Investment Program agreements that provide tax benefits to data centers.
I know of no data center SIP applications and any SIP would still have to be approved by the County, but my proposal is to send a message to developers, the county, the state and the public that we are closing this small window that may exist because it could undermine our ongoing efforts to review and update our local regulations on data centers and tax incentives in Hillsboro.
My proposal received approval from a majority of council members and will be placed on the next Council agenda for approval.
We continue to be the most aggressive data center regulators in Oregon. And leaders in the entire country. It’s not fast enough, but that’s because land use laws everywhere in the country were not prepared for the onslaught of data center investments, not due to a lack of desire on this council’s part.
There are no shortcuts to the law. So when someone claims there’s an easy answer to a difficult problem that only they have discovered, be very very skeptical. If there were an easy and obvious solution, there wouldn’t even be a difficult problem.