Tie vote kills Prince William data center tax hike proposal

WOODBRIDGE — An effort to hike taxes on data centers in Prince William County failed at a special meeting Wednesday night.

A 4-4 tie vote killed a proposal touted by Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart At-large that would have increased taxes on the current seven data centers in the county, as well as future data centers to be built, from $1.25 to doubling it over five years to $2.50 per $100 of assessed value.

Stewart said the move would bring Prince William County’s tax rate closer to neighboring Loudoun County, the world’s data center hub, which has a $4.20 rate.

“Loudoun gets $300 million a year [from data center taxes], of which they’ve been showering their schools with,” said Stewart.

The tax hike in Prince William County was set to generate an additional $2 million more for county schools each year, and an additional $800,000 that would have been used to support residents with mental disabilities.

Wednesday’s special meeting was not to approve a tax hike but to vote to re-advertise a higher tax rate that would have reflected the higher data center rates. Stewart, along with the other supporters of the tax hike, Supervisors Maureen Caddigan, Peter Candland, and Frank Principi, urged fellow Board members to support it in order to hold public hearings on the proposal.

If it had passed, Supervisors appeared keen on moving the adoption of its fiscal year 2020 budget from April 30 to May 7, giving more time for public discussion on the matter.

The special meeting comes after the Board of Supervisors in February told the public that it would hike the data center tax rate after a similar effort failed last year. After vowing this year to leave the data center rate be, the Board of Supervisors directed County Executive Christopher Martino to begin discussions with the data center industry about the need for tax increases in the coming years.

The Prince William Chamber of Commerce staunchly opposed the tax hike, and Supervisor Ruth Anderson agreed, saying there were too many unanswered questions about the proposal and how it would affect the county’s economic development goal to grow the county’s commercial tax base to 30 percent, reducing the burden on overtaxed homeowners.

Those overtaxed homeowners are what caused Supervisor Peter Candland to support the proposed data center hike. If passed, the additional revenues would have lowered the property tax bill for all county residents next year from $1.125 to $1.115 per $100 of assessed value.   

“Over the years, if more people talked about protecting the taxpayers and not data centers, we would have a very different [property] tax rate on the table,” said Candland.

The $1.25 rate on the computer and the peripheral tax rate have been in place since 1999. Stewart called the special rate “corporate welfare” and a government subsidy for the business sector.

“These are the biggest, richest corporations in the world. Amazon has seven data centers in Prince William County. They have no shortage of money. All we’re asking them to do is pay their fair share.”

In his first vote as Neabsco District Supervisor, Victor Angry, who was sworn in last week after winning a special election to complete the term of the late John D. Jenkins, voted no.