Joan Hartley

Senator Hartley Votes for Legislation Concerning Tax Incentives for Qualified Data Centers, Supporting Job Creation

Senator Hartley today supported the governor’s economic incentives legislative proposal to attract and grow Data Centers in Connecticut. Recognizing that Data Centers are central to the emerging technologies that are revolutionizing our world and are fundamental to advances in medicine, health care, manufacturing, finance and education and so much more.

Sen. Hartley stated, “This forward-looking legislation positions Connecticut to compete in the digital economy, Connecticut’s geography gives us an edge to offer greater rapidity, in conjunction with this bill’s economic incentives we have the potential to be a destination for hyper scale data centers. I am proud to join in bipartisan support of this bill to encourage job and business growth in the Waterbury region and throughout the state.”

The bill, HB 6514, known as ‘An Act Concerning Incentives For Qualified Data Centers To Locate In The State’, would offer sales tax incentives to promote development of data centers. It would waive sales taxes for up to 30 years on data centers that invest at least $400 million in a facility in a qualified opportunity zone in Connecticut, or at least $200 million if the facility is located in an ‘enterprise zone’. These zones are areas which are encouraging economic growth and development. Several opportunity zones are situated within Waterbury and Naugatuck.

Also under the bill, a qualified data center – a facility that is developed, acquired, constructed, rehabilitated, renovated, repaired, or operated to house a group of networked computer servers in one physical location – would be exempt from any financial transactions tax or fee that may be imposed by the state through trades of stocks, bonds, or any other financial products. This exemption would last for a period of 30 years from the date of construction of the facility is completed.

Currently, there are 11 data centers in Connecticut. These buildings house computer systems and centralize an organization’s shared IT operations, equipment, storage, management, and dissemination of data and information pertaining to a particular business. Building additional data centers throughout the state increase opportunity for economic growth. The construction of these facilities would provide high paying jobs and with a big boost in the construction industry.