Bill would spur business growth

COLUMBIA BASIN — A bill allowing a temporary sales tax exemption for server farms’ equipment would likely bring more business and property tax revenue to Grant County.

“We have a couple of developers who bought property in Quincy and want to see this property developed,” said Pat Boss, a government affairs consultant for the Port of Quincy, on Wednesday.

“We want to see development and construction on property that was purchased,” he added.

If approved by the state House of Representatives, it would prompt companies to start construction right away, Boss said.

The bill was approved by state Senate this week in a 39-4 vote and is awaiting a vote by the House.

The bill would allow the state to receive an immediate economic impact in the next few months because of added business.

Sen. Janéa Holmquist, R-Moses Lake, and Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, voted for the bill.

Four Western Washington Democrats voted against the bill, apparently after efforts to have the bill include their districts failed.

“In the end, the discussion involved keeping it a rural county bill,” Boss said. “I think they wanted the bill to include their own area.”

To qualify for the exemption, the data center must be built in a rural county, have at least 20,000 square feet dedicated to housing servers and start construction between April 1, 2010 and before July 1, 2011.

In particular, Grant County and Douglas County would benefit because the areas have affordable power and available land, Boss said.

“They have the availability to site data centers,” Boss commented.

The social networking Web site Facebook was looking at Quincy in December, but instead decided to locate to Prineville, Ore., because of Washington’s tax structure, he said.

Other companies previously looked at sites in East Wenatchee, Quincy and Moses Lake.

Yahoo! and Microsoft, which have data centers in Quincy, each have extra property there.

“Clearly, when you go back to the original plan companies submitted in 2005-2006, they submitted bigger plans than they originally built,” Boss commented.

Boss, who was working in the state capital Wednesday, said he was told the House bill could pass that day.

Lewis McMurran, the Washington Technology Association’s vice president of government and external affairs visited Yahoo! and Intuit’s data centers in Quincy, calling them “pretty intensive operations.”

“We’re very supportive of seeing high-tech development across the state,” McMurran commented. “We think this is a good bill that will help do that.”

More data centers would create many construction jobs and help diversify the local economies, McMurran said.