Officials dislike bill's death

MOSES LAKE - Gov. Chris Gregoire and Grant County officials are reacting with a mix of disappointment, frustration and surprise about the death of the data center tax break bill.

The bill would have extended the deadline of an original bill allowing tax exemptions for data centers' replacement servers.

More construction jobs, new businesses in Grant County and a boost to the local tax base were also expected.

During a TVW broadcast, Gregoire said Tuesday a fiscal analysis was done by the Legislature when the original bill was proposed.

"While I can't give you the numbers, the last time we looked at data centers and we gave them the incentive, it worked, beyond anybody's understanding of how it might work," Gregoire commented.

She explained she had been a "proponent of the data center from the beginning as an incentive."

To businesses ready to build data centers and possibly considering other states, she said time simply ran out.

"I don't have an indication there weren't votes in the House to get that through," Gregoire said.

She hopes the issue can be revisited during the next session, she said.

Gregoire was unavailable for further comment Wednesday afternoon because she was traveling to Bridgeport High School. She was speaking at the school's commencement ceremony.

The bill was approved by the Senate, but died in the House last week during the end of the Legislature's special session.

Rep. Bill Hinkle, R-Cle-Elum, and Rep. Judy Warnick, R-Moses Lake, both said Wednesday they would have voted in favor of the bill.

"In the end, it was (House Speaker) Frank Chopp who said 'no'," Hinkle commented. "To this day, I don't know why. It was supposed to be one of a package (of incentives) that came out. That was a big bill for us."

Chopp, D-Seattle, was not available for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Hinkle said he was "very disappointed," about the bill's death, as the construction industry is hurting.

Warnick said she hadn't heard if the bill's death was going to discourage companies from coming to the state.

"I'm concerned it doesn't send the message we want to be sending, that Washington is a business-friendly state, when we don't have the tax break," Warnick commented.

She is hearing there wasn't enough time and support to pass the data center bill, but thinks there would have been support

During the last minutes of session, the worker's compensation bill passed. The tax incentive packages did not.

Warnick contends there was also time to approve the tax incentives.

"We still had a couple of hours to do that and we could have done that," she said. "At the last minute, they banged the gavel and said, 'We're done.' It makes me question why that happened."

Ultimately, it was something the leadership decided, she said.

"I'm very, very disappointed," Warnick said.

One of the big losers is not only the state and revenue it would bring in, but the workers, said Gary Chandler, government affairs director for the Association of Washington Business.

More than 200,000 work hours were created since the original incentive passed, he said.

Jon Smith, managing director of the Grant County Economic Development Council (EDC), said he was surprised about the bill.

"It seemed to have a lot of momentum, but it just died there at the end," Smith said.

The EDC is working with about three or four companies to build data centers in Grant County and hadn't received any feedback from them, he added.

Quincy City Administrator Tim Snead said it was "frustrating" to hear what happened.

"I have more of a question why," he said

The original incentive resulted in Yahoo! and Microsoft expanding in Quincy and Dell and Sabey breaking ground there.

In Moses Lake, an expansion is underway at the Titan Data Center to build a co-location data center for different companies.