Data Centers Can Bring Good Jobs, Property Tax Relief, and Energy Investment to South Dakota

Our Take

NetChoice is a trade association that counts Amazon, Google, and Meta among its backers, so a video arguing South Dakota should roll out the red carpet for hyperscale data centers isn't exactly a neutral public service announcement — it's an industry group making the industry's case. That doesn't make every point wrong, but it means the framing skips the parts that matter most to ratepayers: who fronts the cost of new transmission and generation before the data center's projected tax revenue ever materializes, and what happens to household electric bills while utilities build out capacity sized for a hyperscaler's peak load.

"Property tax relief" and "energy investment" sound great in a script, but the actual terms — the length of tax abatements, the interconnection agreements, whether the facility pays cost-of-service rates or gets a discounted industrial tariff — are decided in utility commission filings and county board meetings that most residents never see. South Dakota isn't unique here; it's the same playbook rolling through dozens of states, and the fine print is where communities either come out ahead or end up subsidizing someone else's cloud storage.

We track these deals as they surface on our facility map, and if you want to know what's been proposed or approved near you — and how to weigh in before the ink dries — check our take-action page. Credit to NetChoice for putting the industry's pitch on the record; now it's on the rest of us to read past it.