Governor Mike Braun: We Want To Be Open For Business To Anyone
Governor Mike Braun joins us, right, and now the Governor of Indiana, and sir, let’s start with this data center conversation, because there’s a lot of back and forth here in Indianapolis with this Google data center. There’s a conversation about the power these data centers use, up a question about whether or not they bring any jobs or are these jobs all taken by people on H1B visas and therefore it’s not going to Americans who could do this job. Is Indiana for or against data centers?
So obviously Tony has been the talk of the town across the state. You go to a rural county that struggles for assess value any kind of investment. They view it maybe as a way to broaden their tax base, but you are correct, there’s a ton of capital investment, the construction kind of multiplier effect. The jobs… those dissipate. Course after it’s done, once you’ve got it, it uses a ton of electricity and a decent amount of water to boot so double-edged sword to some extent, depending on which county you’re in. And I compare it to wind and soar where we now have moratorium in seventy of our counties, roughly where they’ve already staked out their turf, don’t want anymore. It’s got a foothold in several counties, but most due to the fact that people have risen up and even if it doesn’t make sense necessarily, it’s putting them on hold. So, this is the latest version of it, and it’s in the context of utility rates marching in a direction that for many it becomes unbearable.
So how do you sort through it?
I think number one, the legislature passed a good piece of legislation that requires any data center that’s coming in that has not already gotten started has to pay for eighty percent of the construction costs the generation of electricity, so it doesn’t burden rate payers. So, I think that’s where we start. And then you can see the East side of Indy folks didn’t want it for a variety of reasons. Then it’s going to be up to the data centers and the utility companies to make the case that it’s going to be neutral in terms of impacting the cost of electricity for everyone else.
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