One day, I skipped a couple of meals and ordered pizza for dinner. I enthusiastically ate the whole thing. After 76 subsequent pizza dinners, however, I grew less enthusiastic about pizza than I used to be, especially since I wasn't skipping meals anymore.

In the world of politics, this would make me a flip-flopper. First I was in favor of pizza, yet now I'm against it? Stop my election before I change my mind again! Outside the world of 30-second attack ads and vertical social media clips, however, the idea that someone who was in favor of something under one set of circumstances might change their mind after those circumstances changed is not particularly controversial.

This brings me to gubernatorial candidate Aaron Ford's (D) pivot on data centers.

At the height of the Great Recession in 2010, Nevada's unemployment rate reached nearly 15 percent — the worst in the nation. Though Nevada's unemployment rate improved to 7.3 percent by the time the 2015 session started, it remained the worst in the nation. Policymakers on both sides of the aisle were looking for something — anything at all, really — to pull Nevada's nation-worst economy out of the doldrums. With that in mind, then-Senate Minority Leader Aaron Ford joined Republican Majority Leader Michael Roberson in sponsoring SB170, which partially abated sales and personal property taxes for new data centers.

As Ford likes to point out, even a stale candy bar can look like an appetizing meal if you're hungry enough.

Circumstances, however, have changed significantly since then. Though Nevada's unemployment rate still remains among the worst in the nation, it was only 5 percent in July — the state's lowest since the pandemic when it led the nation in the worst possible way with a 30.5 percent unemployment rate. That Nevada's unemployment rate continues to improve in the face of declining visitation levels, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, suggests that the state's economy might actually be diversifying enough to successfully reemploy hospitality workers into other trades. 

Industry demand for data center construction, meanwhile, is notoriously strong at the moment. Monthly spending on data center construction is more than an order of magnitude higher than it was in 2015 with no end in sight. Copper and uranium prices, buoyed by the industry's increasingly voracious demand for wiring and power, are high and increasing.

Additionally, local and national resistance to further data center construction is growing. The governors of Texas and New York have issued moratoriums on the approval of data centers within their states while several other states are rolling back the same sort of tax exemptions Nevada put into place over a decade ago.

All of this places Nevada's incentives in a harsh light. Though they arguably helped increase data center construction after they were enacted, transparency surrounding the program and its benefits has been lacking for years. Additionally, many of the counties whose taxes were abated by the 2015 bill are frustrated by the lack of discussion between the state officials approving the abatements and the county governments that lose potential tax revenue.

So, naturally, Ford is running on pausing tax breaks on new data centers and collecting the metrics that should have been received in the first place from the data centers that collected previous tax breaks.

Fair enough. Nevada is full of data centers, at least in the sense of being well fed with them now and into the foreseeable future. Geographically speaking, even larger data centers are smaller than many people think — Loudoun County in Virginia has 250 data centers within its 515-square-mile borders, yet a cursory satellite view of the county shows it's in no danger of becoming a concrete jungle. With more than 100,000 square miles within its borders, Nevada can very comfortably fit the 76 data centers already built or under construction within the state with plenty of room to spare.

Instead, Nevada can — and should — be choosy about which data center projects are built within the state. We no longer need to settle for stale candy bar projects that route around local opposition by building on nearby public lands or attempt to push power generation costs on existing customers. If someone offers to build a 20,000-acre data center in Nevada's desert, as is happening in Utah right now, we can politely but firmly say no thank you — or, at the very least, triple-check the project's power and water needs, along with how the project plans on fulfilling them, before permitting it. If a data center project, such as one under construction in New Jersey, refuses to adhere to local and federal regulations, it should be halted.

Loudoun County's experience with data centers proves (I'm linking The Verge's coverage on this twice since it's excellent reading) that hyperscale data centers make poor neighbors — so don't build large data centers next to people's homes. Build them next to the dozen or so data centers that have already been built in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center or build them on the edge of Yerington where nobody can hear them instead. Smaller, quieter data centers that more closely resemble office buildings in size and noise can continue to deliver excellent value for municipal taxpayers as they have throughout the country for decades.

As for water consumption, the data center under construction in Yerington will use at least 60 percent less water than the alfalfa field it will replace — given the state of Walker Lake, which Yerington's watershed drains into, it needs all of the help it can get. In the Truckee Meadows, meanwhile, data centers currently consume 22 of the 90,000 acre-feet allotted to Reno-Sparks, or 0.024 percent of the region's water. That's not nothing and it should be minimized where it can be — banning evaporative cooling in future projects could be beneficial, depending on how much water is needed to generate the energy necessary to cool data centers with air conditioning instead — but it's also not something to overreact to.

Which brings me to Sen. Dina Neal's (D-North Las Vegas) proposed bill to enact a moratorium on data centers.

There's a difference between taking our time before eating the next pizza and categorically banning pizza for the rest of our lives. As a reminder, Nevada has a part-time Legislature that is only supposed to meet once every two years. A moratorium enacted through executive order, such as those in New York and Texas, can be overturned once circumstances change and future proposed projects demonstrate some humility and discipline. Neal's proposed statutory moratorium, however, would not be overturned until a subsequent legislative session finds some time and political capital in their jam-packed 120-day calendar to overturn it. That could potentially take decades.

Ford is on the right side of this issue. Allow data centers to be constructed — but permit them on our terms. If they wish to build in our communities, require them to pay their taxes in full and make them show their work. Then, once the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed and the boxes are checked, continue to put as many Nevadans to work as possible before the next inevitable economic downturn.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.