Community Benefits Agreement Strategy

Communities are shifting from passive acceptance to strategic bargaining with Big Tech over data centers, demanding concrete financial returns, infrastructure safeguards, and transparency rather than relying on vague promises of jobs and economic growth. This will help the affordability issues experienced by our residents.

Billion-dollar tech companies requesting land and services to build hyperscaler data centers in Laramie County can afford to contribute to the needs of the communities into which they build. Community Benefits Agreements and Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) contracts are two vehicle by which such contributions are negotiated, or mandated. The document below explains how to do it.

It is authored by a University of Wyoming professor, Jacob Hochard and Research Assistant Caden Bogus . Dr. Hochard is the Knobloch Associate Professor of Conservation Economics at the University of Wyoming’s Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources. 

How Communities Are Bargaining With Big Tech Over Data Centers

Summary and link to examples in Hochard’s publication: “How Communities are Bargaining with big tech over data centers”

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