By: Diane Benjamin
Ask AI about Pritzker support for data centers. He was for them before this election year. I despise politicians who change positions to win elections, even worse if they are buying their seat. Grok summary:
Bottom line: Before 2026, Pritzker was a clear supporter who created and defended state tax incentives to attract data centers to Illinois.
The below is a screenshot from the Bloomington City Council meeting video Monday night. The draft ordinance will be out BEFORE this Planning Commission meeting. It will probably be available here: https://www.bloomingtonil.gov/government/boards-commissions/planning-commission
Don’t kid yourself. The politicians are salivating over the tax revenue they will get from a data center. They say “not in my town” out one side of their mouth and the other side says “locate here in my town”.
There will be no “value added” from a data center in the long run. Also, the Governor has set a moratorium on data center construction and formed a task force to study and develop policy. The City will be required to abide by whatever State statute is developed, potentially overriding any ordinance the city develops.
He loves removing local content
Makes one wonder who is choreographing $$ these projects. Also who the Chamber, Stakeholders, Planning Commission and political class partners are. State, region, county, and local are. Much of it all is clear but still wonder.
The reason we have all the data centers we do in Illinois today is 100% because of prizker and Democrats. He gave millions if not billions of dollars in tax breaks to data center run by mega corporations, and then bragged about it.
Zero foresight into the energy and water problems it would cause in communities where JB doesn’t own one of his many homes.
https://iml.org/file.cfm?key=17389