alt Hacker News> >> So the residents of Richland Parish did not have much of a heads-up on what was coming.
> No voting, no public interests, only closed-door politics.
This is exactly what NIMBYs say about attempts to build housing; and resisting efforts on the part of local people to exercise political pressure against proposed housing development projects is a core component of YIMBYist activism. If it's possible for local activists to be short-sighted, self-interested, or straightforwardly wrong when they exert political pressure against housing developments, then it's also possible for them to be similarly wrong about data centers, or any other built structure that someone, somewhere has a problem with.
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There's a lot of ground between gifting $3.3 billion in tax incentives to a megacorp for a short-term increase in construction employment and allowing a homeowner build a second dwelling on their lot.
Incidentally, that same $3.3 billion could build around 10,000 accessory dwellings in Baton Rouge.
What back-deals are yimbys doing?
There's a huge difference between extremely publically pushing for laws that allow buildings to be built vs private negotiating tax breaks that only affect a singular building.
So, the massive tax breaks that were given at the expense of the residents...how do you explain that away?
This is a strange comparison.
If a real estate developer already owns land and wants to build at their expense on their own land, quite a few people think that, in general, they should be permitted to do so as long as they comply with applicable laws.
But this set of tax breaks is modifying the effect of the applicable laws (namely sales and use tax, according to the article) for the benefit of a landowner. That seems rather different.