A Maryland-specific look at the industry’s strongest arguments, and where they hold up
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
National coverage of the data center backlash tends to run one of two ways: either data centers are quietly draining communities dry, or opposition to them is manufactured hysteria that ignores an industry quietly solving its own problems. Neither version is built on Maryland’s own numbers. This is.
The tax revenue is real — and it’s not close
That’s the strongest, most concrete thing a county gives up by saying no. It isn’t hypothetical, and it isn’t industry spin.
A Baltimore County staff analysis — produced by a government trying to regulate data centers more aggressively, not by an industry group — found they generate roughly $171,000 per acre annually in property tax revenue, compared to about $82,000 for manufacturing and $35,000 for warehouses. In Frederick County, the Quantum Frederick campus alone has already generated more than $50 million in recordation tax revenue, money the county has funneled into agricultural preservation, open space, housing, and transit — with a community benefit agreement covering additional commitments still under negotiation. A Maryland Tech Council-commissioned study estimated a single mid-sized Prince George’s County facility would generate over $1 billion in economic activity during construction and roughly $20 million in new annual county tax revenue, enough to cover the cost of 175 police officers, 158 firefighters, or 176 teachers by the study’s own framing.
That’s the strongest, most concrete thing a county gives up by saying no. It isn’t hypothetical, and it isn’t industry spin — it’s shown up in actual county budgets already.
The jobs number tells a different story
The tax revenue and the jobs don’t arrive together.
The same Baltimore County analysis that produced the tax figure above also found data centers generate about half a permanent job per acre once operational, compared to 13 for warehouses and 17 for manufacturing. Construction employment is real but temporary — a few years of building-trades work, then a facility that runs on a skeleton crew of technicians. If a community is banking on data centers for long-term employment, the industry’s own regulators’ numbers don’t support that. The tax revenue and the jobs don’t arrive together; a county is trading employment density for tax density, not getting both.
A county is trading employment density for tax density, not getting both.
Maryland already built a cost-shifting shield — and it’s new
The most common objection to data centers is that their power demand raises everyone else’s electric bills. That concern is legitimate — a PJM market monitor analysis attributes roughly $6.3 billion in added wholesale power costs across Maryland and 12 other states specifically to data-center demand growth. But Maryland has already moved to blunt it, twice in two years. The 2025 Next Generation Energy Act created a “large load tariff” framework requiring data center customers using 100 megawatts or more, at an 80% utilization rate, to bear their own interconnection and infrastructure costs rather than spreading them across residential ratepayers.
Maryland has already moved twice now to keep new data center load from being subsidized by everyone else’s power bill.
The 2026 Utility RELIEF Act then lowered that threshold to 25 megawatts and a 60% utilization rate, specifically to pull smaller data centers into the same cost-shifting protection; the Public Service Commission is in the final stages of adopting the implementing regulations. Separately, the state’s push to implement a capacity price cap in PJM’s most recent Base Residual Auction is credited with preventing an estimated $13.3 billion in excess costs. Both figures are current at once — Maryland isn’t claiming the cost problem is solved, but it has moved twice now to keep new data center load from being subsidized by everyone else’s power bill, which is more than many states have done.
The water comparison is true today and getting less true by the year
Citing today’s gap without the trajectory is a selective use of an accurate number.
Data center defenders often point out that golf courses use several times more water nationally than data centers do — roughly 2.08 billion gallons a day for golf irrigation versus 449 million gallons a day for data center cooling, a real, sourced gap. That comparison is accurate as a snapshot. It is not a stable one. Golf’s water use is flat or slightly declining as the industry shifts toward drought-resistant turf and recycled water; data center water demand is on an exponential trajectory tied to AI training and inference growth, and multiple industry and independent analyses project total U.S. data center water consumption will overtake golf’s sometime around 2026 to 2028. Citing today’s gap without the trajectory is a selective use of an accurate number — worth knowing, not worth resting an argument on.
“Keeping data out of China” doesn’t hold up at the county level
This is the softest of the industry’s arguments, and it’s worth being specific about why. Most of what a Maryland data center actually handles — cloud storage, enterprise software, streaming — was never realistically headed to Chinese-controlled infrastructure regardless of local zoning; that isn’t how existing data flows work. The more serious version of this argument is a national one: the U.S. and China currently host the largest shares of global data center capacity, and there’s a legitimate case that a country’s ability to train and run frontier AI systems domestically is a strategic asset. But that’s an argument for the United States having enough capacity somewhere. It isn’t an argument that any single Maryland county’s zoning vote is the hinge point.
A moratorium in Howard County, or Charles County, or anywhere else in Maryland doesn’t send that capacity to Beijing—it sends it to Virginia, or Ohio.
A moratorium in Howard County, or Charles County, or anywhere else in Maryland doesn’t send that capacity to Beijing — it sends it to Virginia, or Ohio, or whichever jurisdiction approves the next project. Some of the loudest recent public commentary pushing the national-security framing has also leaned on unverified claims that organized opposition to data centers is foreign-coordinated propaganda. That allegation is circulating in national commentary without independent verification, and it shouldn’t be repeated as established fact — but its presence in the debate is itself worth noting, since it’s a sign of how far some advocates are reaching to make the sovereignty argument stick at the local level, where it doesn’t actually apply.
The equipment tax exemption cuts against the industry’s own “fair share” framing
The property tax revenue counties collect is real, but it coexists with a standing state-level exemption the industry actively lobbied to preserve.
Maryland exempts qualifying data center equipment — not land, not buildings, just the servers and personal property inside — from state sales and use tax for 10 to 20 years, depending on investment size. A 2026 bill to repeal that exemption died in committee this session, a result the industry’s own legislative advocacy group counted as a win. That matters for weighing the “data centers pay their fair share” argument: the property tax revenue counties collect is real, but it coexists with a standing state-level exemption the industry actively lobbied to preserve. Both things are true. Neither cancels the other out.
What this actually adds up to
Strip the overstated claims from both sides and Maryland’s own numbers say something narrower than either side’s rhetoric.
Strip the overstated claims from both sides and Maryland’s own numbers say something narrower than either side’s rhetoric: a county that approves a data center gets substantial, provable tax revenue and very few permanent jobs, a real (if new and untested) shield against ratepayer cost-shifting, and a water footprint that’s currently smaller than golf’s but growing toward parity. A county that says no doesn’t meaningfully change the national AI race or send a project to a foreign adversary — it more likely sends the project to the next county, or the next state, that says yes. That’s a legitimate, county-by-county tradeoff. It was never a national-security-sized question, no matter how loudly either side argues otherwise.
A county that says no doesn’t meaningfully change the national AI race—it more likely sends the project to the next county, or the next state, that says yes.
Sources: Baltimore County Planning staff data center study (July 2026); Frederick County government community benefit agreement announcement; Maryland Tech Council-commissioned economic impact analysis; PJM Independent Market Monitor analysis and PJM 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction results; Maryland’s 2025 Next Generation Energy Act (HB 1035) and 2026 Utility RELIEF Act, and related Maryland Public Service Commission large load tariff rulemaking (Title 20 proposed regulations); Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and Florida Water & Pollution Control Operators Association water-use estimates; Data Center Alliance of Maryland’s 2026 legislative session summary; Server Country and ArentFox Schiff summaries of Maryland’s data center tax incentive structure.
Keep MDBayNews Reporting Free
MDBayNews exists to help Marylanders understand decisions made by state and local leaders — especially when those decisions affect daily life, rights, and public services.
If this article helped clarify what’s happening or why it matters, reader support makes it possible to keep publishing clear, independent reporting like this.
Have a tip or documents to share?
We review submissions carefully and confidentially. Anonymous tips are welcome when appropriate.
Discover more from Maryland Bay News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.