Governor Pritzker’s decision to pause the Illinois Data Center Investment Tax Credit is a shortsighted decision that will cost Illinois workers and taxpayers.
This pause does nothing to lower utility bills, protect the grid, or advance clean energy. Instead, it will send billions of dollars in investment and thousands of union jobs to Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio — states that sit on the same electrical grid, where those data centers will be built anyway, just without Illinois workers protected by nationally leading labor standards and without the clean energy requirements we’ve collaboratively fought to establish here.
Illinois didn’t become a national leader in clean energy policy by reacting to polling and headlines. We got here by doing the hard work of building durable frameworks that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. This pause abandons that approach entirely.
The Governor’s framework calls for data centers to generate or pay for clean energy, which is a principle Climate Jobs Illinois also supports, but Illinois won’t advance that goal by clearing the field and sending investments to states with weaker labor and environmental standards. You advance it by coming to the table and getting the policy right.
We support finding real solutions to rising utility costs, but this unilateral executive action was designed to generate headlines, rather than practical results. Pausing the tax credit without a replacement framework in place does nothing to lower a single utility bill. What it does do is walk away from the property tax revenue, homeowner tax relief and funding for local schools generated by data centers for communities across Illinois.
Ultimately, workers, electricity ratepayers and taxpayers will pay the price for this decision. We call on Governor Pritzker to pause his “pause” and instead convene the workers, industry representatives, environmentalists, and consumer advocates to build a framework that actually delivers for Illinois consumers and the workers who power this state.