Say “data center” and most people picture racks of servers, in a metal building, behind a fence. They don’t picture repaved roads, modernized water systems, or a fully funded school budget. But in communities from Northern Virginia, across the Midwest, and to rural New Mexico, the facilities powering America’s digital economy are increasingly showing up, not just on the power grid, but in the ledger that pays for the public services residents actually see and use every day. As the AI build-out accelerates, and America enters a historic, capital-intensive phase of infrastructure investment, data centers are proving to be one of the more surprising sources of funding for it.
But don’t just take the industry’s word for it. Look at the receipts.
Loudoun County, Virginia
Loudoun County, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers known as Data Center Alley, offers the clearest before-and-after picture. In 2025, data centers were estimated to generate about $895 million in real and personal property tax revenue, a little over 95% of the county’s entire operating budget. That revenue has let the Board of Supervisors cut the residential property tax rate every year for a decade while still fully funding Loudoun County Public Schools, the Sheriff’s Office, and fire and rescue.
Here’s the number worth remembering: A 2026 fiscal analysis found that without data center revenue, the typical Loudoun homeowner’s property tax bill would have to rise by roughly $5,800 a year, a 91% increase, just to maintain current service levels. Unlike residential build-out, these facilities ask for almost little back in terms of public services. As county officials put it, they “don’t put kids in our schools” and “don’t put cars on our roads.” They pay in, but they don’t draw down.
New Albany, Ohio
If critics want proof that communities can hold data centers accountable, New Albany wrote the manual.
Since 2010, the Columbus-area city has attracted 40 data centers to its International Business Park, with more than two dozen additional ones planned or under construction. Never did they simply hand over the keys. Rather, the city built a formula requiring every data center to make minimum annual payments equal to what the land would have generated as corporate offices or advanced manufacturing, met through a mix of payroll taxes, payments tied to rising property values, fees, and cash. The results speak plainly as a single data center generated $3.9 million in local tax revenue. That’s the equivalent, at the city’s 2% income tax rate, of a company with a payroll over $165 million. The revenue from these developments has helped the local school district avoid going to the ballot for funding.
The pattern repeats across the state. Amazon committed more than $15 million in direct annual payments to Marysville schools for 15 years as part of its investment there.
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation found that data centers delivered $1 billion in state and local tax revenue in 2024 alone. When Ohio lawmakers floated restrictions this year, it was New Albany’s own community development director who told them a moratorium would only help the communities outside Ohio competing for the same investment.
Montgomery County, Missouri
If Loudoun and New Albany show what a mature data center economy looks like, Amazon’s new $10 billion campus in Montgomery County, Missouri, shows the impact of a new hyperscale data center in rural America. Beyond the construction jobs and more than 400 permanent technician and operator positions, Amazon is contributing over $7 million directly to the community — including $3 million for local emergency dispatch and more than $1 million toward a new gathering space at the county fairgrounds. The county projects the campus will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new property tax revenue over the next 25 years, money that flows straight to local schools, roads, and first responders.
Answering the critics’ most-asked question about electricity, Amazon has agreed to pay the full cost of its own electric service and grid connection, with no rate discounts, so the campus’ power needs never land on its neighbors’ bills.
And on water, the company has also partnered with an agricultural technology firm to help area farmers cut unnecessary irrigation, a project expected to conserve roughly 100 million gallons of water a year in the surrounding watershed. The data center isn’t competing with the community for resources; instead, it’s helping maintain them.
Los Lunas, New Mexico
Then there’s the rural New Mexico proof point in the village of Los Lunas. When Meta broke ground on its data center campus there in 2016, Los Lunas was a bedroom community south of Albuquerque. Since then, the campus has generated $145 million in gross receipts tax revenue for the village, plus $189 million more for the state, while the village’s population grew 15 percent between 2020 and 2024, even as New Mexico’s overall population stayed flat. Meta has invested more than $2.5 billion in the community over nearly a decade, creating hundreds of permanent jobs and providing over $6 million to local schools and nonprofits — a record strong enough that the village’s own mayor recently wrote to El Paso’s city council urging it to say yes to Meta’s next project.
And on water — the issue opponents raise loudest in the arid Southwest — the company isn’t just minimizing its draw. Meta has invested in eight restoration projects in the Rio Grande watershed that together restore over 172 million gallons of water a year, with a stated goal of returning more water to New Mexico’s watersheds than it consumes. New Mexico’s own economic development secretary calls the effect “transformative” and wants to replicate it in other rural communities across the state.
Leesburg, Virginia
Just down the road from Data Center Alley, Microsoft is funding more than $25 million in water and sewer improvements near its Leesburg campus so the cost of serving its facilities doesn’t land on local ratepayers. That’s not a one-off act of corporate goodwill. Since 2020, Microsoft has invested more than $500 million across 75+ water and wastewater infrastructure projects nationally, and in January 2026, they formalized this approach into a company-wide initiative, called Community-First AI Infrastructure, where they publicly commit to fund their own grid costs and train local workers wherever they build.
The Common Thread — and the Policy Stakes
Different companies, different states, same pattern: developers, not residential ratepayers, are increasingly footing the bill for infrastructure upgrades in the local communities that host them. Whether it’s a revenue formula in Ohio, a full-cost power agreement in Missouri, or watershed restoration in New Mexico, the through-line is the same. That through line is precisely the opposite of the “hidden costs dumped on neighbors” narrative manufactured to justify moratorium proposals across the country.
A blanket ban doesn’t distinguish between a poorly sited project and one built on enforceable community commitments; they simply block both, and with it, the tax relief, school funding, and infrastructure investment as well. The better path is the one Loudoun, New Albany, Montgomery County, Los Lunas, and Leesburg are already living: transparent, binding agreements on cost allocation, water budgets, and tax contribution, preferably enshrined in legislation.
Policymakers weighing data center siting rules certainly owe their constituents one thing before deciding what to prohibit: an honest look at what communities have actually gained.