Hill Country Data Centers
Residents across the state have made their stances on data centers clear, as at least 10 different Texas counties have taken on the westward- bound influence of the corporate giants that are responsible for establishing Asset-Backed data centers. However, the conflicts are unfolding differently in each county.
Unprecedented legal actions from county officials have been taken in at least 2 of them; the counties of Hill & Van Zandt have engaged the encroaching corporations. Notably, an article published in The Texas Scorecard established that Van Zandt County enacted a successful moratorium, of sorts, by catching the corporate developers red-handed using illegal Chinese batteries in their production. The batteries were deemed illegal by AG Ken Paxton and Governor Abbott for serious hazards involving explosive malfunctions and military espionage on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. The article also shared Van Zan- dt County’s primary concern: “Rural fire departments are not equipped to handle worstcase battery fires, toxic plumes, or long-term contamination if something goes wrong.”
Hill County was technically the first to enact a ‘moratorium,’ or a temporary halt to data center construction that was only in place for two weeks–but the language in the original administrative order could have paused construction for up to one year.
The Texas Tribune covered this story last month, citing the $100 million lawsuit that followed Hill County’s moratorium. After the suit was filed and the moratorium was effectively cancelled, Hill County commissioners renegotiated terms and conditions with the developers. The Tribune asserts that, “County Judge Shane Brassell said he still considers the moratorium a success and said he believes the checklist is on firmer legal ground.”
In Texas, counties do not have the power to stop construction on private land. The developers in Hill County alleged the moratorium was illegal; however, Hill County commissioners rescinded the moratorium themselves before a judge could rule it null and void. This indicates that while a moratorium is unlikely to be outright successful in front of a judge, it can be a powerful tool early on in a county’s negotiating tactics.
Other negotiation tactics used include tax abatements. Abatement proposals function to serve the same kind of rules and regulations to data center developers that Hill Country provided after the lawsuit was filed. Abatements have been used in America throughout the rise of industrialization in order to attract corporate entities. However, their use kicked off after World War II, particularly in the Midwest, where some places, like Lawrence, Kansas, “Currently [use] tax abatements as [their] primary development tool.”
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is an outspoken think tank based in Massachusetts that lobbies against corporate interests, like tax abatements, and monopolies on residential properties in urban areas–which allows them to drive up rent prices. The Lincoln Institute is a think tank, and its work should be scrutinized because of this, but this institute is uniquely self-funded and often peer-reviewed by Cambridge alumni, meaning their publications are not aimed to please wealthy donors. In 2025, they published a 44-page study titled Who Owns America: Massive Corporate Ownership of Residential Land, that breaks down how the corporate bailouts and the land grabs that followed the 2008 economic crisis contributed to the growth of the same monopolies that are now developing data centers. In 2008, corporations were given “deep discounts” on bundled residential mortgages, and “gained control of housing across the country through foreclosure.”
The same way that single- family mortgages were bundled together and sold as debts to corporations in 2008 with Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS), data center development has taken on a similar pattern on Wall Street with Asset-Backed Securities (ABS). The Institutional Investor asserts that, “Securitization allows these assets to be rated and incorporated into institutional portfolios with characteristics similar to investment-grade corporate debt.”
Wall Street bundles data center leases into bonds (ABS) and flips them to investors for immediate upfront cash. This allows them to negotiate the ‘future rent’ the property is expected to bring in before the investors ever see the money. This creates a toxic cycle in which the developers cash out before construction ends, stick the locals with the bill for the necessary electric grid upgrades, and then they move to start up a new project they won’t see through–all while paying little to nothing in state and federal taxes.
Calculating the money of the future that the data center had not yet seen–but developers are still trying to trade as stock–is how the corporate lobbyists in Hill County were able to claim that the moratorium would cause 100 million in damages. Those are the prospective earnings of the center in Hill County. The suit was not based on actual physical damages caused, but the potential loss of wealth of corporate investors who have likely never set foot in Hill County.