In Hillsboro, data centers take advantage of a tax loophole — but are these companies living up to their end of the deal?
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
In Hillsboro, data centers take advantage of a tax loophole — but are these companies living up to their end of the deal?
A report by OregonLive.com’s Luke Hammill found that 15 businesses in the Portland suburb banked more than $11.5 million in property tax savings in 2013-14. While a few companies in the area have found success and provided jobs — as the “free enterprise zone” deal calls for — the majority of companies have not.
If the three largest employers were removed from the enterprise zone, about 75 percent of the remaining 2013-14 tax abatement would go to four data center companies that have created just seven full-time jobs since joining the zone, according to an Oregonian/OregonLive analysis of state data. The remaining quarter would go to eight companies that have created 170 jobs since 2009.
A company called Infomart Portland highlights the disparity. Infomart employed just one full-time worker in 2013, but received a greater 2013-14 tax break – over $775,000 – than Qorvo, which has created 330 full-time jobs since 2011 on top of the 600 full-timers it had already hired.
(SOURCE: OregonLive.com)
In Lane County, hundreds of new jobs have been created by a surge of call centers opening.
But Elon Glucklich, of the Register-Guard, reported on the drawbacks of those new jobs — including low wages and high turnover.
Even though they don’t offer top-dollar jobs, call centers still want tax breaks and other incentives before they locate here. Getting Royal Caribbean to build a facility in Springfield instead of Spokane took $1.3 million in Oregon tax incentives. Enterprise Rent-A-Car signed a five-year lease on downtown Eugene office space, opening a 200-employee call center in 2007 after Lane County unveiled a $50,000 inventive package. A similar package lured First Call to Veneta.
But some call centers don’t offer stable employment, and they can shut down abruptly. In 2012, Enterprise closed its Eugene center, downsized and shifted the reduced number of employees to a work-at-home model rather than renew its downtown lease. Relying on large pools of unskilled workers makes call centers more able than higher-wage employers to downsize, or pack up and leave, at the first sign of slippage in business, Conerly said.
