The questions that actually decide these projects.

01 · Power

For developers, officials, and residents

Who pays for the power infrastructure

This is the single most consequential change in the Georgia landscape, and the one most often described inaccurately in a public meeting.

In January 2025 the Georgia Public Service Commission approved, by unanimous vote, new rules governing large-load customers on Georgia Power's system — those using more than 100 MW. The rules require such customers to bear the transmission and distribution costs incurred as their projects progress, extend permissible contract terms from five years to as long as fifteen, and impose minimum billing requirements so that a customer that fails to materialize does not leave the costs behind.

Why it matters in a hearing. The most common local objection to a data center is that other ratepayers will subsidize its power. That objection is now answerable with reference to a specific regulatory framework rather than a reassurance. It is also not a complete answer: the rules govern Georgia Power's jurisdictional customers, cost allocation is settled through utility and PSC process rather than by a county, and the arrangement for any particular facility is specific to its contract.

What a complete answer looks like. The serving utility named. The load and its phase-in. What transmission or substation work is required. Which framework governs the allocation. And a clear statement of what the county does and does not control — because a commission asked to decide something it has no authority over will decide it badly.

Sources:Georgia PSC media advisory, 23 January 2025 ·Data Center Dynamics

02 · Revenue

For officials and residents

The state tax exemption, and what it does and doesn't touch

A county commission is frequently asked to approve a project whose largest public subsidy the county did not grant and cannot revoke.

Georgia exempts qualifying high-technology data centers from state and local sales and use tax on covered equipment and certain construction materials, under O.C.G.A. § 48-8-3(68.1). The exemption reaches equipment broadly — servers and peripherals, switchgear and power distribution, cooling towers and air handling, energy storage, and backup generators. Qualification turns on minimum investment and job-quality thresholds that scale with the population of the host county, with lower thresholds for counties under 50,000. Applications go through the Georgia Tax Center, and the exemption is scheduled to sunset on 31 December 2031.

The scale. State estimates put revenue forgone through the exemption at roughly $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2026, rising toward $3 billion in 2027. The Department of Revenue publishes aggregate expenditures by county, which means a commission can see what has been claimed in its own jurisdiction.

What the 2026 session did. Nothing, in the end, and that itself is worth knowing. Senate Bill 410 — which would have paused the exemption pending study — passed the Senate on 6 March 2026 and died in the House. SB 408, SB 436, HB 559, and HB 1012 also failed to advance. The exemption remains fully in force. Expect the question to return in the next session; a developer telling a county the matter is settled is overstating it.

The distinction that gets lost. Sales and use tax exemption is state policy. Property tax on real property and equipment, and any local abatement of it, is a local decision — usually made by a development authority, often through a bond-lease structure, on terms the county can negotiate. Conflating the two produces a public argument in which nobody is discussing the decision actually in front of the commission. Ask for a year-by-year table separating state exemption, local abatement, and net receipts to the county and the school district.

Sources:Georgia Department of Revenue ·Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts, tax incentive evaluation ·Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 2026 ·SB 410 history

03 · For developers

Before site control

What to learn about a county before you control a site

Power, fiber, water, and land price narrow the list. What follows decides whether the site you bought is a site you can use.

• How land use is actually decided here. Whether the approval you need is legislative or quasi-judicial changes what contact is permissible, what the record has to contain, and what an appeal would look like.
• The last contested land-use fight. What it was about, who organized it, how the commission handled it, and whether anyone lost a seat over it. Counties learn, and the lesson they learned is the terrain you are entering.
• The water question, locally. Not your consumption in the abstract but what else draws on that source, whether the system has capacity concerns, and whether a drought contingency has ever bound local users.
• School district finances. Consistently the strongest local argument in both directions and the one most often mishandled. Know the digest, the millage, the enrollment trend, and what a project of this size does to each.
• Emergency response capacity. Whether the responding fire department is volunteer, what it would need for a facility of this type, and whether anyone has asked it.
• Election timing. Not to work around it. To understand that a commissioner facing an electorate in eight months needs a defensible answer, and that giving them one is your job.
• Whether a moratorium is live or being discussed. Several Georgia counties have paused or restricted new data center development. The condition of the ordinance when you file is not necessarily its condition when you close.

A candidate county that fails on several of these is not necessarily a no. It is a signal about what the engagement will cost and how long it will take, which is exactly what belongs in an investment committee memo before the land is under contract rather than after.

04 · Commitments

For all three audiences

How to structure a commitment that survives

Most community benefits language fails the same way: it is a statement of intention written to sound generous, and a year later nobody can tell whether it was honoured.

A commitment that holds has six parts.

1. A number or a defined standard. Not minimize water use — an annual figure, a peak-day figure, and what happens if either is exceeded.
2. A date or a trigger. Quarterly, annually, before certificate of occupancy, within thirty days of a complaint.
3. A named obligor. The entity actually bound, and language that survives the sale of the asset — because these assets change hands.
4. A reporting obligation. Who publishes what, where, and how often. A commitment without one is unverifiable by design.
5. Independent evidence. The utility bill, the third-party monitoring report, the county's acceptance letter. Something produced by someone other than the party being measured.
6. A consequence. What happens on failure. Cure period, escalation, remedy. This is the part that gets negotiated out, and its absence is the tell that a commitment was never meant to bind.

Where the commitment lives matters as much as how it is drafted. Conditions of zoning run with the approval and are enforceable by the county through its own process. A separate benefits agreement is a contract between the parties who signed it, which raises the question of who can enforce it if the county is not a party. Both have a place. Neither should be assumed to do the other's work.

05 · For officials

Before a public hearing

What you need in front of you before the vote

The failure mode is not a bad decision. It is a decision made without the documents that would have made it defensible.

• The technical studies themselves, not a summary — water, acoustic, traffic, stormwater, air permit — with the name of the professional accountable for each.
• Confirmation of which claims have not been studied, stated plainly.
• The revenue analysis year by year, separating state exemption from local abatement, and showing the school district line.
• The proposed conditions in final language, with the enforcement mechanism for each.
• Any benefits agreement, with its parties, its term, and who can enforce it.
• The decommissioning obligation and the financial assurance behind it — or an explicit acknowledgement that there is none.
• A written record of what the public asked and how it was answered, including what was left unresolved.
• Your county attorney's guidance on the nature of the proceeding and what that means for your prior contacts.

A commission that has these can approve or deny and defend either. A commission that does not is exposed regardless of how it votes, and the applicant is exposed with it.

06 · After approval

For all three audiences

What long-term reporting should look like

Nearly every campus expands, and the community that tolerated the first building decides the second. Reporting is not a courtesy; it is the mechanism by which the second approval becomes possible.

Reporting worth the name has four properties.

It is published, not filed. A report submitted to a county and never posted has satisfied a requirement without informing anyone.

It shows failure the same way it shows success. Behind schedule and below target appear in a real report. Their absence over several years is evidence of a reporting process that has stopped measuring anything.

It points to outside evidence. Each line traces to a document produced by someone other than the reporting party.

It leaves open items open. An unresolved complaint keeps its age visible until it is resolved or formally closed with a stated reason. Quiet disappearance is the most common failure and the most corrosive.