West Virginia has a new statewide plan for data center development, which includes an effort to bolster support for the increasingly unpopular sector by using data center tax revenue to fund local infrastructure and offset statewide income taxes.
Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey this week unveiled a seven-point framework for building data centers in West Virginia, following through on a 2025 law that removes local control over the sector in favor of statewide standards meant to attract hyperscalers.
Morrisey has been a major data center cheerleader, often describing the sector as key to West Virginia’s economic future, as well as U.S. national security. He has urged data center developers to relocate to his state amid growing backlash in neighboring Virginia and other states.
But the first-term Republican, who is well-known to conservatives and industry executives from his time as attorney general, also acknowledged the public’s souring impression of data centers — which could impede their development in West Virginia if state officials feel pressure to use their newfound power over the sector to crack down on them.
Americans are now more likely to oppose than support a data center near their home, The POLITICO Poll recently found, with Republican support for such development moving nearly 20 percentage points away from the sector during the first half of the year.
Morrisey himself has even publicly shamed a major data center developer in his state. But the governor said his new data center framework aims to avoid the dynamics that have made data centers unpopular elsewhere.
“Across the country there’s a national debate underway and people are hearing a lot about data centers. A lot of states rushed into the sector without a viable plan. In West Virginia we’re not doing that,” Morrisey said Tuesday in remarks alongside state legislative leaders.
“We are applying lessons learned from others’ failures,” he said. “When people talk about problems that have occurred in other states — those are other states. You learn the lessons from those problems.”
Morrisey’s plan calls for sharing data centers’ benefits with residents and local governments, as well as mitigating their negative impacts.
The governor emphasized that, under West Virginia’s data center law, half the sector’s tax revenue will go toward reducing and possibly eliminating statewide income taxes. (West Virginia’s income tax rate ranks in the middle of the U.S.)
The remaining tax revenue will be divided between a data center’s host county (30 percent), other counties in the state (10 percent) and upgrading local infrastructure (10 percent).
“All West Virginians must directly benefit from data center revenue,” Morrisey said.
Another pillar of West Virginia’s approach is a comprehensive 20-year plan for statewide data center development. Morrisey argued that strategy would prevent the kind of local impacts that have driven data center opposition elsewhere. The state also plans to evaluate developers themselves to ensure they have enough capital to follow through on their plans.
“This can’t be a fly-by-night operation,” Morrisey said.
Other pillars of the plan — such as shielding ratepayers from higher electricity prices and protecting the state’s water — also aim to blunt criticism of the sector that’s growing nationwide.
And despite West Virginia’s law removing data center decisions from local control, Morrisey’s plan calls for giving local communities “a voice” on a new statewide Data Center Advisory Council and for the state Commerce Department to “engage directly with local leadership to align private sector investments with municipal needs.”
West Virginia currently has no hyperscale data centers, but proposals for their development already have caused an uproar in some communities.
For instance, plans for a massive data center near Tucker County have spurred some local residents to form an opposition group, Tucker United, to fight each step of the development.
The developer of that project, Fundamental Data, drew a rebuke from Morrisey after an engineer associated with the company bragged at a North Carolina city council meeting — where he was speaking against a local data center — that his company “basically wrote” West Virginia’s data center law. The company later distanced itself from that employee.
“This so called representative is fabricating this story — he should be ashamed of himself,” Morrisey wrote on his personal social media account. “No respectable company would allow someone who represents them to mislead the media and the public like this. I’ve been worried about how this company has handled itself from the beginning. They need to do much better. Shame on them.”
Fundamental Data has said it remains “committed to working with state regulators and providing direct answers to Tucker County residents, local leaders and the media as the project advances.”
