The Abatement Report Card: Do Data Centers Keep Their Tax Promises?

In the span of about six weeks this summer and fall, two central Ohio cities showed different sides of the tax-incentive bargain. In Hilliard, the city's Tax Incentive Review Council recommended terminating a company's property-tax abatement after it missed its job commitments. In New Albany, city council moved to continue dozens of abatement agreements, including agreements with Amazon, Meta, and Google, and is scheduled to consider two new ones on October 6.

Same region. Same basic review process. Very different outcomes. And much of it happened in public meetings that receive relatively little attention.

The mechanism is the TIRC, or Tax Incentive Review Council. Under Ohio law, local governments using certain property-tax incentive programs convene these councils to review whether companies are meeting the commitments in their agreements. The council can recommend that an agreement continue, be modified, or be terminated. The local legislative authority then acts on those recommendations.

In practice, the TIRC functions as an annual check on tax-incentive agreements. That makes its records particularly useful. Economic impact studies usually look forward and depend on assumptions about investment, employment, and future activity. TIRC records look backward at what companies actually reported after an agreement was signed.

For someone who builds economic and fiscal forecasts, that distinction matters. Forecasts tell us what may happen. Compliance reviews tell us what happened relative to the commitments that justified the agreement.

The Hilliard and New Albany records provide a useful Central Ohio case study. They do not establish whether tax incentives work generally. They do show what an ongoing review process can reveal.

Hilliard: thirteen continuations and one termination

Hilliard's TIRC met on August 25, 2025, to review tax year 2024. Fourteen active Community Reinvestment Area agreements were reviewed. Thirteen were recommended for continuation. One was recommended for termination.

Two of the larger agreements involve Amazon.

Amazon Data Services, Old Hilliard CRA. The agreement covers two data center campuses on Scioto Darby Road and Cosgray Road. The company committed to $200 million in real-estate investment and 35 new jobs. It reported $700.3 million of investment and 130 new jobs, with $8.3 million in new payroll against a $2.45 million commitment. In tax year 2024, the abated value was $15.2 million. The company paid $244,443 in property tax, while $435,054 was abated.

Vadata, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Britton Central CRA. This agreement covers $183.9 million in appraised value, of which $173.5 million was abated under a 15-year, 100 percent abatement running from 2015 through 2029. The company committed to $225 million in investment and 25 jobs. It reported $2.43 billion invested and 231 jobs, with $26.4 million in payroll against a $2 million commitment. Property tax paid in 2024 was $298,766, while $4,966,317.21 was abated (the abatement covers about 94% of the property's value; it is a 15-year, 100% CRA, so there is very little left to tax).

The TIRC minutes state that Amazon “far exceeded every agreement benchmark.” They also note the company's sponsorship of city events and partnership with Hilliard schools. The agreements were found in compliance and recommended for continuation unanimously.

One industrial-warehouse agreement had a different outcome. The original company had been acquired and its assets divested, and the new owner did not meet the inherited job and payroll commitments. The TIRC found the agreement out of compliance and unanimously recommended termination.

That example matters because one criticism of tax incentives is that performance requirements are rarely enforced after an agreement is signed. One review cycle does not resolve that broader question, but Hilliard provides a concrete example of the enforcement mechanism being used when reported performance fell short.

New Albany: the same process at a much larger scale

New Albany applies the same basic review process across a much larger portfolio of incentive agreements. Its two TIRCs, one covering the Licking County portion of the city and one covering the Franklin County portion, met in July 2026 to review dozens of Oak Grove II CRA agreements. The resulting recommendations went to city council in September and October.

The Licking County list includes several major data center operators. Vadata and Amazon Data Services appear under separate agreements, as do Sidecat LLC, associated with Meta, Montauk Innovations LLC, associated with Google, and EdgeConneX. The reviewed agreements were recommended for continuation.

The Franklin County list includes the TJX data center and the SI NAL01 data center, which were also continued. Two abatements completed their scheduled terms in 2025 and required no further action.

The pipeline continues. On October 6, New Albany is scheduled to consider new CRA agreements with VTRE Development LLC and NA Innovation 100 LLC, together with an annexation agreement involving Jersey Township. If approved, those agreements will create another set of commitments that future TIRCs will review.

What the records do and do not tell us

Three distinctions are useful when reading these reports.

First, compliance is not the same as fiscal benefit. A company can meet or exceed every commitment in an incentive agreement without establishing that the agreement produced a positive net fiscal return. The size of the tax expenditure still matters. Vadata's nearly $5 million in abated property tax in one year, for example, is a real fiscal cost. Determining whether the agreement produces a positive fiscal result requires comparing those costs with the revenues and other benefits attributable to the project.

The TIRC answers a narrower question: did the company meet the commitments written into the agreement? It does not answer whether the agreement was worth its cost.

Second, a compliance review can only test the commitments that were negotiated. If investment, employment, or payroll thresholds were set below what the project would have delivered anyway, exceeding them does not tell us whether the public received the best available terms.

That makes the original negotiation important. The interesting question is not simply whether Amazon exceeded a 35-job commitment on a project that ultimately reported $700 million in investment. It is also whether 35 jobs was the appropriate benchmark when the agreement was signed.

Third, widespread compliance can have more than one interpretation. It may indicate that companies are performing well. It may also indicate that some commitments were relatively modest compared with the ultimate scale of the projects. The TIRC records establish compliance with negotiated thresholds. They do not establish that those thresholds were demanding or optimal.

Four lessons for local governments

For city councils, school boards, and economic development officials negotiating incentive agreements, these records suggest four practical lessons.

Write commitments that can be measured. Investment, employment, payroll, deadlines, and other performance requirements should be specific enough to verify later.

Conduct the review every year and make the record accessible. Performance requirements matter more when companies know they will be reviewed and the results will be available to the public. Hilliard's 72-page packet provides a useful example of a detailed public record.

Keep compliance and fiscal analysis separate. “The company kept its promises” and “the agreement produced a positive fiscal return” are different findings. A sound review process should be capable of answering both questions.

Treat the original agreement as the starting point for accountability. New Albany's new CRA agreements will eventually be evaluated against the commitments written into them now. The quality of the later review therefore depends heavily on the quality of the terms negotiated at signing.

The debate over data center incentives often relies on project announcements, individual examples, and headline investment figures. TIRC records provide a different kind of evidence: contemporaneous public records comparing reported performance with negotiated commitments.

They are not a complete measure of whether an incentive was economically justified. But they are one of the better places to start when asking whether companies delivered what they agreed to deliver.

Sources: City of Hilliard TIRC packet, “Memo: TIRC Recommendations” (72 pp., TIRC meeting August 25, 2025, reviewing tax year 2024; Resolution 25-R-74); City of New Albany Proposed Legislation packets for September 1, 2026 (Resolutions R-38-2026 and R-39-2026) and October 6, 2026 (R-38 through R-42-2026).

For a broader framework for separating compliance, fiscal benefit, and the cost of incentives, see How to Properly Handle Property Taxes, Abatements, and Incentives in Economic Impact Studies and SRC EvalMetrics' Data Center Impact Analysis practice area.