The Minnesota Reformer reports…

The Legislature passed a bipartisan bill Monday that extends tax breaks for some of the country’s most profitable technology companies on their data centers up to the year 2077, in a win for both Big Tech and the trade unions that build the data warehouses.

The once boutique tax subsidy has exploded in cost in recent years, as tech companies chased the benefit to meet ever increasing demand for computing power. In fiscal year 2015, the state estimated a sales tax break for data center purchases of computers, servers and other equipment costs the state about $6 million. That number is projected to explode to $114 million in fiscal year 2025 — a 1,800% increase — according to state tax expenditure reports.

Minnesota currently has 42 data centers, with the majority spread across the metro. Nationwide, tech companies are rapidly building data centers — warehouses with computer servers used to power the internet and, increasingly, AI — to store and process data.

As Gov. Tim Walz and his fellow Democrats in the divided Legislature confronted a worsening fiscal outlook, however, they looked to the data center tax breaks. They settled on revoking the sales tax exemption on electricity bills, which are massive because of data center energy requirements.

Curbing this tax break alone will bring in an estimated $140 million over the next four years.

But lawmakers also gave Big Tech a win, extending the expiration of the state’s sales tax break for data centers on purchases of computers, servers, software and cooling and energy equipment.