The Real Story – A Column
To: Governor Tina Kotek
From: Dirk Knudsen, Editor, The Hillsboro Herald
Date: July 16, 2026
Subject: Resolving the Conflict Between Your Prosperity Roadmap and the Silicon Forest Reality
“I simply say Oregon is demure and lovely, and it ought to play a little hard to get. And I think you’ll all be just as sick as I am if you find it is nothing but a hungry hussy, throwing herself at every stinking smokestack that’s offered.” Republican Governor and true man of the people- 1982
Tina Kotek- after significant pressure from the left of the Dem party – July 2nd, 2026: “We need to have a stronger statewide approach on data center growth. Oregon needs to stop being a cheap date and making it too easy for them.“
Here is our response-
Dear Governor Kotek,
Two weeks ago, you stood before Oregonians and accepted the final report of your newly formed Oregon Prosperity Council. The document paints a grim picture, reminding us that Oregon ranks 49th in the nation in non-farm employment growth. Its 10 priority recommendations demand a familiar, supply-side cure: expand the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) by 2%, establish a $250 million site-readiness fund, slash regulations by 20%, and scale back local tax oversight.
Your “cheap-date” comment is way too late, and you seem to be soft-playing the fact that many Oregonians from both sides of the aisle want Data Centers stopped NOW, not tomorrow. Governor McCall was more committed to Democratic principles than you seem to be these days. So buck up! People will have your back. But you better act now because this selling out of Oregon is killing our jobs, our children’s futures and education, and our businesses and beautiful Oregon. You can not policy-splain this. It requires a total commitment. Your Prosperity Council was poorly chosen and seems to be looking out for their own prosperity and not Oregon’s.
Now, the rest of the message:
We write to you today from Hillsboro, the very heart of Oregon’s “Silicon Forest,” which has produced the jobs that have powered Oregon’s economy for decades, to ask you to pause and look closely at the facts on the ground.
If you follow the “default” roadmap laid out by your Prosperity Council, you will be treating the wrong illness. Oregon’s semiconductor crisis is not a crisis of “hostile taxes” or “excessive environmental conservation.” It is a crisis of unmanaged corporate extraction, and your administration already holds the tools to fix it.
We urge you to consider three critical contradictions before committing Oregon’s public policy to this corporate wish list:
The Stacked Deck: A Predetermined Echo Chamber
Governor, we must address the elephant in the room: the composition of your Prosperity Council and the highly suspect nature of the reports driving these recommendations.
The $50,000 Business Oregon semiconductor report, authored by the University of Oregon, claims that “regulatory uncertainty” and “high taxes” are driving companies away. Yet, this entire narrative is built on interviews with 23 anonymous “industry experts” who were shielded from public scrutiny. The methodology of the $50,000 taxpayer-funded UO study is critically flawed and lacks public transparency, relying entirely on 23 anonymous ‘industry experts’ whose potential conflicts of interest are completely shielded from public scrutiny.
The Prosperity Council itself reads like a Who’s Who of Oregon’s corporate and developer lobby:
- Renée James (Co-Chair): Former President of Intel.
- Jordan Schnitzer: One of the state’s largest commercial real estate developers.
- Dave Drinkward: CEO of Hoffman Construction, the exact firm contracted to build these massive, multi-million-dollar high-tech manufacturing plants.
- Tim Knopp (Chief Prosperity Officer): The former Republican Senate Minority Leader tapped to guide this process.
When you appoint real estate developers, construction moguls, and former Intel executives to write an economic roadmap, a pro-developer outcome is practically baked into the design. This represents a clear structural conflict of interest.
The Real Land Crisis is the Hillsboro Data Center Land Grab
The Prosperity Council and Business Oregon’s report argue that we must carve up Oregon’s protected agricultural reserves and expand the UGB because we are out of industrial land.
But Governor, why are we out of land? It is not because of conservationists. It is because the City of Hillsboro, with no zoning specific to Data Centers and AI Computing, allowed data centers to swallow nearly 500 acres of prime, high-value industrial land right here in Hillsboro. These data centers require massive footprints and immense power but create almost no long-term, family-wage jobs once constructed.
We applaud your recent signing of the moratorium barring new data centers from receiving local Enterprise Zone property tax breaks. But if you expand the UGB by 2% without strict, state-level zoning laws that prevent data centers from cannibalizing that land, developers will simply build more server farms, leaving our actual advanced chip manufacturers and mid-sized suppliers completely squeezed out. Not only that, but Hillsboro has seen land prices skyrocket from $250,000 to well over $1 million per acre – unprecedented value that tech firms will struggle to match. Data Center closings are tied directly to some of these sales.
The Tax Illusion vs. The Pink Slips
The corporate voices on your Prosperity Council argue that Oregon’s tax system is “hostile” and discourages investment.
Let us look at the actual math. Oregon has no sales tax on the multi-million-dollar equipment used to make computer chips. Our state corporate income and activity taxes largely exempt exports. Right here in Washington County, Intel saved tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, in property taxes last year alone on its manufacturing machinery through local abatements granted under Oregon’s Strategic Investment Program (SIP).
In 2023, Oregonians handed these same manufacturers $260 million in direct state cash subsidies through the Oregon CHIPS Act, including a massive $115 million check directly to Intel. The return on our investment? Intel slashed its local workforce from 23,000 to 18,000 or fewer in a matter of months, even as its stock soared on global AI speculation. Governor Kotek, Oregonians are ‘paying more and getting less’ because we are subsidizing record-breaking corporate wealth that is being funneled to out-of-state shareholders while our local workers are handed pink slips. Intel has the capacity to grow here if the company wants to. If it wants to expand, it will, and no doubt our state will answer the call. But let’s not let this report and predetermined outcomes stand as unbiased.
We do not need more tax cuts for giant corporations; we need strict clawback provisions that tie state and local subsidies directly to local job guarantees. Oregon needs to reward job creators and not Data Centers and AI Factories that are draining our communities.
The Power Struggle: Lean on the POWER Act
Your Prosperity Council recommends dismantling the Climate Protection Program and fast-tracking industrial utility permitting. Yet Hillsboro’s energy grid is already under unprecedented strain.
You recently rightly praised the early impacts of Oregon’s POWER Act, highlighting how the PUC is poised to shift a 29% electricity rate hike onto energy-guzzling data centers to protect residential ratepayers and small businesses. This is the exact kind of regulatory courage Oregon needs.
If we fast-track permitting and lower utility standards to appease heavy industrial users, we will drive up PGE rates for the average Oregonian and starve our grid. We must prioritize energy infrastructure for actual, high-employment manufacturing over the passive, resource-draining digital warehouses currently dominating the Silicon Forest.
Our Call to Action
Governor Kotek, you have shown a willingness to address these tough questions by forming the Data Center Advisory Committee and implementing the tax incentive moratorium.
We ask you to reject the Prosperity Council’s premise that the only way to save Oregon’s economy is to weaken our land-use laws, slash public revenue, and fast-track development.
Instead, we ask you to:
- Implement a strict, statewide zoning cap on data centers to preserve Hillsboro’s existing industrial land for real, high-employment manufacturing.
- Redirect state economic aid away from multinational conglomerates like Intel and toward the small-to-mid-sized local suppliers who actually keep their operations—and their tax dollars—in Oregon.
- Enforce strict worker-retention metrics on any high-tech firm receiving state subsidies or local tax abatements.
Oregon’s prosperity should be measured by the security of its working families and the health of its communities, not the stock prices of corporations that lay off our neighbors.
Respectfully,
Dirk Knudsen
Editor, The Hillsboro Herald
Editor’s note-
Juan Carlos Ordóñez from the OCPP followed up on our story with this one. His take is very similar, and he is a solid voice on this matter of “Prosperity”.
Thank you so much!!!!!!! What an intelligent read!
Thank you, Dirk. This is potent stuff.
IMHO, Ms. Kotek should return any campaign contributions from data center interests.
I urge everyone to monitor what your county commissioners and state legislators are taking from construction companies and big tech. See who takes money from Fortis Construction, Hoffman Construction, Amazon Web Services, META and Idaho Power. Google big donors.
These companies invest money in office holders and expect a return on their investment. So far, their investments have worked out. Let’s change that.
Agree, excellent, and Pam also.
And don’t forget Intel is the Only Hillsboro Water Customer (Large Industry category–created in the 2018 water rate study due to its disproportionate water usage) that underpays what they massively consume — 37% of Hillsboro’s water. Next largest category is Single family residential, using 24%, who Overpays. The rest of Industry uses 11%. This was information for the 2024 rate increase public hearings. I have requested updated pie charts.