A tech industry group backed by Microsoft, Google, and Meta is running TV and social media ads in Oregon defending data centers, just as Hillsboro's first-in-the-state moratorium freezes new approvals in the Washington County tech corridor near Bethany and Cedar Mill.

Oregon Connects, a nonprofit registered with the Oregon Secretary of State on Wednesday, March 4, filed as a "social welfare organization that promotes data centers," the Portland Tribune reported Tuesday, July 28.

The group is one of at least seven state-level organizations created by the Data Center Coalition, whose members include leaders from Microsoft, Google, Meta, QTS, and Equinix.

The 30-second ads feature B-roll of a family cooking together, a nurse, and a business owner, and close with the tagline: "Oregon's data centers: committed to paying their costs, so Oregon families don't."

That claim drew sharp criticism. Juan Carlos Ordóñez, communications director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, told the Portland Tribune: "If data centers were truly 'committed to paying their costs, so Oregon families don't,' then they wouldn't be taking hundreds of millions of dollars in property tax abatements each year."

The local stakes

The ad campaign lands in the middle of an escalating fight over data center growth in Hillsboro, the hub of the tech corridor that stretches into unincorporated Washington County.

As we reported July 28, the Hillsboro City Council unanimously voted Tuesday, July 28, to impose a 120-day moratorium on new data center and battery energy storage system approvals. The city has 16 built data center sites covering 346 acres, according to city records.

During the pause, city staff will study how much land, power, and water data centers consume and evaluate impacts including noise, vibration, and effects on wetlands.

The moratorium followed about six months of heated council meetings and a Washington County petition that mobilized more than 5,000 residents, according to Hillsboro Councilor Kipperlyn Sinclair. Sinclair pushed to amend the moratorium to explicitly cover AI computing and AI factories before the council approved it.

Money and influence

The numbers are striking. Statewide, data centers are receiving more than $450 million in local tax breaks in 2026, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive. The top 11 tech-company-owned data centers in Hillsboro receive an average of $294,000 in property tax breaks per full-time employee this tax year.

Nine people. $3.3 million. That's the staffing and tax-break total for Elon Musk's social media site X in Hillsboro this year, according to Washington County records.

Oregon Connects registered on the same day the Oregon House voted to pass a one-year moratorium on Standard Enterprise Zone tax abatements for data centers. Even with that pause, data centers will save $85 million in Oregon property taxes from the program this year alone.

The Data Center Coalition had approximately $4.6 million in operating revenue in 2024 and spent more than $250,000 on advertising that year, according to its most recent tax filing. Oregon Connects spokespersons declined to answer questions about who funds the ads. As a tax-exempt social advocacy organization, it is not required to publicly disclose its contributors.

Dirk Knudsen, editor of the Hillsboro Herald, wrote that the campaign amounts to a sophisticated, out-of-state public affairs effort designed to build public consent before Oregonians can fully deliberate impacts on their power grid, water resources, and tax structure.

What's next

The moratorium runs approximately 120 days from July 28, expiring in late November 2026. No specific hearing date for permanent land-use rules has been announced. Meanwhile, as we reported July 7, Oregon regulators approved a 29.7% PGE rate hike for data centers effective July 8, while residential customers saw a 1.3% rate decrease.

1000 Friends of Oregon has joined a lawsuit with local leaders, businesses, and farmers against Hillsboro over approvals for tax breaks that, in some cases, offer data centers 25 years of back-to-back property tax waivers.