KVIG Informative

A Nevada lawmaker who backed the state’s data-center subsidy framework a decade ago is now one of its loudest critics. Campaign finance records show why the reversal raises questions.

Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton — filing under her former name, Benitez-Thompson, in earlier records — voted for the 2015 legislation that created Nevada’s data-center tax abatement framework. State campaign filings reviewed by the nonprofit Nevada Independent show her campaigns accepted at least $9,000 from Switch-related interests, lobbyists and companies involved in the data-center tax break debate, along with $23,000 from NV Energy, Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific Power between 2010 and 2020.

Those contributions don’t establish that anything improper occurred. But they sit alongside a public record: a lawmaker who voted for the subsidy framework, took campaign support from interests tied to the industry and the state’s dominant utility, and became a vocal critic of data centers only after the boom became politically unpopular.

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Benitez-Thompson has defended the shift by drawing a distinction between the industry Nevada subsidized in 2015 and the one now expanding across the state. She told the Nevada Independent that no one in 2015 anticipated artificial intelligence would reach its current scale.

The debate has real financial stakes attached. Nevada has approved roughly $457 million in projected data-center tax abatements under the framework her earlier vote helped create, according to Nevada Independent reporting.

U.S. Rep. Dina Titus has separately asked Gov. Joe Lombardo to pause state tax abatements specifically for data-center projects proposed on federal land, citing water use, extreme heat and grid reliability concerns tied to the proposed Townsite Solar 2 project near Boulder City.

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Titus’s request is narrower than it might sound. It would pause abatements only for projects on federal land — not repeal Nevada’s broader incentive program, claw back subsidies already granted, or affect projects on private property, which make up the bulk of the $457 million already approved.

Nevada Democrats are scrambling to look tough on an industry some of them helped subsidize a decade ago. Whether that’s a genuine reversal or a political retreat depends on what happens to the other $457 million in tax breaks nobody in Carson City has proposed clawing back.