RICHLAND PARISH, LA – Whether a data centre pays for anything you care about is decided before the first slab is poured. It is decided by what your local sales tax is already promised to, and by whether anybody is there to spend money.
In one Louisiana parish the sales tax was already dedicated to employee salaries. So the money thousands of workers spent there landed in school staff accounts.
Three people described this on the All-In podcast: Meta’s president, Louisiana’s economic development secretary and the superintendent. No person living near a data centre is quoted objecting. Every figure is recalled from memory, and this page says where the record differs.
Contents
The rule did it, and the company says so#
The clearest sentence comes from Meta’s president, Dina Powell McCormick.
“I’ll be very honest, this was not our idea. This actually happened because this law uh allows or in fact mandates that every extra dollar of tax surplus goes directly to the teachers.”
That is the mechanism, and nobody in the hour names the rule that carries it.
The superintendent says the parish has “a 1 cent and a 1/2 cent sales tax that’s dedicated to employee salaries”. The school board is also the majority collector: “The Richland Parish School Board collects 51% of the taxes for the district.”
A parish without it gets the building, not the cheque.
The superintendent ties it to headcount.
“I was able to see the sales tax collections go from 5% 10% which is normal for a school system to about 60 or 70%.”
“at that time the number of workers at the data center site increased.”
At the peak, he says, collections were up “about 260%”. The state page says so in writing, without the number. Construction activity, it reports, “has already boosted local sales and use tax collections, contributing to $50,000 teacher bonuses in Richland Parish”.
The law nobody mentions, and the part nobody can confirm#
The governor’s December 2024 announcement says the company “is expected to take advantage” of a state programme, Act 730 of 2024.
Read the act. It says an approved data centre gets back the state and local sales tax it paid, not just on the machines in the hall. It says it also covers “costs of construction and building materials … labor and installation services”. The rebate, it says, is “to be paid annually”, so the tax is paid first and returned later. The local half, it says, is “processed by the appropriate local taxing authority”. That is the parish, handing money back from its own account.
The act says the agreement runs “an initial term of twenty years”, and that the state “may renew the agreement for an additional ten years”.
Whether this project has been certified is published nowhere. The act wants a sworn attestation and a signed agreement. The governor’s page says expected. Nobody says done. Statute, rule and guidance are not the same thing, and a press release about one is none of the three.
The numbers, and the record#
The superintendent said a December cheque “went from roughly about $4,000 to about $8,000”. Then his certified employees “received an increase of about $40,000”. Two lines follow that the captions attribute to nobody: “$40,000 check.” and “They got a $50,000 check.”
The transcript marks a speaker change before both and names nobody. This page will not say who did.
A later line gives the previous year as $10,000 and the two increases as “a net of about $45,000”. $4,000 plus $40,000 is about $45,000.
The written record joins them up. Meta’s own page for that data centre says teachers “received annual bonuses of up to $50,000 – 400% higher than last year”.
The hour says “certified employees” once and “teachers” repeatedly, and nothing in the record defines either word.
No filing or study is produced for a single money figure. A company video plays and says “A multi-billion dollar capital investment like the one that Meta is making in Richland Parish.”
At least four written records exist. KNOE, a Louisiana television station, reported the payouts on 9 June, the day before they were due.
Citing unnamed sources, KNOE said a full share would be $50,935 certified, $17,472 classified. The previous year, it reports, $10,200 and $3,323. A rise from $10,200 to $50,935 is 399 percent, which the company rounds to 400.
Not everybody gets a full share. KNOE says they go “only to regular, full-time employees from one-cent collections on the sales tax”. It reports “First-year employees receive 1/4 share …”, rising to a full share at four years and “subject to the potential reductions mentioned above”. The count, it says, is of “total years of certified experience, including years of service earned outside of Richland Parish”.
KNOE carries the only attributed source for the $40,000. The president of the Northeast Federation of Teachers and School Employees called such an increase “not far-fetched” for some employees. Tax funds, that source said, had grown “almost 2,000%”. That is not the superintendent’s 260 percent, and neither says what it counts.
KNOE calls them the “13th checks”, paid at the end of the school year. The data centre did not create this payment. It made it big.
What the officials answered, and what they did not#
A host put the standard list: pollution, electricity bills, water, noise and the look of the buildings.
Susan Bourgeois, Louisiana’s economic development secretary, answered on water and power, and on pollution only as a question about the fuel. Noise and the look of the buildings got no answer at all.
The land had been farmland, she said, and Meta chose a cooling system that ”… uses less water than was being used … when it was being farmed”. On power she said the company “paid for its own generation”.
Those are spoken answers with no filing behind them, though the company page carries figures she did not use. It says the site “will utilize” a closed-loop system circulating “a glycol mixture”. It is not running yet. It says the company pays “the full costs for the energy used by our data center”. The page also says the company delivers “an expected $2.65 billion in customer savings over the next 20 years”.
What the hour leaves open#
Nobody sizes the rebate. The state secretary calls it “a sales tax exemption which is critical”, and stops. Whether the cheque counts towards a pension is never asked. KNOE and Meta’s page both describe a payment that recurs. Neither says it stays this size.
And nobody asks what happens when construction ends. The figures grew as the project grew from $10 billion to $50 billion. The governor’s page said “500 or more direct new jobs” in 2024; the state now says 1,000 or more. Every version puts permanent staff far below a peak crew of 5,000 or 7,500. The governor’s page says building is expected through 2030.
None of that means the parish is wrong to be pleased. The transferable part is not the number. It is the dedication rule, whether anybody will be spending nearby, and whether your state can hand tax back. How to check one.
Source: All-In Podcast, published 17 September 2026, 44 minutes, transcript pulled and read in order, then extracted with locators before drafting. The two Louisiana guests are on stage for about a third of it. The transcript names both Louisiana guests by first name only. The secretary’s surname comes from the governor’s page. The superintendent’s is nowhere, so this page prints none. The governor’s announcement and Act 730 are linked above. Three more pages carry claims here and are not linked, because this site admits only high authority sources: datacenters.atmeta.com, knoe.com and opportunitylouisiana.gov/data-center/meta. Nobody from this masthead was in Richland Parish.