Oregon Gov DC Advisory Committee Meeting 5 / Jun 26 2026 / topic: energy affordability revenue incentives / draft report Jul 31 / final report Oct 2026 / 2027 legislative session implementation / SB 88 PUC Cost Allocation signed Jun 11 2026 / Enterprise Zone + SIP exemptions / Hillsboro Prineville Umatilla The Dalles geography

Plain-English version. Oregon is a top-5 state for data center capacity in the US: ~7-8% of all US data center build-out has been in Oregon over the last decade, concentrated in Hillsboro (the Washington County corridor west of Portland), Prineville (Crook County, home to Apple + Facebook campuses), Umatilla / Morrow County (Amazon Web Services), and The Dalles (Google). The Oregon data center industry has historically been driven by two structural factors: (a) PNW hydropower making electricity cheap and clean, and (b) statewide Enterprise Zone + Strategic Investment Program (SIP) tax exemptions that made local property tax exposure trivial. That combination is now under political pressure. Gov. Tina Kotek convened a statewide Data Center Advisory Committee in January 2026 via executive order. The committee's mandate is to produce policy recommendations covering siting, energy/water resource impacts, ratepayer protection, revenue (taxation), and incentives by October 2026. The committee includes representatives from the state energy department, utilities (PGE, PacifiCorp, Northwest Natural), Oregon CUB (the citizen utility ratepayer board), local jurisdictions, and industry. The committee has now held five meetings and two public listening sessions. Meeting 5 (yesterday, June 26) was specifically scoped to 'Energy Affordability, Revenue, and Incentives' — the Oregon equivalent of the Virginia tax conversation. The committee discussed: (1) whether to introduce a per-kWh data center electricity surcharge similar to Virginia (no formal recommendation yet); (2) how to allocate utility-driven transmission costs between data center customers and residential customers (an SCC-rate-class-equivalent question); (3) whether to narrow the Enterprise Zone and SIP exemptions that have driven Oregon's data center growth (politically hard — Crook County's tax base is heavily dependent on Apple + Facebook exemptions); (4) the water-rights question, which is acute in central and eastern Oregon where the Umatilla and Crook County data centers are. Procedural calendar: - **July 31, 2026**: committee discusses and deliberates the draft report. Public document at that point. - **October 2026**: final report and policy recommendations. - **2027 legislative session**: any new statutory changes (taxes, siting requirements) would have to be passed by the Oregon legislature in the 2027 session (Jan-July 2027). In parallel, Oregon's 2025-2026 short session already passed SB 88 (the Public Utility Cost Allocation bill, signed June 11, 2026), which creates a separate utility cost-allocation framework for data centers — Oregon's structural equivalent to Virginia's SCC January 2026 rate-class order. SB 88 means data center customers in PGE and PacifiCorp territory now face a separate rate-class proceeding at the Oregon PUC starting in 2027, regardless of what the Governor's advisory committee recommends.

Primary source · Oregon Department of Energy — Governor's Data Center Advisory Committee Meeting 5 Agenda (Jun 26 2026) + Davis Wright Tremaine — New Oregon Law Impacts Data Center Development Statewide + Oregon CUB — Oregon Still Needs More Protections Against Data Centers + Columbia Riverkeeper engagement materials ↗