* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news service…

During a more-than three hour House Revenue and Finance Committee hearing Wednesday in Chicago, the data center industry asked for breaks on sales taxes and job creation. Industry leaders said it would make Illinois more competitive with neighboring states that do offer the incentives.

House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, wasn’t a fan of the idea.

“I feel very uncomfortable that we are in a situation where if we want to compete, we may have to offer special deals to this group but not to that group, and at the end of the day I think we’re looking at something I think is hard for me to define as other than a little bit of corporate welfare and a little bit of corporate blackmail,” Currie said.

State Rep. David Harris, R-Arlington Heights, also questioned why one industry should get special preference over another.

But Phil Horstmann from data center company Ascent said without incentives, he doesn’t expect the industry to grow in Illinois.

“The simple fact is that it’s not economically viable to come here anymore,” Horstmann said.

Lance Alvarez, who helps select data center sites for Microsoft, said the company does “a tax analysis for all states and Illinois ranks in the bottom 3rd. Currently, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri and Minnesota offer incentives to attract data centers.”

He said Illinois doesn’t provide a level playing field to attract multi-billion-dollar data center investments.