Who Holds the Risk?

01The short version

New material on this page is marked New. Everything else is a short summary with a link to the full page where we documented it.

02The chain, in one picture

flowchart TD
  A["Developer
owns the land"] --> B["A PID is created
(often the developer
is the only owner)"]
  B --> C["PID borrows
for roads, water,
sewer"]
  C --> D["Homebuyers pay
an extra tax
for decades"]
  A --> E["Same land in a
tax increment area
(CRA, MIDA, UIPA)"]
  E --> F["New taxes go
to the project,
not schools or county"]
  F --> G["Cut services or
raise the rate on
everyone else"]
  A --> H["Data centers:
sales-tax break,
no strings"]
  

Read the mechanism in full: PID Mechanism Map · PIDs, Schools & Bonding.

03Who carries the risk

Tap a tile to flip it.

04What a home pays

A PID can charge up to 0.015 per dollar of taxable value under state law, though many set a lower limit in their own governing document. A primary home in Utah is taxed on 55% of its value; a second home or rental on 100%.

05NewIf someone stops paying

Here is what the law and the documents we have show, step by step.

1. The PID tax is collected with the regular property tax bill. If it isn't paid, the property becomes delinquent, the same as for any unpaid property tax.
2. About four years later, the home can be sold. Utah Code 59-2-1343 makes property that is not redeemed by March 15 after four years of delinquency subject to the county tax sale. Utah County's tax-sale page says properties in its sale are "at least five years delinquent." The owner can stop the sale by paying everything owed before it happens. Utah has no buy-back period after the sale.
3. The district charges one rate to every property in it. It can raise that rate only up to the limit in its governing document. Tooele Valley PID's limit, for example, is 0.006; its governing document puts no dollar cap on how much it can borrow.
4. If the rate is already at the limit and a big owner stops paying, the shortfall falls on reserves and then on the investors. State law says a PID's "financial burden" is "borne solely by the public infrastructure district" and not by the creating entity, the state or any other government.
5. A district can't simply close. Tooele Valley PID's governing document says it dissolves only after all its debt is paid or discharged. The State Auditor has said Utah has no law laying out how to wind down a district that fails.

06NewIf a data center goes dark

The servers and chips inside a data center are replaced every few years; the deals around the buildings run for decades. One Fortune opinion piece (Ricardo Semler, Sept. 18, 2026) puts server and networking equipment at 3 to 6 years, cooling and electrical at 7 to 15, and buildings at 30 to 60. Here is what the documents say happens if a campus closes.

Stratos (Box Elder County, MIDA)

• The county's "minimum" depends on power being sold. In the county agreement (posted by Box Elder County as Agreement 26-15), MIDA promises the county at least $10,000 a year per megawatt of generation "installed," but the way it promises to get there is to "adjust the MET," the 0.5% Municipal Energy Tax on energy sold to the data centers. If little or no power is sold, raising the rate on it raises little or nothing. The agreement doesn't say what happens then.
• The one sure cash: three annual payments of $5.4 million from the developer, starting within 30 days of the first building permit.
• The data center's special property-tax payment does not go to the county. The agreement lists its uses as public infrastructure, the military and payments to the state.
• No closing rules. The agreement runs 50 years and contains no provision for a campus that stops operating, sits empty or shrinks, and no cleanup or removal requirement.
• The developer agreement (a draft): if the developer breaches, the only remedy is a lawsuit to enforce it; neither side can end it or collect money damages. MIDA's own document page has said its copies remain "draft and unsigned" during the referendum. The county's posted copy is dated May 4, 2026.

The statewide sales-tax break (rewritten by S.B. 114 in 2020)

• No jobs, wage or investment requirement, no end date, and no requirement to report what it saves.
• It covers "replacement parts" that last a year or more, so each new round of equipment is also exempt.
• Because nothing was promised in return, there is nothing to pay back if a data center leaves. See S.B. 114, Line by Line.

Tooele Valley (Inland Port Authority)

• A separate PID issued $33 million in bonds for roads, water and sewer serving the site.
• Its governing document says approving it "shall not be construed as a guarantee by UIPA of payment of the District's obligations."
• The data center is paused: Tooele County paused new data center applications, and Utah News Dispatch reported (Sept. 3, 2026) that UIPA was not slated to consider financing the project area "any time soon — if at all."

Power for one customer

• The Williams Companies' Eagle Mountain gas plant will sell 520 megawatts to Meta under a 12.5-year contract, per its Public Service Commission filing. Power plants run for decades. We have not seen what happens to the plant after year 12.5.
• Stratos's power is planned for the campus itself, not the public grid. Nothing we've read says what happens to it if the campus closes.

07Real cases, already on the record

Statewide: PIDs had issued about $5.27 billion in bonds as of Aug. 7, 2026, per figures the State Auditor's office confirmed to the Hive, up from roughly $3.8–4 billion at the end of 2025. The Legislature's research office counted about 204 PIDs as of Jan. 1, 2026; KPCW reported 221 by late August, 71 of which had issued debt.

08NewWhat MIDA and UIPA keep, spend and owe

Both run largely on a share of the new taxes inside their project areas instead of a tax rate of their own.

MIDA: proposed budget for the year ending June 30, 2027

From MIDA's own budget filing on the state public notice site. Stratos has no budget line yet. Transparent Utah states that the State Auditor does not audit MIDA; a private firm does.

MIDA and district borrowing on record

These are amounts borrowed, not what is still owed. The balance owed is in MIDA's annual audited report on Transparent Utah, which we have not yet reviewed.

UIPA: proposed budget for the year ending June 30, 2027

• Money in: about $45.5 million, of which $36.3 million is listed as "State of Utah" and about $2.1 million as "Property tax differential."
• Money out: about $34.7 million, including $19.2 million in transfers to other funds and $6.1 million in salaries (up from $3.2 million two years earlier).
• Debt: a $150 million bond issued in December 2021, backed by tax differential from its Salt Lake City area; about $6.5 million a year goes to it.
• A labeling question: UIPA's 2025 budget listed property tax differential at $15–30 million a year; this filing lists about $2 million under that name. The filing doesn't explain the difference. It may be a change in labels; we have not confirmed that.

09What's protected, and what isn't

10The fair side

11Map

The districts and data center areas on this page. Pins are approximate.

12Questions to ask, and whom to ask

13What this doesn't show

• Whether any particular district will fail. This page shows what the documents say would happen, not a prediction.
• The default terms in each bond's official statement. We have not yet read them for Nordic Village, Mountain Village or Wohali.
• How much MIDA and UIPA still owe. The amounts above are what they borrowed.
• Actual PID tax rates for every district this year. The calculator uses limits from governing documents and state law.
• Whether tax sales have already happened inside any Utah PID.
• The Stratos signature status. MIDA has described its copies as unsigned drafts; the county posted a copy dated May 4, 2026.

14Read more