Pete Ricketts Data Centers & AI Taxes Nebraska

Nebraska Data Centers Collected $836 Million in Tax Breaks Under the Law Pete Ricketts Signed. His Own Republican Successor Had to Shut Them Off.

As governor, Pete Ricketts signed the ImagiNE Nebraska Act. Since 2021, data centers have collected an estimated $836 million in tax breaks under Nebraska's incentives — until Gov. Jim Pillen barred new ones in July to 'protect our land and protect our water.' Ricketts has taken money from the companies and owns AI investments.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 16, 2026

Nebraska Data Centers Collected $836 Million in Tax Breaks Under the Law Pete Ricketts Signed. His Own Republican Successor Had to Shut Them Off. — Photo: Charlie Riedel / AP Photo, via The American Prospect

Nebraska's Republican governor, Jim Pillen, did something unusual this July. He signed an executive order cutting off new state tax breaks for data centers — the giant computer warehouses that run AI and eat up power and land.

"Nothing's changed. It's just simply we're not giving the farm away to do it," Pillen said, according to KETV. "That's why this is critical that we protect the people, that we protect our land and we protect our water."

The tax breaks Pillen shut off were built by the governor before him: Pete Ricketts, who is now a U.S. Senator running for reelection.

What Nebraska gave away

As governor, Ricketts signed LB1107 on August 17, 2020. It created the ImagiNE Nebraska Act — a new package of corporate tax breaks, including exemptions from property taxes, that took effect in 2021.

The American Prospect reported this week on what data centers got out of Nebraska's incentives. The figures come from Pillen's own office. From January 2021 through June 2026, data centers collected:

About $519 million in property tax exemptions on $15 billion worth of equipment, according to 10/11 NOW
About $317 million in tax credits, direct refunds and sales tax exemptions, per KETV

That's roughly $836 million. Facebook's data center in Papillion alone got about $311 million, the Prospect found.

What did Nebraskans get back? Not many jobs. Data centers employ few people once they're built. When Google broke ground on its $600 million Papillion data center in 2019, Rep. Don Bacon said the project was bringing in about 30 jobs. Bacon also said the Papillion data centers "use more power than the entire city of Lincoln."

Ricketts' explanation for why tech companies were coming? "The number one reason these technology companies are coming to Nebraska is our people." The Prospect's verdict was that as governor he "didn't extract anything" from the companies in return.

The backlash came after he left

Nebraskans have since turned against the build-out. Twelve counties have put at least temporary bans on new data centers, KETV reported. It took a Republican governor — not a Democrat — to say the state had been "giving the farm away."

Ricketts' position now is that data centers are "a community decision," the Prospect reports, citing the Lincoln Journal Star — leaving it to towns to bargain with some of the biggest companies in the world on their own.

Who's paying Ricketts

The Prospect also looked at who's paying for Ricketts' campaign:

Google's PAC has given his campaign $17,500 since 2023, according to its own FEC filings (the Prospect puts it at $20,000). Meta's PAC gave $2,500.
Kenneth Stinson, former chairman of Kiewit — a company that builds data centers — gave $200,000 to the Pete Ricketts Victory Fund.
Employees of Tenaska, which is planning what would be the largest data center in the country, have given $17,000 this cycle.

And Ricketts has more than $1.5 million invested in funds with AI holdings, according to his personal financial disclosures as reported by the Prospect. We've written about how he made an estimated $8.6 million in a single month without doing anything, and how the stock trading ban he's leading never makes anyone sell what they already own.

In Washington, more of the same

As a senator, Ricketts voted for Trump's budget bill, which made permanent a tax rule letting companies write off the full cost of their equipment right away. Microsoft's annual report says that rule saved it up to $12 billion in taxes, the Prospect reports, with billions more going to Facebook, Amazon and Google.

What the record shows

As governor, Pete Ricketts signed the law that created the ImagiNE Nebraska Act, and from 2021 through mid-2026 data centers collected about $836 million in Nebraska tax breaks — about $311 million for one Facebook facility — while creating few jobs. In July his Republican successor cut off new breaks to stop "giving the farm away." Ricketts has taken $17,500 from Google's PAC and $200,000 from a data-center builder's former chairman, and holds over $1.5 million in AI-linked investments.