Newtown’s State Rep Mitch Bolinsky (R-106), along with a bipartisan coalition of colleagues in the state House of Representatives, approved legislation that will encourage the development of data centers in Connecticut, with the possibility of thousands of high-tech and construction jobs.

The proposal, HB-6514, An Act Concerning Incentives for Qualified Data Centers to Locate in the State, is intended to help boost development in economically distressed areas, as well as leaving incentive decisions in the hands of local municipalities.

The state economic development department would then handle oversight of the centers to ensure that they made the minimum investments to qualify for the incentives.

“This proposal can make Connecticut very attractive to this kind of industry. Economic proposals like this are much needed in Connecticut, with our state having job growth of only 0.6% over the last several years. This is a signal to the business community that Connecticut is open for business,” said Rep Bolinsky. “Not only could this bill bring a whole new industry to the state, [but] the new data centers could generate 1,000 to 1,500 construction jobs at a time.”

A data center is a physical facility that enterprises use to house their business-critical applications and information. Data centers provide different functions depending on what the enterprise needs.

They can provide:

Computing: The memory and processing power to run the applications, generally provided by high-end servers.

Storage: Important enterprise data is generally housed in a data center, on media ranging from tape to solid-state drives, with multiple backups.

Networking: Interconnections between data center components and to the outside world, including routers, switches, application-delivery controllers, and more.

Governor Ned Lamont reacted to the vote saying, “Seeing the Connecticut House of Representatives approve this measure in a bipartisan way is exactly what our residents want to see when it comes to our commitment to economic growth and continuing our Connecticut comeback.

“Data centers are the backbone of the digital age, and with this growing need we are witnessing a significant period of national growth to build these infrastructures and create the corresponding jobs that support their operations,” Lamont added. “Connecticut needs to get in the game and bring this industry to our state. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to show the technology industry that Connecticut supports this sector and we welcome their development in our state.”