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Legislation currently advancing through the Michigan State Legislature would exempt new data centers from paying sales and use taxes in Michigan. Data centers are large users of both electricity and water, often don’t deliver on the jobs and investments that they promise, and raise an important question about exactly what kind of development and investment we need in Michigan.

After the devastating collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Michiganders are not ruling out a similar tragedy in the Great Lakes. After obtaining a public records request from the U.S. Coast Guard, a new report in the Detroit News discovered that Great Lakes freighters lost control or power more than 200 times between 2012 and May 2022, and crashed with stationary objects more than 60 times over the same decade. While the News notes that a freighter crash similar to the Key Bridge tragedy is unlikely with the Mackinac Bridge, there is a profound risk of damaging Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.