The city’s own economic-development philosophy argues that El Paso needs the kind of investment that a hyperscale data center represents – private capital, a new industrial operation, an expansion of the taxbase and a connection to a global company operating in an industry far removed from the city’s traditional economic base.
The META 380 Agreement ticks off the right economic development boxes but when compared to Woody Hunt’s August 2022 study it shows that it fails El Paso’s economic development needs.
On August 16, 2022, Woody Hunt released The Perryman Group, “Developing the El Paso Economy: Key to Supporting Local Needs” study he commissioned through his foundation to a select group of El Pasoans. On the surface, the study supports the incentives for economic development that META received. It argues for more private-sector economic activity and that incentives are an important weapon in competing for corporate investment.
City officials have argued that the agreement with META is a win for El Paso because it will generate jobs and taxes for the city. But is that true?
The question El Paso’s taxpayers need to answer is whether the Wurldwide LLC agreement, under which META is building its controversial datacenter serves its purpose of jobs and taxes.
The Study’s Argument for Economic Development but Not Corporate Giveaways
The Hunt commissioned report begins with a diagnosis that few in El Paso would dispute. Compared with other major Texas cities, El Paso has lower household incomes, lower productivity and significantly lower concentrations of employment in industries associated with higher earnings, including manufacturing, information, financial services and professional services.
The report concludes that El Paso needs more private-sector economic activity.
But study does not argue that every new business deserves a subsidy.
Hunt’s study makes an important distinction between primary economic activity and activity that merely follows existing economic activity. A primary business activity sells goods or services outside of El Paso bringing in money into the local economy. It is their growth that creates an economy for the secondary economy communities need to prosper.
That is the important point in the META debate, are the incentives delivering a primary business activity?
A major datacenter can reasonably be characterized as a primary economic activity. It is part of a global technology operation, rather than a business dependent primarily upon El Paso’s consumers. The META project fits this basic economic-development model described by the study.
But that is only the beginning of the analysis.
The Report’s Real Test: What does El Paso Get from the META Deal?
The study acknowledges that companies have the incentive to negotiate the largest package they can get. El Paso, meanwhile, is competing against other communities for that investment.
That makes incentives a legitimate part of the economic-development process.
But the report draws a bright line between necessary incentives and excessive incentives.
The report says the ideal incentive package should provide the “tipping point” necessary to attract a project while simultaneously producing an appropriate return on the public investment. It acknowledges that such calculations cannot always be made with mathematical precision but insists that economic-development professionals should use available information to move toward the objective of propelling El Paso’s economy forward.
Did the people negotiating and approving the META datacenter deal achieve the goal of increasing jobs and reducing tax burdens? In other words, did those negotiating the deal with META offer more than was necessary? More important is whether the resulting jobs, wages, tax revenue and other economic benefits are sufficient to justify what taxpayers gave up?
The 380 Agreement’s Numbers Deserve Scrutiny
Under the agreement, Wurldwide committed to at least $800 million in investment. That has since increased with the involvement of BlackRock, but the underlining metrics remain. The agreement provides that the company may receive an annual property-tax grant equal to 80 percent of the city’s property-tax revenue attributable to the datacenter, with the initial phase eligible for 15 consecutive annual grants. Additional phases can qualify for additional 15-year grant periods, in essence giving META 30-years, or more of the tax incentives.
And while the contract requires at least an $800 million investment, it explicitly states that the company has no obligation to construct the project and may elect not to construct the project or any phase of it.
This does not necessarily make the agreement bad. But does the agreement benefit the El Paso taxpayer?
Under the agreement, the city committed future public revenues to an extraordinarily long economic development project that has become controversial not because of the incentives, but rather by rising concerns over the pressure it puts on El Paso’s electric and water resources.
The question before El Pasoans today is, does Woody Hunt’s report support the META datacenter agreement? In other words, notwithstanding electricity and water, what does El Paso receive in return from META for the lucrative tax incentives?
Fifty Jobs
Fifty jobs are a surprisingly small employment commitment for the tax incentives. This is where Hunt’s study provides perhaps the strongest basis for criticizing the META agreement.
The 380 Agreement requires the company to eventually provide at least 50 full-time jobs, collectively across all phases, and maintain those jobs during the applicable grant years. The contract does not require 50 jobs for each datacenter phase.
The agreement defines a qualifying full-time job as one paying at least the area’s median wage, which is defined initially as $16.43 per hour under the contract’s wage floor.
That is where the agreement and Hunt’s study diverge.
Hunt’s study recommends that the highest levels of incentives be reserved for projects paying approximately $20 per hour or more, because it estimates that about $19.86 per hour is needed for each job to exceed the city’s corresponding costs in the agreement. That was four years ago.
In other words, Hunt’s economic-development philosophy is not simply about counting jobs, but about the quality of the jobs.
More important is that the 50 jobs and the size of the investment is striking.
The agreement’s initial investment commitment was $800 million. The investment in the datacenter has since mushroomed to $14 billion but the job commitment of 50 jobs remains.
This means the agreement does not require anything approaching a conventional relationship between the scale of the incentive and the number of permanent jobs it creates.
Quite simply, the El Paso META datacenter investment is $14 billion and the 50 jobs it promises will only deliver around $1.7 million each year to El Paso’s economy in the form of jobs over the next 15 years, assuming all goes according to plan.
That is less than one percent of the total investment over 15 years.
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To be fair, construction employment can be substantial, and the city and META have subsequently described thousands of construction jobs and a much larger eventual operational workforce as the project has expanded. META announced in March 2026 that its El Paso investment had grown to more than $10 billion and that the facility was expected to support more than 300 jobs once completed.
But this only reinforces the question:
Why wasn’t the original agreement written around the economic benefits the city is actually expected to receive?
Moreover, META can make promises about jobs but without a mechanism to hold them accountable to the promises the city is limited in holding META accountable to them.
The Strongest Argument for the META Deal is Also Its Weakest Argument
Supporters of the project argue that the project represents a significant private investment, adds commercial and industrial property to the tax base and produces revenue that would otherwise not exist. The city estimates approximately $83.4 million in net collections for each phase of the five-phase project, while estimating that the combined city-and-county incentives are about $110 million for Phase 1 and potentially $550 million across all phases.
These arguments are supported by Hunt’s economic development study.
A city with low household incomes and relatively high tax burdens can benefit when private investment expands the commercial tax base. New workers spend money locally. Businesses generate economic activity. Commercial development can eventually reduce the relative burden placed upon residential taxpayers.
But the underlining question is whether an 80% tax incentive was appropriate?
Hunt’s paper argues that the proper incentive should be the amount necessary to make the project competitive and not simply the largest amount META can negotiate.
The Public-Risk Question
There is another issue that Hunt’s economic development study makes that is impossible to ignore.
The study argues that communities must use public resources efficiently and must optimize the return on their investment. This means the city’s economic-development calculation cannot stop at the value of the datacenter. It must also account for what the city must provide to make the project possible.
For El Paso that includes roads, water, wastewater and electricity.
The 380 agreement itself provides for significant improvements to Stan Roberts Sr. Avenue and contemplates a separate water and wastewater agreement with the El Paso water utility.
This is where the rising controversies over electricity and water intersect with the study. Will El Paso’s ratepayers also pay for the datacenter’s utilities through utility rate increases?
Earlier this year, the city opposed El Paso Electric’s proposed 366-megawatt McCloud natural-gas generation facility, saying the proposal raised concerns about affordability, infrastructure and the potential financial burden on existing ratepayers. The plant is [intended to serve the Wurldwide/Meta datacenter] during a transition period.
The almost $500 million natural gas-powered electrical plant is pending before the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC). The PUC is expected to rule on it in October. If completed next year as planned, the electricity generating plant would provide 100% of the datacenter’s electrical needs for the first five years. And, although META proposes to fund the project during the first five years, the electricity-generating plant is expected to connect to El Paso’s electric grid after five years leaving open the question of whether El Paso’s ratepayers will pay to build it. META has not committed to paying for its construction.
The economic development study argued that incentives should be weighed against the costs to the city’s taxpayers. That includes associated costs like building electricity capacity. This analysis was not part of META’s 380 Agreement.
The Controversy Is No Longer About Taxes
In February 2026, the city council authorized development of a broader datacenter policy framework focused on community engagement, utilities, infrastructure and the long-term impacts of datacenters.
The city’s subsequent draft policy framework identified recurring public concerns about water and energy use, transparency, economic incentives, utility rates and environmental impacts. It specifically reported that some participants considered the 80 percent tax incentive unnecessary and questioned whether the jobs justified the incentive.
These new developments and concerns do not make the original META 380 Agreement necessarily bad but they show that the people who developed the agreement for the city did not include a full analysis of whether it would benefit El Pasoans, especially when Hunt’s economic development study in 2022 argued for the need for these types of analysis.
The BlackRock Question
The economics of the datacenter became even more complicated in July 2026, when META announced a strategic venture with BlackRock to develop the El Paso datacenter.
Under the arrangement, BlackRock-managed funds will own 80 percent of the venture while META retaines 20 percent. META said the total development cost would be approximately $14 billion, with approximately $12.5 billion financed through debt. META will contribute the assets of land and construction-in-progress, valued at approximately $2.3 billion.
This development does not invalidate the city’s agreement, but it raises a legitimate question about the agreement.
The city’s 380 agreement is with Wurldwide LLC, not with a generic concept called “economic development.” The contract contains detailed obligations concerning investment, employment, construction and tax grants.
When ownership and financing structures change, residents are entitled to ask whether the economic assumptions that justified the original bargain remain valid.
The city has said the agreements remain enforceable and contain performance requirements and remedies. That seems reassuring as a matter of law, but it does not settle the larger economic question.
Hunt’s study does not argue against the META agreement, but it provides an important test for it.
The report explicitly says that incentives can be essential to an effective growth strategy. It says communities should be proactive in attracting new economic activity and recognizes that tax relief can be offset by the broader fiscal benefits generated by new business activity.
But the study strongly argues that incentives should be prudent, rational and efficient.
Under Hunt’s framework, El Paso should ask five fundamental questions about the META datacenter:
First, was the incentive actually necessary? Would META have located in El Paso without an 80% property tax incentive, or would a smaller incentive have been sufficient?
Second, are the permanent jobs sufficient in number and quality to justify the public investment? Fifty jobs appear difficult to reconcile against an $800 million initial investment commitment, now a $14 billion investment particularly when the study recommends much stronger job and wage standards for the highest levels of incentives.
Third, does the project generate a genuine benefit after accounting for infrastructure and public-service costs? The gross value of a new tax base is not the same thing as its financial benefit.
Fourth, are El Paso residents receiving a proportionate share of the economic opportunity? A project can be physically located in El Paso without necessarily producing the maximum possible employment and contracting benefits for El Paso residents, raising the question of whether the incentives traded for the meager jobs were necessary to begin with?
And fifth, does the deal maximize the return on the public resources being committed?
This last question is at the heart of the matter.
El Paso needs economic development. That does not mean El Paso needs every economic development deal.
Hunt’s economic diagnosis of El Paso remains relevant – the city has too little high-value private-sector activity and too great a dependence on sectors that do not generate the same levels of income and productivity found elsewhere in Texas, i.e. a government labor force working in infrastructure that does not generate property taxes.
The fundamental failure of META’s agreement rests squarely on the city officials who negotiated it and approved it.
Did El Paso intelligently negotiate the tax-incentives agreement with META or were they simply looking to promote an economic “win” for the city at the cost of future problems like the one being experienced today?
If the city is offering millions – or potentially hundreds of millions – of dollars in future tax revenue, it should demand something in return – substantial permanent employment, wages meaningfully above local averages, local hiring, local contracting, infrastructure commitments, environmental safeguards and measurable fiscal benefits.
That would be entirely consistent with Hunt’s economic development study released the year before the city agreed to offer META lucrative incentives.
The study does not argue that El Paso should reject the META agreement, but it tells El Paso how to negotiate it.
This is where today’s META debate lies. The debate should not center around “jobs versus taxes,” or “development versus the environment,” but whether the META agreement justifies the public investment?
Are the promised 50 jobs worth around $1.7 million annually worth the tax incentives it gives away during the first 15 years’ worth it for El Paso?
Who negotiated the META deal and who approved it is who should be held accountable today, not whether canceling the agreement today resolves the controversy? Holding the people behind the agreement accountable is the first step in addressing the problem.
The solution to the problem is identifying what the city can do now to move forward, not by arguing that the potential revenues benefits the city’s taxpayers but what lessons were learned for future projects, and more importantly identifying those who failed and what steps can be taken to force META to protect the city’s ratepayers from electricity and water hikes.
The El Paso City Council and the El Paso County Commissioners have bureaucratic tools in their arsenals to force META to protect the ratepayers but only if they hold accountable those who failed the community in the negotiations and by willing to acknowledge the agreement is flawed necessitating the creative applications of their many governmental tools at their disposal.
Woody Hunt commissioned a report that he released to a select group of people on August 16, 2022, that outlines where the META agreement fails and how. It is the blueprint for El Paso’s stagnant economy, and it identifies how the META agreement can be fixed through creative thinking.
Cover photograph: Woody Hunt with the cover of “Developing the El Paso Economy”, June 2022, photograph via MountainStar Sports Group.
Don”t you think it is pretty clear by now that the City did not know what it was doing when it agreed to the Meta deal?