$1.4 million in tax breaks. Per job.

What Cloverleaf says.

The headline numbers from Cloverleaf's pitch to Lowndes County: $1.5 billion investment. ~$75 million in net annual tax revenue. Up to $10 million in community benefits via CACF. 1,000+ construction jobs. 50–100 permanent jobs after that.^E1E2

What that leaves out.

The $1.5 billion isn't Cloverleaf's. Cloverleaf is a developer, not the operator. The $1.5B belongs to whatever hyperscaler eventually buys the site — a tenant Cloverleaf has not named.^E3 Lowndes County will never have a contract with that hyperscaler. The county's contract is with Cloverleaf, who plans to sell and exit.

The $75 million is a ceiling, not a floor. Tax abatements are already on the table. Commissioner Dickson Farrior moved at the April commission meeting to deny any tax abatement, citing health, property values, and quality of life. The motion failed.^E4 Whatever abatements get granted are carved directly out of the $75M.

The $10M CACF “community benefit” is staged. The Lowndes Signal's reporting confirms the structure: $1M up front. $4M after the Energy Services Agreement and Public Service Commission approval. $5M paid out over five years post-construction start. If the project never gets built — which is what happened to Cloverleaf's Greenleaf, Wisconsin project — neither does most of the money.^E5

The per-job math.

Good Jobs First, the leading transparency NGO on state and local subsidies, has published the per-job public cost of subsidized data-center deals where it can be calculated:

• Illinois averages $1.4 million in public subsidy per data-center job. One Elk Grove project: 20 promised jobs for $51 million in sales-tax exemptions — $2.6M per job.^E7
• Ohio averages $1.4 million per job at Alphabet's data centers; $1.0 million at Meta's.
• Georgia, Virginia, and Texas each lose more than $1 billion per year in state tax revenue to data-center incentives.^E8

Cloverleaf has pitched “50 to 100 permanent jobs” at Project Red Clay.^E9 If the eventual abatement structure comes anywhere near the per-job costs documented in other states, Lowndes County's “net” tax revenue won't be net at all.

The transparency problem.

Good Jobs First reports that Texas spent $1 billion subsidizing data centers in FY 2025 and reported only the company names — no project-level subsidy amounts, no job creation, not even the locations.^E10 The pattern is the same across states: deals are negotiated in private, abatements are granted in public, and accountability for whether the promised jobs ever materialize is nowhere.

Lowndes County is being asked to repeat that pattern.

The question for the Commission.

• The full schedule of tax abatements being requested — by year, by tax line.
• The net revenue to Lowndes County after abatements, modeled across the abatement window.
• The actual permanent-job count, by title, by salary band, with a binding minimum and a clawback if it isn't hit.
• A binding clawback bond if the site is built and the operator walks — or if the project is never built at all.