Everyone in Birmingham has spent three months arguing about this document. It is three pages. Most of what gets attributed to it is not in it.
Most recent proposals expect a break just on sales tax. Both Texas Senate candidates have come out against itsales tax breaks. Claude writes
Important facts
The Industrial Development Board of the City of Birmingham adopted the resolution on May 29, 2026, certified by Secretary Tatianna Turrentine-Long. The beneficiaries are Nebius Inc., a Delaware corporation, and Alabama ADC Holdings, LLC, its wholly owned Delaware subsidiary, plus their successors and assigns. The parent, Nebius Group N.V., is Amsterdam-based and does not appear in the text.
The project is a multi-building AI data center spanning eleven listed parcels on Milan Parkway, Lakeshore Parkway and Venice Road, Birmingham 35211.
Two abatements, both under Alabama’s Tax Incentive Reform Act of 1992: 65 percent of all state and local noneducational ad valorem taxes for up to thirty years, and 80 percent of all construction-related transaction taxes for up to thirty years, excluding local construction taxes levied for education or education capital improvements. The Board found the project a qualifying data processing center under Section 40-9B-3.
One number appears in the entire document: projected total investment over 30 years of approximately $35,890,000,000.
What the resolution does
Six operative sections. Section 2 grants the abatements to the fullest extent the Act permits and states that the Board intends the grant to sweep in every abatement Section 40-9B-4 authorizes for data processing centers. Section 4 authorizes the Chairman to execute an abatement agreement in whatever form he deems appropriate, on counsel’s advice. Sections 5 and 6 give the Chairman and the officers open-ended authority to act in their sole discretion.
What is not here: no vote tally, no job count, no dollar value for the abatements, no clawback language. Reporting that attributes those to the resolution — the 6-0 vote, 78 jobs at more than $90,000, proportional repayment — is drawing on the attached applications and the separate 16-page agreement, reported at $3.234 billion in abatements. Both are referenced here as attachments, not reproduced.
Author and credits
Issued by the Industrial Development Board of the City of Birmingham, Alabama — seven members appointed by the City Council, operating independently of the city. Adopted May 29, 2026; certified by the Board Secretary. The first page calls it a public meeting, the certification page a special meeting. Chair David Perry has defended the package publicly.
Link
Certified copy of the resolution, adopted May 29, 2026 (PDF on file; no public canonical URL located).
Summary
This is an enabling document, not a deal. The Board makes its findings — that the applications supported a cost/benefit analysis, that the project qualifies, that abatements are desirable to induce the companies to proceed — and then hands the actual terms to its Chairman.
That cuts both ways. Opponents describing a multibillion-dollar giveaway are describing the agreement, which this resolution authorizes but does not contain. And Mayor Randall Woodfin’s insistence that the city gave Nebius nothing is technically consistent with a document no city official votes on — while the Council appoints every member who does.
Conclusions
The resolution lands on one thing: maximum abatement, maximum term, construed as broadly as the statute allows. It takes no position on power, water, noise, or the litigation in Jefferson County Circuit Court, where the next hearing is set for March 8. It does not say what the abatements are worth. Anyone quoting the IDB resolution on jobs or clawbacks is quoting something else.
edited and authored by Dave with close collaboration by Claude