Legislation that would extend Washington State's temporary tax breaks for companies building and operating data centers died this week, failing to attract enough support in the State House of Representatives for the body to take a vote on it, according to a report by the Columbia Basin Herald.

The bill ÔÇô which the State Senate passed in May ÔÇô would exempt data center users from sales and use taxes on servers bought before 1 April, 2021. The tax break currently on the books expires in April 2018.

Senator Janea Holmquist Newbry, one of the Senate bill's sponsors, said in a statement released in May, that the existing law, passed in March 2010, had already created more than 1,000 construction jobs, with hundreds more in the pipeline, awaiting approval for additional projects.

 "A year ago, we brought together Republicans and Democrats, business and labor to help pass this incentive," she said. "Since then, the Department of Revenue has approved seven projects to go forward with an investment of US$1bn-$2bn, and many construction workers who have been drawing unemployment now have jobs."

The most recent data center construction projects in Washington State include a VMware data center in Wenatchee (building leased from Sabey), a Dell project in Quincy, a Server Farm Realty facility in Moses Lake, and capacity expansions by Yahoo! and Microsoft, among others.