(The Center Square) — Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois said rural parish leaders across the state began calling her asking whether they, too, could land a data center after news spread that some Richland Parish teachers received $50,000 year-end checks fueled by a surge in sales tax collections.

“The minute that got announced that y’all were giving $50,000 bonuses, I can’t tell you how many leaders of rural parishes in Louisiana called me and said, ‘Secretary, do y’all have any who are considering our parish? Please bring one here,’” Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois said during an appearance released Thursday on the All-In podcast.

Bourgeois appeared alongside Richland Parish Schools Superintendent Sheldon Jones during an episode of the podcast featuring Meta President and Vice Chair Dina Powell McCormick that focused on the company’s massive Hyperion data center under construction in northeast Louisiana.

Jones said the shift in Richland Parish became visible almost immediately as the number of workers at the Meta construction site increased beginning in December 2024.

The school system receives a share of local sales taxes. Jones said increases in collections that would ordinarily run around 5% to 10% climbed to 60% or 70% before peaking at roughly 260%.

The effect showed up directly in employee checks.

A distribution from the half-cent tax in December 2025 roughly doubled from about $4,000 the year before to about $8,000, Jones said. Then came the larger June distribution: a full-share certified employee who had received roughly $10,000 the previous year received more than $50,000 this year.

“If you take that December increase and the June increase, it was a net of about $45,000 for our teachers,” Jones said.

School district figures previously reported by the Richland Beacon-News put the June payment at $50,935 for full-share certified employees, up from $10,200 in 2025. Classified employees received $17,472, compared with $3,323 the year before.

The payments are not direct bonuses from Meta. They are distributions of dedicated local sales-tax revenue that swelled as thousands of workers and contractors descended on the parish to build the data center.

The windfall may also be changing Richland Parish’s ability to compete for teachers.

Powell McCormick said Jones had described a school system that once struggled to recruit educators but was now receiving calls from teachers around Louisiana interested in working there. Jones said the broader economic change could also help reverse a familiar problem for the rural parish: young people leaving for jobs elsewhere.

“Our best and our brightest,” Jones said, often leave for college and do not come back because the parish historically could not offer enough attractive jobs.

“Now we’re able to write our own narrative that if you want to leave and go, you can, but you don’t have to,” Jones said. “We have opportunity here for you here in Richland Parish.”

Meta announced in July that its Richland Parish investment had grown to more than $50 billion, with the campus planned for nearly 10 million square feet and 5 gigawatts of computing capacity. The state says construction could support 7,500 workers at its peak and the completed facility about 1,000 operational jobs.

But the benefits come alongside substantial public incentives. Louisiana law exempts eligible purchases and expenditures at certified data centers from state and local sales and use taxes, including equipment, construction materials and certain electrical infrastructure. The initial exemption can last 20 years and may be renewed for another 10.

Gov. Jeff Landry signed an executive order in June directing LED to develop additional protections for future data centers and other large electricity users seeking the exemption, including requirements related to ratepayers, grid reliability, local benefits and natural resources.

Bourgeois said the framework gives Louisiana more leverage to decide which projects it wants.

“We have a sales tax exemption, which is critical to be able to land an investment of this size and this scale,” Bourgeois said. “But now we get to really court who our partners are going to be.”

She and other state officials repeatedly held up Meta as the model.

Bourgeois said Meta had shouldered costs associated with new generation, grid improvements, resilience and storm recovery rather than simply shifting those expenses to existing customers.

Entergy Louisiana has described the arrangement somewhat more cautiously, saying Meta revenue will “significantly offset” infrastructure costs and that the company will share in costs for storm recovery, resiliency and other system expenses.

The debate over whether data centers ultimately lower or raise costs for existing electric customers remains active before regulators and lawmakers.

In Richland Parish, however, Bourgeois said the $50,000 teacher checks have produced a much simpler reaction from some local leaders.

“The global narrative is not happening in Louisiana,” she said.