Iowa hopes to draw ‘Web search portal businesses’ with a new law ...

covers electricity, cooling towers, “business-owned substations” and even “back-up power generation fuel.” To qualify, businesses must spend at least $200 million in Iowa over six years, starting with “site preparation activities,” and they have until 2009 to buy or lease land. Businesses that don’t invest $160 million the first six years owe all exempted taxes. The law broadly defines a qualifying business: “An entity whose business among other businesses is to provide a search portal to organize information; to access, search, and navigate the Internet, including research and development to support capabilities to organize information; or to provide Internet access, navigation, or search functionalities.” The law raised the eyebrow of at least one lawmaker, Senator Jeff Angelo, who said it tracked one passed last year that “lured” Google to open a data center in Council Bluffs. “Why pass a new package every time, when we could simply put the breaks in place to lure high-wage, high-tech jobs year-round” -- instead of writing a bill seemingly designed for Microsoft, “which has expressed interest in Iowa,” Angelo said on his blog. A “lobbyist declaration” listed three Microsoft lobbyists as supporting the bill and lobbyists for media companies Mediacom Communications and Meredith as “undecided.” But Angelo endorsed the law’s broad definition, saying it will give Iowa school graduates economic reasons to stay there if a broad range of businesses moves in. Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, sneered at the law’s required high investment and fiscal impact statement, which predicted that only two buildings for businesses would be built and that the law will cost Iowa roughly $36 million through fiscal 2012.