​​When the bills hit mailboxes in July 2025, the shock was as sharp as any tax hike in living memory. Families across New Castle County compared notes. “Revenue neutral,” officials had promised. But neutrality didn’t feel neutral when the average homeowner’s bill went up and Amazon’s went down — by millions.

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Behind those bills was a name most Delawareans had never heard: Tyler Technologies. Behind Tyler, another name everyone knew: Amazon, not at the retail counter this time, but quietly hosting the County’s most sensitive government data through Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The deeper question is not just about assessments or cloud contracts. It’s this: Why were residents never told by their elected officials that their private data — tax rolls, property records, even emergency systems — had been outsourced to a private vendor and stored on Amazon’s servers?

 

Ownership and Influence: The Wall Street Giants Behind Tyler

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Tyler Technologies is no mom-and-pop shop. It is a $20+ billion S&P 500 company, its shares controlled by the usual titans of Wall Street.

• The Vanguard Group — ~12.9% ownership

• BlackRock, Inc. — ~8–9%

• State Street Global Advisors — ~4.3%

• T. Rowe Price Investment Mgmt — ~3.7%

• Principal Global Investors, Geode Capital, Eaton Vance, Invesco, MFS — each 2–3%

(Source: Yahoo Finance – Institutional Holders)

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These aren’t active managers with policy agendas. They’re giant index funds. Their connection to Delaware politics is indirect — through pension funds, retirement accounts, and diversified portfolios. But their sheer scale makes Tyler a corporate heavyweight with little incentive to act like a local partner.

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Amazon itself does not own Tyler. Its role is more subtle — and more powerful.

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The AWS Deal: How Amazon Became Delaware’s Silent Data Host

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In 2019, Tyler signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with Amazon Web Services, later expanded into an eight-year deal in 2024. The agreement meant Tyler would migrate its flagship products — ERP, tax systems, open data portals, permitting, even emergency systems — onto AWS servers【investors.tylertech.com】.

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For Delaware and New Castle County, that meant this: when the County bought Tyler’s systems, it wasn’t just buying Tyler. It was buying Amazon’s cloud, too.

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• Open Checkbook (2017) — launched on Socrata (later acquired by Tyler), now runs on AWS【newcastlede.gov】.

• ERP Upgrade (2019–2020) — Tyler Munis for finance, HR, procurement; cloud-hosted on AWS【multibriefs.com】.

• Property Reassessment (2021–2023) — Tyler’s iasWorld appraisal software, delivered as SaaS on AWS【businesswire.com】.

• Public Safety — Delaware’s 911, fire/EMS, and law enforcement reporting through Tyler’s New World and Emergency Networking platforms, also AWS-hosted【firerescue1.com】.

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Every contract Delaware signed with Tyler carried, silently, a second partner. Not a line-item voted on by County Council. Not a public hearing. But a massive transfer of public data to Amazon’s servers nonetheless.

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The Flashpoint: Amazon’s $2.5 Million Tax Cut

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Then came the reassessment.

• Amazon’s Boxwood Road logistics hub was assessed at $108 million.

• Just two years earlier, the same property had sold for $392 million.

• The difference cut Amazon’s county tax bill from $3.5 million to $1 million — a $2.5 million annual savings【spotlightdelaware.org】【whyy.org】.

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Meanwhile, residential homeowners saw average increases of 15–30%. Wilmington’s downtown garages and office towers owned by banks also received deep cuts.

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Tyler’s defense? They applied the “income approach” — valuing properties based on rents, vacancies, and cap rates, not on sale prices. Standard industry practice.

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But optics matter. And the optics were devastating: Delaware’s data was stored on Amazon’s servers while Amazon itself walked away with one of the largest tax breaks in state history.

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Why Didn’t Residents Know?

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Here’s the political crux:

• At no point did New Castle County Council or the Meyer Administration (2017–2024) publicly emphasize that adopting Tyler meant handing resident data to AWS. The contracts were described in terms of “modernization” and “compliance,” not outsourcing to Amazon.

• Council Resolution R21-110 (June 8, 2021) authorized Tyler for reassessment, but did not detail AWS hosting【newcastlede.gov】.

• Budget hearings referenced project costs (ERP $2M+, reassessment $14M+), but not where the data would live.

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Why? Transparency has a political cost. If residents were told: “Your tax data, property records, and 911 systems will now sit on Amazon’s servers,” questions would follow: Who secures it? Who audits it? What if AWS suffers an outage or breach? Why is a trillion-dollar company benefiting from tax breaks while holding government data?

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Silence was easier.

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Guardrails Delaware Should Have Demanded​

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Other governments have already learned the hard way.

• North Carolina’s eCourts (Tyler’s Odyssey): wrongful arrests, litigation allowed to proceed【apnews.com】.

• Cook County, IL: cost overruns and delays in Tyler rollout【injusticewatch.org】.

• Tyler Ransomware (2020): exposed local government clients nationwide【reuters.com】.

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Delaware could have — and still can — demand stronger protections:

1. Full Disclosure — Contracts must plainly state where data resides and which third parties (AWS, NIC, etc.) are involved.

2. Exit Plans — Governments must own current copies of their data and force vendors to assist in migration if contracts end.

3. Independent Audits — Sample valuations, cap rate assumptions, and system integrity must be tested by an outside firm.

4. Multi-Cloud Strategy — Avoid concentration risk by requiring data portability across providers.

5. Public Reporting — Monthly updates on costs, data hosting, and appeals, published for residents to see.

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The Bigger Picture: Outsourcing Core Government Functions

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This is bigger than Delaware. Across the country, public functions — courts, tax rolls, 911, even elections — are increasingly outsourced to private firms and hosted on third-party clouds. The efficiencies are real. But so are the risks:

• Vendor Lock-In — Governments trapped in proprietary systems they can’t exit.

• Opaque Valuations — Families paying more while corporations pay less, with no visibility into the formulas.

• Public Trust — Undermined when taxpayers discover after the fact that Big Tech holds their data.

Delaware’s experience with Tyler and Amazon AWS is not just a case study in modernization. It is a warning: when elected officials don’t disclose the full story, the credibility of government suffers.

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Conclusion: Trust, Transparency, and the Next Chapter

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Modernization isn’t optional. Counties can’t run 40-year-old mainframes forever. But neither should modernization mean secrecy. Delawareans deserved to know that their data was leaving county servers for Amazon’s cloud. They deserved to know that a court-mandated reassessment would mean higher bills for homeowners and lower ones for corporations.

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The failure here wasn’t just technical. It was political. Leaders chose not to say plainly what was happening.

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That silence turned a modernization story into a trust crisis. And unless Delaware and New Castle County adopt stronger guardrails, this won’t be the last time residents wake up to find the fine print of a private contract has reshaped their public lives.

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Tyler and Amazon:The Cloud Partnership That Put Delaware’s Data — and Taxes—to the Test

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Why government outsourcing demands tougher guardrails

 

When Delaware and New Castle County signed on with Tyler Technologies, the pitch was modernization: faster systems, transparent finance, and compliance with a court order to finally update 40-year-old property assessments. Tyler, the largest dedicated provider of government software in the country, came with an impressive résumé — ERP systems, tax platforms, open data portals, and public safety software in dozens of states. And when Tyler signed a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the County’s data began moving to the cloud, promising speed and scalability.

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But what looks like progress on paper has raised uncomfortable questions in practice: Who really controls the data? Who benefits when assessments miss the mark? And what happens when a third party — like Amazon — is not your contractor but still sits at the center of your infrastructure?

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The Ownership Web: Vanguard, BlackRock, and Beyond

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Tyler Technologies (NYSE: TYL) is not owned by a single entity but by Wall Street giants. Vanguard (12.9%) and BlackRock (8–9%) are the largest shareholders, followed by State Street, T. Rowe Price, and other institutional investors【finance.yahoo.com】. Amazon does not hold equity in Tyler. Yet Amazon’s footprint looms large — not as a shareholder, but as the indispensable host of Tyler’s cloud services. Since 2019, Tyler’s AWS partnership has meant that critical county and state systems — from open checkbooks to reassessment databases — now sit on Amazon’s servers【investors.tylertech.com】.

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This isn’t unusual in the age of cloud computing. But it does mean that Delaware’s most sensitive public data — property rolls, tax records, even emergency reporting systems — are stored not on government-owned servers, but on the infrastructure of one of the world’s most powerful corporations.

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What Delaware Got — and What Went Wrong

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The promise:

• A modern ERP to replace 20-year-old county systems【multibriefs.com】.

• A new computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) system to fulfill a court-ordered reassessment【businesswire.com】.

• Transparent finance and spending dashboards powered by Tyler’s Socrata platform【newcastlede.gov】.

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The reality:

• By 2023, Tyler had valued Amazon’s $392 million Boxwood Road distribution center at only $108 million【spotlightdelaware.org】. That assessment cut Amazon’s county property tax bill by $2.5 million a year【whyy.org】.

• A Wilmington bank’s $22 million garage was assessed at $410,000【spotlightdelaware.org】.

• Homeowners saw increases while marquee corporations got relief — shifting the tax burden onto families【spotlightdelaware.org】【whyy.org】.

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Officials pointed to Tyler’s use of the income approach (based on rents, expenses, and cap rates) as the explanation. But the optics were brutal: Amazon’s servers hosted Delaware’s data while Amazon’s warehouses received some of the largest tax breaks in state history.

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Guardrails Governments Need

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Delaware’s experience is not unique. Other governments have seen problems with Tyler and similar vendors:

• North Carolina’s eCourts project sparked litigation over wrongful arrests tied to Tyler’s Odyssey rollout【apnews.com】.

• Bexar County, TX and Cook County, IL reported overruns and rollout delays【axios.com】【injusticewatch.org】.

• Tyler itself suffered a ransomware attack in 2020【reuters.com】, exposing the risks of centralizing government data with one vendor.

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So what should governments do?

1. Competitive Bidding with Teeth — Force real comparisons with Oracle, SAP, Accela, OpenGov, and others. No default sole-sourcing.

2. Exit Clauses & Data Escrow — Governments must own current exports of their data, with penalties if vendors block migration.

3. Multi-Cloud Strategy — Don’t let all critical infrastructure rest on Amazon AWS or any single provider.

4. Independent Audits — Contract a separate firm to test sample valuations, system outputs, and cloud security.

5. Transparency Mandates — Publish the model assumptions, cap rates, and ranges used in assessments. Citizens shouldn’t have to guess why Amazon pays less while they pay more.

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The Bigger Question

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The Tyler–Amazon partnership shows both the promise and peril of outsourcing government’s core functions. On the one hand, Delaware gained modern systems it could not have built alone. On the other, when one vendor controls ERP, tax rolls, emergency systems, and portals — all hosted on another corporation’s cloud — accountability blurs.

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Is this good or bad? The answer is that it depends on the guardrails. Without them, Delaware becomes a case study in public trust eroded by private contracts. With them, technology partnerships can modernize government without handing over the keys to the kingdom.

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The lesson is simple but urgent: modernization must never come at the cost of sovereignty over data, equity in taxation, or transparency in governance. Otherwise, the cloud partnership that was supposed to serve the people ends up serving everyone but them.

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Sources

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• Tyler Ownership: Yahoo Finance – Tyler Institutional Holders

• Tyler–AWS Agreement: Tyler Investor Relations – AWS Collaboration

• ERP Implementation: MultiBriefs – NCC ERP Modernization

• Reassessment Contract: New Castle County Resolution R21-110 | Businesswire – Delaware Counties Hire Tyler

• Reassessment Outcomes: Spotlight Delaware – Amazon Assessment | WHYY – Tax Burden Shift

• Vendor Problems Elsewhere: AP News – NC eCourts | Injustice Watch – Cook County | Axios – County Rollouts | Reuters – Tyler Ransomware

• Finance & Ownership: Yahoo Finance – Tyler Institutional Ownership

• Tyler–AWS Collaboration: Tyler Technologies Investor Release

• New Castle County Open Checkbook: NCC Transparency Portal

• ERP Implementation & Award: MultiBriefs on NCC ERP

• Reassessment Contracts: Delaware Business Times – Tyler Contract | Businesswire – Tyler Awarded Delaware Contracts

• Assessment Outcomes: Spotlight Delaware – Amazon Assessment | WHYY – Tax Burdens Shift

• Vendor Problems: AP News – NC eCourts | Axios – County Rollouts | Injustice Watch – Cook County | Reuters – Ransomware Incident​​​​