Two top Intel lobbyists sent a pointed letter to legislative leaders and to Gov. Kate Brown on Wednesday with an explicit warning that “Oregon could miss out altogether” on billions of dollars in new Intel spending if the Legislature doesn’t act urgently.

“Our window to compete with other states for these dollars is right now,” Oregon lobbyists Mike Freese and Danelle Romain wrote to the governor and legislative leadership in both parties.

Large chipmakers are moving rapidly to expand their factory network across the country and capitalize on $280 billion in federal assistance Congress approved last summer as part of the CHIPS Act. The lobbyists wrote that other states are bulking up their own incentive package and suggested Oregon isn’t keeping pace.

“Oregon has an extraordinary, limited-duration and time-sensitive opportunity to compete nationally for historic investments in semiconductor research and development and manufacturing, providing a massive benefit to our entire state,” Freese and Romain wrote in their letter, which reads as an undisguised warning from Oregon’s largest corporate employer.

Both Freese and Romain are registered lobbyists for Intel, as well as various other businesses and industry groups. They did not explicitly write they were speaking for the company but are well known in Salem.

Intel anchors the state’s chip industry, with 22,000 workers assigned to its campuses in Washington County. Semiconductors account for nearly half of Oregon’s exports, $13.3 billion in value last year alone, with most of those chips coming out of Intel’s factories in Hillsboro.

Intel already enjoys enormous property tax breaks worth more than $750 million over the past five years. The absence of a state sales tax saves Intel hundreds of millions more on the expensive equipment it uses to make its microprocessors and Oregon’s corporate income tax largely exempts chipmakers and other companies that sell most of their products to customers out of state.

Other states are offering an order of magnitude more, though.

Just Wednesday, New York announced it had secured a huge new factory from Idaho-based memory chipmaker Micron with $5.5 billion in state tax credits. Ohio lured two huge new Intel factories with $2 billion in public incentives, including a $600 million direct taxpayer subsidy.

Those states’ economies are among the nation’s largest. It’s unlikely Oregon could match those sums, and there might not be public sentiment to give away huge quantities of taxpayer dollars.