Overview
- House leaders released a conference report on Friday that preserves the data-center sales-and-use tax exemption and creates a 13-member Virginia Commission on Data Center Accountability to study impacts and report by Nov. 1, and Gov. Abigail Spanberger has endorsed the plan.
- Senate negotiators, led publicly by Sen. Louise Lucas, posted a counterproposal for a tiered state impact fee on data centers that they say would raise roughly $1.7 billion for state priorities.
- Speaker Don Scott asked the House clerk to cancel a planned session on Tuesday after budget conferees failed to reach agreement with the Senate, leaving the June 30/July 1 fiscal deadline and the risk of a government shutdown unresolved.
- Community leaders and some lawmakers in Northern Virginia are pressing for limits and mitigation of data-center growth, citing large water use for cooling, strain on electric grids, continuous noise, and rising local utility costs and budgets.
- The standoff forces a choice between preserving incentives to protect investment and adopting near-term revenue changes to fund education, Medicaid and other House spending priorities, and could prompt legal fights or shift future data-center investment away from Virginia.