THE COMMONWEALTH THIS WEEK

September 27-October 03, 2026 | Virginia This Week

THE BIG PICTURE

This was the week Virginia stopped debating whether the data-center industry had grown too big to question and started answering that question in three places at once. On Monday, Henrico — a county with 37 data centers already standing and 17 more in the pipeline — tightened the zoning rules that made it the Richmond region's hyperscale hub. The same day, Prince William supervisors shrank the Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District that was the structural scaffolding of their own build-out. By Thursday, Gov. Abigail Spanberger had rolled out the 2026 Virginia Energy Plan, built around the premise that data centers should bear more of the grid costs they create, and the General Assembly had advanced a $205 billion budget containing a new tax on those same facilities. Loudoun, meanwhile, kept moving toward the 12-month pause its lawyers say they can legally impose.

Put these together and the pattern is unmistakable: the Commonwealth is in the middle of a coordinated, cross-institutional repricing of the industry it spent two decades courting. It is happening in county zoning offices, in the governor's energy framework, in a budget bill, and in the SCC dockets that will translate all of it into kilowatt-hour terms. The developers who treated Virginia as a frictionless jurisdiction now face a different map, in which Henrico, Prince William, and Loudoun — three of the state's five most important data-center counties — have all moved against by-right expansion within a 15-day window.

The remaining question is who pays for what, and the week's quieter signals — Appalachian Power's rate hike complaints, a Dominion-NextEra merger review heading to Fairfax, Verizon's stalled copper retirement — all orbit the same gravitational center. Virginia's electricity bill, in every sense of the phrase, is finally being itemized.

THIS WEEK IN VIRGINIA

Henrico and Prince William tighten the screws on the same Monday

In a single day, two of Virginia's most important data-center jurisdictions pulled back the welcome mat. Henrico County adopted zoning changes Monday, September 29, limiting new data centers in a county that already hosts 37 of them with roughly 17 more previously approved and in the pipeline, per Virginia Business. Hours later, the Prince William Board of Supervisors voted to shrink the county's Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District — the designation that had functioned as the structural invitation for large-scale projects, per Virginia Business reporting on Northern Virginia.

Neither action bans the industry. Both change the default. Henrico's move matters because it is the first Richmond-region county to codify restraint; until this week, the greater Richmond market was where developers went when Northern Virginia got complicated. Prince William's shrinkage of its overlay district is the more technically significant act — it removes land from the by-right pool, forcing projects into legislative review on a case-by-case basis.

For developers, the message read in combination with Loudoun's parallel work on a 12-month pause and reconsidered grandfather rights (set for an October 6 legal opinion and an October 20 policy vote, per Loudoun County) is that there is no obvious next county to run to. The three jurisdictions that account for the bulk of Virginia's hyperscale footprint are now, within 15 days of each other, moving in the same direction.

Watch October 6 and October 20 in Loudoun. If grandfathering protections for 17 pending applications are narrowed or removed, Northern Virginia's entitlement environment changes materially, with litigation almost certain.

Spanberger's energy plan and a $205 billion budget converge on the same bill

Gov. Spanberger unveiled the 2026 Virginia Energy Plan on Thursday, October 1, framing it as a push for "affordable, reliable" power that can support growth while keeping the Commonwealth on course for net-zero electricity by 2050, per the governor's office. The plan was built from more than 3,000 survey responses, six regional meetings, a town hall, and 20 industry listening sessions, and it links Virginia's energy future directly to the data-center boom — with the explicit goal of making the industry bear more of the grid costs it creates. Fox 5 covered the rollout as part of its Virginia tag coverage.

That plan does not sit alone. Legislators advanced a $205 billion budget this week that includes a new tax on data centers, per Virginia Mercury's reporting flagged in Google News. The energy plan and the budget are now pointed at the same target from two sides — regulatory accountability and direct fiscal extraction — and they build on the broader data-center framework Spanberger issued September 18, which called for banning NDAs on commercial projects, ending by-right approvals for very large facilities, and tightening environmental review, per the governor's September release.

For ratepayers, the operative question is whether the "data centers pay their own way" principle survives contact with the 2027 session and the SCC's cost-allocation proceedings. The governor has now committed the executive branch to that principle in print. The budget has committed the legislature to it in dollars. The hard part — translating both into tariff design — comes next.

Richmond's Diamond District promise meets a lawsuit

The ownership group behind the Richmond Flying Squirrels — Navigators Baseball — has sued the city and its development partners in Richmond Circuit Court, alleging breach of contract and constructive fraud over the stalled Diamond District redevelopment, per Virginia Business. The complaint, filed September 10, says the promised mixed-use neighborhood around CarMax Park has failed to materialize, and that the delays are damaging operations, revenue, and planned events.

The filing predates this week's window but it hangs over Richmond's fall in a way that only grew heavier. The city is heading into a budget cycle in which it is already seeking $100 million in sewer money from the General Assembly and struggling to find votes for its solar ambitions. The Diamond District was supposed to be the counterweight — the visible proof that Richmond can deliver a modern public-private project at scale. A lawsuit from the anchor tenant is the opposite of that proof.

Watch how the city responds. If Richmond settles quickly, the signal to future developers and investors is that promises will be honored under pressure. If it litigates, the Diamond District becomes the second major Richmond redevelopment in a decade — after the Navy Hill collapse — to produce more depositions than buildings.

The Board of Education settles the testing fight, for now

The Virginia Board of Education approved new rules on Tuesday, September 29, for local alternative assessments in subjects without statewide SOL tests — including Virginia Studies, Civics and Economics, Earth Science, and Chemistry — adding requirements for double-scoring and public reporting, per Virginia Mercury. The guidance gives divisions more flexibility in how they measure learning, but school leaders warned the implementation will cost money, training, and administrative capacity divisions do not uniformly have.

The vote is the latest step in Virginia's multi-year rework of how it tests students, and it leaves the system in a familiar middle ground: more locally designed, less uniformly comparable, and dependent on the quality of division-level execution. For parents, the practical consequence is that two children in the same subject in two different divisions may be assessed in meaningfully different ways. For superintendents, the question is whether the state will fund the training and double-scoring the rules require.

The through-line to other education fights this fall — SOL cut scores, chronic absenteeism reporting, literacy screening — is that each one shifts cost and judgment downward from Richmond to the division. The rules changed Tuesday. The capacity to implement them did not.

Reston's federal contractors post a big week while Washington debates their future

Three Virginia-headquartered contractors booked a combined ceiling of roughly $1.95 billion in new federal work this week. SAIC was awarded a $742 million recompete task order Tuesday, September 29, to support U.S. Customs and Border Protection risk-assessment systems through September 2031, per Virginia Business. Leidos secured a $926 million second option year on a U.S. Navy network contract and up to $127 million more on an Army airborne intelligence program, per Virginia Business. CACI won an Immigration and Customs Enforcement task order worth up to $149.6 million for tactical communications infrastructure, per Virginia Business coverage.

The scale is important but so is the composition: border, Navy networks, Army ISR, and ICE communications. Northern Virginia's defense-and-intelligence corridor is being paid, this week, to do more of exactly the work the current federal administration prioritizes. That cuts both ways. These contracts stabilize the region's revenue through 2031. They also deepen the Commonwealth's exposure to the policy and procurement direction of a single customer whose own priorities can shift quickly.

Separately, Boeing was selected September 30 to build the Navy's next-generation stealth fighter in a program valued at roughly $20 billion, per Virginia Business. The program is national in scope, but Hampton Roads' shipbuilding and engineering suppliers sit directly in its supply chain.

Public health closes a chapter in Buckingham and opens one on the flu

The Virginia Department of Health declared the 2026 measles outbreak in Buckingham and Cumberland counties over this week, per VDH's media updates. The outbreak, which spread from Buckingham into Cumberland earlier this year, was Central Virginia's most significant vaccine-preventable disease event in recent memory, and its resolution is a modest but real win for county-level public health infrastructure.

VDH also marked the start of the 2026–27 influenza season on October 4, per the department's current media update. The timing matters because Virginia enters flu season with a public-health workforce still rebuilding from pandemic-era attrition, and with a veterinary surge story unfolding alongside — Scott's Addition Animal Hospital in Richmond has not accepted new clients in three years because of a nationwide veterinarian shortage, per 29News. VDH and the Virginia Veterinary Medical Association also marked Rabies Awareness Week September 27 through October 3, per VDH.

Measles ending is a reminder that outbreaks can be contained when the infrastructure holds. The question for the next six months is whether that infrastructure — human and veterinary — holds under seasonal pressure.

WHAT TO WATCH (next week)

• Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, October 6. The board is scheduled to consider the county attorney's legal opinion on whether grandfather protections for 17 pending data-center applications can be narrowed or eliminated, per Virginia Business. If the opinion green-lights retroactive changes, every county drafting data-center restrictions gets a template; if it does not, the pause stays prospective.
• Fairfax County hearing on the Dominion-NextEra merger, October 9. The SCC's merger review has drawn an unusual volume of ratepayer attention. If the hearing overflows, the proceeding tilts from a financial-math question into a public referendum on who pays for data-center-driven grid expansion, with NPR Virginia flagging the merger-law question as a live one.
• SCC rule filing effective October 9. A State Corporation Commission filing submitted September 18 is scheduled to take effect October 9, per the Virginia Register. Utilities and practitioners will be scrambling to meet the compliance window; the subject matter should be verified against the underlying document.
• Loudoun's full data-center pause resolution, October 20. The vote that codifies — or dilutes — the 12-month pause, per the county announcement. The teeth of the resolution will determine whether other Northern Virginia counties follow the template.
• Behavioral-health licensing changes. The State Board of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services has an emergency amendment to 12VAC35-105 scheduled for the October 19 Register, per the Virginia Register listing. If the amendment tightens survey or compliance obligations, Virginia providers could face new exposure before most budget cycles have adjusted.

EARLY SIGNALS

• Appalachian Power's rate hike is drawing organized customer pushback. Virginia Mercury reported customer criticism of the proposal this week, flagged via Google News. The mechanism to watch: Southwest Virginia customers have the strongest claim that they are being asked to subsidize load growth they neither created nor benefit from, and their testimony lands in SCC proceedings that are increasingly open to that argument.
• A Northern Virginia data-center project died this week after years of community opposition and litigation. Reporting across Cardinal News and Virginia Business framed the collapse as part of a broader pattern. The mechanism: once a project of this scale falls to community opposition, developers and their lenders reprice risk on comparable sites, which in turn accelerates the geographic contraction of the industry's buildable universe.
• Verizon's copper landline retirement delay at the FCC. WBOC reported September 30 that Verizon's transition away from copper in Virginia and Delaware has hit regulatory resistance. The mechanism: an FCC delay extends Verizon's obligation to maintain legacy infrastructure, which keeps rural reliability in play but also preserves a federal pressure point on the company's broader modernization timeline.
• A Henrico judge limited striking Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden workers' picketing. Per VPM News, the order places immediate constraints on how the labor action can be publicized. The mechanism: Richmond-area nonprofit labor disputes are rare enough that a judicial ruling on picketing scope sets a reference point other cultural institutions and their unions will cite.

COMMONWEALTH LIFE / WORTH DOING

• The University of Richmond disclosed a $150 million pledge — the largest gift in its history — as it launched a $600 million campaign, per Virginia Business. The money is earmarked for scholarships, faculty, advising, internships, research, and athletics.
• Hunting license and permit fees in Virginia rose October 1, per WBOC. Hunters should check updated rates before the fall seasons tighten.
• Hampton Roads drivers should plan for overnight closures on I-64 and the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion through the weekend, per VDOT. Single-lane closures in both directions from Willoughby Bay Bridge to Patrol Road ran 8 p.m. to 7 a.m.
• A somber note: A deadly workplace shooting at a United Rentals facility in Manassas was reported during the week, per Fox 5, which described the shock across the Manassas community. Details were limited in available reporting.

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