THE COMMONWEALTH THIS WEEK

September 20-September 26, 2026 | Virginia This Week

THE BIG PICTURE

This was the week Virginia stopped pretending the data-center debate was a zoning question and admitted it is now the organizing principle of state government. On Monday, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed Executive Order 22 and unveiled a Data Center Accountability Framework that would end by-right approval for facilities above 25 megawatts, ban non-disclosure agreements on commercial projects, and bar the Virginia Economic Development Partnership from assisting large data-center recruits through the Business Ready Sites Program. On Tuesday, Prince William supervisors unanimously shrank the Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District. By week's end, legislators were advancing a $205 billion budget with a new data-center tax, and the SCC had penciled the Dominion–NextEra merger onto the fall calendar.

The tension is no longer whether Virginia will regulate; it is whether the state can regulate coherently before the physical infrastructure — substations, transmission lines, water intakes — is already in the ground under vested rights. Prince William's own overlay carve-out leaves eligible parcels able to proceed by-right. Loudoun's proposed 12-month pause, up for a formal vote October 20, is explicitly wrestling with a grandfather clause that could swallow the reform. Meanwhile Attorney General Jay Jones has asked the SCC to reset the 180-day clock on the utility merger that will ultimately determine who pays for all that power.

Everything else this week — the $1.7 billion highway-maintenance hole, the school nurse mandate, the Toano plant closure, even UVA's $300 million arts gift — reads against that backdrop. Virginia is being asked to fund old obligations while it renegotiates the terms of its newest and most lucrative industry, and the 2027 General Assembly session in January is where those two ledgers will finally meet.

THIS WEEK IN VIRGINIA

Prince William Shrinks the Overlay, But Leaves the Door Cracked

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on September 22 to shrink the Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District and eliminate automatic by-right approval for most new data-center projects outside the remaining qualifying parcels, per Virginia Business. The county's own planning office materials confirm the overlay will be closed to future expansion while parcels already inside can still proceed by-right if they meet eligibility pathways.

That carve-out is the story. Prince William is one of the fastest-growing data-center jurisdictions in the country, and it has just moved from expedited approval toward discretionary review — but for tomorrow's applicants, not today's. Projects already holding an eligibility pathway, including substation infrastructure Dominion needs to serve committed campuses, still have a runway.

The practical stakes are land-use certainty, tax revenue, electricity demand, transmission construction, and the county's ability to impose conditions on future campuses. The unanimous vote gives supervisors political cover; the vested-rights language gives developers time. Watch whether Fauquier and Stafford see a wave of applications diverted from Prince William over the next 60 days — that is how "ending Data Center Alley" turns into "moving Data Center Alley."

Spanberger's Framework Meets Its First Real Test

Governor Spanberger this week unveiled the Data Center Accountability Framework and signed Executive Order 22, creating an AI Task Force and directing immediate state action on oversight, transparency, environmental protection, and energy costs. The administration's companion release commits to banning non-disclosure agreements for commercial data-center projects and requiring local approval for any facility drawing more than 25 megawatts.

Legal analysts at Venable noted that the order also bars VEDP from assisting data-center projects at that 25 MW threshold through the Virginia Business Ready Sites Program or expedited permitting. That is a material change to how Virginia has recruited hyperscale investment for a decade.

The framework's ultimate force depends on the 2027 General Assembly. An executive order can restrain state agencies; it cannot compel counties. If localities treat EO 22 as guidance rather than mandate — and if the incoming budget's new data-center tax passes without accompanying land-use codification — the framework lives or dies in January.

Jones Asks the SCC to Reset the Clock

Attorney General Jay Jones this week asked state regulators to reset or extend the 180-day review period for the Dominion Energy–NextEra Energy merger after the companies filed supplemental changes, including longer customer bill credits. Jones argued the late filing raises notice concerns and that regulators should not be rushed on a materially changed deal.

The State Corporation Commission has scheduled public hearings in Newport News on October 7 and Fairfax on October 9 in Case No. PUR-2026-00112, with an evidentiary hearing beginning November 17 in Richmond. Dominion and NextEra have announced extended bill credits and job commitments as skepticism grows. Governor Spanberger has declined to call the special session lawmakers requested to extend the review window statutorily.

If the SCC grants Jones's reset request, the merger review slides toward 2027, and who-pays-for-data-center-power stops being a shareholder formality and becomes a public referendum during a General Assembly session already primed to fight over data-center rules. If it doesn't, the November evidentiary hearing becomes the last serious venue before a decision.

The $1.7 Billion Road Problem Nobody Wants to Own

Virginia Department of Transportation staff told officials this week the Commonwealth faces a highway-maintenance funding gap of at least $1.7 billion, warning that deteriorating roads pose both safety and economic-liability risks and could affect future construction and transportation projects.

The number lands at an awkward moment. Legislators are advancing a $205 billion budget with a new data-center tax, and every dollar of new revenue has claimants — schools, Medicaid, the SNAP funding legal fight, and now a maintenance backlog that competes directly with expansion projects for the same limited transportation dollars.

The connective tissue matters: data-center transmission corridors, substation build-outs, and hyperscale campus access roads all put pressure on VDOT's construction pipeline just as maintenance is being crowded out. Watch whether the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee attaches a maintenance line to any data-center tax proceeds when the budget hits floor debate in January.

Toano Loses 419 Jobs

Avid Medical, a subsidiary of Richmond-based Owens & Minor, announced this week it will permanently close its Toano operation, eliminating 419 jobs. The closure hits a concentrated Williamsburg-area industrial employment base and underscores the vulnerability of Virginia's medical-supply manufacturing sector to corporate restructuring.

In Northern Virginia, the workforce story cut the other direction. Bechtel told state officials about 200 Reston employees could be affected beginning in November after its TerraPower split, though the company now expects "few, if any" actual layoffs. Meanwhile Reston-based Leidos landed a $926 million Navy award and a $127 million Army award — the kind of multi-year federal contracts that anchor the region's contractor base.

The two Virginias visible in a single week: a Peninsula industrial employer shuttering while Northern Virginia's federal-adjacent economy absorbs a nuclear-industry shock and keeps hiring. State economic-development officials will face pressure to identify a reuse tenant for the Toano site.

A Nurse in Every School — If Someone Pays For It

A legislative proposal introduced this week would require Virginia schools to have a licensed nurse in every building beginning in 2028, per Virginia Mercury reporting. The proposal creates a statewide staffing standard with immediate implications for rural districts that already struggle to recruit specialized personnel.

Supporters frame it as a student-safety measure. Local school boards will frame it as an unfunded mandate unless the state provides a dedicated funding line — which is exactly the fight that will play out against the $205 billion budget already carrying data-center tax revenue, transportation demands, and Medicaid pressures.

Combined with the new $7.2 million federal disaster-recovery grant expanding child care in Southwest and Southside Virginia, the week's education-and-care story is really a workforce-infrastructure story: rural districts that can't staff nurses can't attract employers, and Virginia's growth outside NoVa is increasingly a question of who staffs the front line.

Jones Books a $694 Million Consumer Win

Attorney General Jay Jones announced Virginia's participation in a $694 million multistate settlement with subprime auto lender Credit Acceptance Corporation — one of the largest consumer-finance settlements associated with the state this year. It places auto lending and treatment of financially vulnerable borrowers squarely on the AG's statewide agenda and, alongside the SCC reset request, establishes Jones as an active policy player rather than a legal spectator.

Also this week, a federal judge blocked new Virginia limits on existing local agreements with federal immigration authorities, preserving current cooperation arrangements while leaving localities barred from newly entering the federal program. The ruling leaves an uneven legal landscape and elevates future appellate action.

WHAT TO WATCH (next week)

• Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, October 20 vote on the resolution to pause legislative data-center and substation applications for up to 12 months, with potential retroactivity to September 15 and a companion measure removing a by-right grandfather clause. If both pass intact, developers will accelerate applications in adjacent counties within weeks.
• SCC Public Hearings in the Dominion–NextEra merger (Case No. PUR-2026-00112) — Newport News on October 7 and Fairfax on October 9. If more Hampton Roads localities intervene, sailor housing and data-center power end up funded from the same strained grid.
• SCC ruling on AG Jones's clock-reset request. If granted, the evidentiary hearing slides past November 17 and into 2027, making the merger a General Assembly-session issue.
• General Assembly pre-filing on the school-nurse mandate. Watch whether the bill carries a state funding line or arrives as an unfunded 2028 mandate.
• Budget floor action on the $205 billion package and its data-center tax. If the tax survives conference committee, it becomes the revenue vehicle every unfunded mandate — from school nurses to VDOT maintenance — will try to attach to.

EARLY SIGNALS

• The 25-megawatt threshold is now a de facto zoning line. Spanberger's EO 22 bars VEDP assistance to data-center projects at or above 25 MW peak demand, and the administration's framework proposes requiring local approval at the same threshold. Every hyperscale campus in the pipeline is now being redrawn around that number. Expect a rush of applications structured to come in just under it — and litigation over aggregation of adjacent parcels — within 30 to 60 days.

• Grandfathering is the reform's real fault line. Prince William's overlay carve-out preserves eligible parcels, and Loudoun's board is explicitly weighing removal of a by-right grandfather clause. The McGuireWoods practice group flagged this week that Loudoun's move covers 230-plus data centers' worth of pipeline exposure. Whatever the two counties do with grandfathering will template every other Virginia jurisdiction's ordinance draft in Q4.

• Long-term-care staffing gets a quiet regulatory boost. Proposed amendments in the Virginia Register would broaden who may serve as a nursing-home or assisted-living preceptor and permit three trainees per preceptor instead of two. Public comment closes October 7. In a sector fighting chronic staffing shortages, this expands the administrator credentialing pipeline without a headline.

• 94,000 Virginians have dropped ACA coverage. WTOP reported this week that enrollment data shows a 94,000-person drop in ACA insurance since last year. That is a leading indicator for uncompensated-care pressure on hospitals and for Medicaid enrollment shifts that will hit the 2027 budget.

COMMONWEALTH LIFE / WORTH DOING

• UVA's Center for the Arts got a jolt this week: the university announced nearly $300 million in new funding, including a $130 million combined gift — described as the largest gift to a single building project in UVA history. Charlottesville's arts calendar for the next decade just changed.
• VCU's School of Dentistry announced a $5 million gift from the Delta Dental of Virginia Foundation, the largest cash gift in the school's history, directed to the new dental building and safety-net care access.
• Thirteen Virginia universities appeared on the 2027 U.S. News rankings, with the University of Virginia leading the state at No. 26 nationally — a reminder that higher education remains one of Virginia's most durable civic and economic assets.
• Fairfax County transformed the site of a broken fountain into a memorial recognizing the impact of the pandemic — a small public-space story worth a visit.
• A trail-safety note: NoVa officials warned this week that e-bikes capable of 50 mph don't belong on the W&OD Trail. Expect enforcement guidance updates before the fall cycling peak ends.

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