Per yesterday's update, the Virginia General Assembly rejected most of Governor Spanberger's substantive amendments to HB 1393 (Bolling) / SB 253 at the April 22 reconvened session, returning the bills to her desk as-passed. The constitutional clock to sign, veto, or take no action runs to May 22. Separately, Virginia Mercury reported April 27 that data center sales-tax-exemption changes are holding up the state budget — the budget fight involves the same legislators driving HB 1393 / SB 253 and is functionally a parallel cost-allocation track. Spanberger has not publicly signaled which way she'll move on HB 1393 / SB 253. Three outcomes remain: sign as-passed (maximal cost-shift), veto (politically costly given SCC's $5.52/mo savings finding), or no action (still enactment).
Primary source · Virginia Mercury ↗
Why it matters
Update on yesterday's lead. Two new layers worth pulling out: (1) the budget hostage taking by the same legislators on data center sales-tax exemption is a tell that the cost-shift fight is not just about HB 1393 / SB 253 in isolation — it's about the entire VA fiscal treatment of data centers, and Spanberger's posture on the bills will read as a preview of her budget posture. (2) The 19-day window means the next news cycle for VA cost-shift is the Spanberger announcement itself. For virginia-data-center-legislation-2026.md: add a countdown to May 22 and a contingent branch for each of the three outcomes, with the price-of-load delta for each. The Dominion 51 GW contracted figure (Q1 lead) is what monetizes — at ~$50/MW-month delta on a 15% cost-shift, that's ~$300M/year in reallocated cost across the contracted book, dropping to whatever fraction of new contracts get touched depending on effective date. That's the input Cliff's de-rate calculator should be modeling for Virginia exposure.
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