The Lyceum: Virginia Daily — Mar 16, 2026

Virginia woke up without a state budget, with severe storms bearing down on Northern Virginia, and with a governor staring at a desk stacked with hundreds of bills she has weeks to sign or kill — including one that has Fairfax County residents melting her phone lines. The fights over data centers, which blew up the General Assembly session, are now playing out in courtrooms, county boardrooms, and utility filings simultaneously. Meanwhile, federal contract dollars keep flowing into Northern Virginia like nothing happened in Richmond, which tells you everything about the two economies this state is running at once.

Two days after the General Assembly adjourned without passing a budget for the first time in recent memory, Governor Abigail Spanberger's office is doing what executive branches do in a crisis: projecting serenity. In a statement, the governor said she's methodically reviewing the bills that did pass and remains in "close contact" with legislative leaders ahead of the April 23 special session called to finish the job.

The budget impasse is playing out amid fights over data centers. Senate Finance Committee Chair Louise Lucas wants to end a massive tax break for the industry, arguing its explosive growth is straining the power grid without paying its fair share. House Appropriations Committee Chair Luke Torian and Spanberger counter that the state must honor existing agreements with the tech giants who built Data Center Alley. All eyes are on private negotiations between the two budget chiefs and the industry itself.

But the budget isn't the only thing on fire. Spanberger now has hundreds of bills requiring action within roughly 30 days — some outlets pin a practical deadline of April 13 — meaning major policy choices on marijuana retail, minimum wage increases, and collective bargaining will land while budget talks are still underway. Add a national economy that just shed 92,000 jobs in February, and the governor is making consequential decisions under maximum uncertainty.

If you thought the data center wars were confined to Loudoun County, a Prince William County judge just corrected that assumption. Judge Kimberly Irving voided the county's 2023 approval of the "Digital Gateway" — a 2,100-acre data center corridor planned near the Manassas National Battlefield Park — ruling that the county failed to give the public proper notice before the marathon 29-hour hearing that led to the rezoning.

This is a stunning legal victory for the homeowners who sued and a gut punch for developers who spent years shepherding the project. The ruling essentially rewinds the clock on what was slated to be the world's largest data center development. The county and developers have 30 days to decide whether to appeal. If they don't — or lose — the entire contentious rezoning process starts over from scratch.

The project faces pressure on multiple fronts. The Department of Environmental Quality recently denied a separate water-cooling permit for a proposed 150-megawatt data center in nearby Bristow, citing risks to local streams and aquifers. That denial is also on appeal. The pattern — simultaneous legal and permitting challenges — could stall large builds across the region and embolden opponents in other counties watching closely.

While the state budget sits frozen, the federal contracting engine that actually powers Northern Virginia's economy keeps humming. Reston-based Leidos announced a $454.9 million contract to modernize the U.S. Air Force's "Cloud One" platform — the digital plumbing that hosts military software and data — working alongside Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

That's not all. Leidos also picked up a separate $250 million contract for AI-enhanced satellite imagery tools for a defense agency, expected to create several hundred engineering roles in Fairfax County. And according to the Washington Business Journal, a third award — $750 million for advanced cybersecurity systems — landed today, with at least 200 new jobs projected over five years.

Combined, these awards are a blunt reminder: for much of Northern Virginia, the economic weather is made in Washington, not Richmond. Thousands of families depend on federal contractor paychecks, and deals like these provide a stability cushion that state budget chaos simply cannot touch. If Leidos ramps hiring across all three contracts, Reston and Fairfax labor markets could see a notable uptick in senior engineering and cyber roles regardless of what happens at the April special session.

Even as other projects stall in court, new hyperscale proposals keep arriving. Tonight the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is set to vote on a special exception for a 400-megawatt data center campus near Ashburn. For context, Dominion Energy recently told state regulators it has requests from data centers for 70,000 megawatts of electricity — nearly three times the all-time peak usage for its entire Virginia service area.

The site sits close to neighborhoods zoned for mixed use, and residents are raising familiar concerns: noise, water consumption for cooling, and whether the grid can handle it. Dominion has already warned regulators that major upgrades are needed. If the Board approves, it signals Loudoun remains open for hyperscale business despite mounting local pushback. If they reject it, the chill could spread to similar proposals across the region.

The Dominion filing tells the deeper story. The utility now receives about 10 new large-customer requests per month, totaling 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts of fresh demand every 30 days. That explosive growth is the ghost at the table in every political discussion in Richmond — from tax policy to environmental regulation to who pays for all the new infrastructure. An SCC hearing opened this week on a proposed Dominion rate increase to fund grid upgrades; analysts estimate approval could raise residential bills by several percentage points statewide over the next 12 months.

Your commute home might be the most stressful thing you do today — and not because of I-66. Meteorologists are flagging an unusually high risk of damaging winds and possible tornadoes this afternoon, stretching from the Carolinas into Northern Virginia. Loudoun elementary schools have already canceled after-school activities, and closures and delays are spreading from Roanoke to Richmond.

For Data Center Alley and Dulles-corridor office parks, the concern is power blips and evening travel disruption. If tornado watches go up, this is the moment to test backup power plans and adjust late-shift staffing. An executive order was amended overnight to fast-track FEMA reimbursement eligibility for affected localities — procedural, but it could unlock millions if damage claims pile up.

A chatbot killed a museum's air conditioner, a judge voided the world's largest data center project, and a utility told regulators it needs three times the electricity it's ever produced — all in the same Commonwealth, all in the same week.

Somewhere in Richmond, a county administrator is filling out a "Gold Standard" opioid settlement form while a seminary in Alexandria debates whether a robot can write a sermon, and honestly, the robot might file the paperwork faster.

Stay dry, stay skeptical.

If someone you know works in Virginia government, defense contracting, or just lives near a data center — forward this their way.