Data center tax break impasse at the heart of a Virginia Democrat civil war

Virginia Democrats are engaged in what we have taken to calling a civil war, though there’s nothing civil about this internecine battle, between the centrists who want to protect the billions in tax breaks that the state gives to the big-pocketed developers of massive data centers, and those in the center-left who want the tax breaks to sunset next year, and that money reallocated to education and social programs.

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ICYMI

• Spanberger defends kicking the can down the road on data centers in TV interview
• Clean Virginia putting pressure on Spanberger, House Dems over data center tax breaks
• Spanberger, House Democrats propose data center study as way around budget impasse
• Spanberger seems to be trying to split hairs on data center tax incentives
• Louise Lucas to the ‘Data Center Diva’: No more tax breaks for data centers
• We don’t like data center tax breaks: But there’s more to it than that

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The latest news here starts with, the House of Delegates has called off a meeting that had been scheduled for Thursday to vote on a state budget for the 2026-2028 biennium, the issue here being, there’s no new budget proposal to vote on.

Part of the problem there: the budget conference committee composed of representatives of the House and State Senate has not met since March 6, which, seriously?

That’s. Your. Job.

Meanwhile, we’ve got State Sen. Louise Lucas, the chair of the Senate Finance & Appropriations Committee, telling a DC TV station that the last time Gov. Abigail Spanberger reached out to speak with her about the budget impasse was “several weeks ago.”

Again, seriously?

Seems that somebody needs to put on her big girl pants and pick up the phone.

Next, there’s word that I saw reported this afternoon on Blue Virginia, crediting political troll Ben Tribbett, to the effect that State Sen. Mike Jones and State Sen. Russet Perry were ushered out of a ceremonial bill-signing photo-op today because they had participated in a data center town hall event hosted by Lucas.

How dare they, right?

One other item of interest: House Speaker Don Scott, in an interview with The Times-Dispatch, went nuclear on Lucas for going nuclear on Scott and Spanberger over their steadfast insistence that we need to keep giving billions in tax breaks to data center developers.

“What’s happening now is basically a civil war among the Democrats. And it’s all because the leader of the Senate right now is Sen. Lucas,” Scott said.

Memo for Don Scott: it’s actually because you don’t see that 70 percent of us agree with Sen. Lucas and want these billions in tax breaks for trillion-dollar data companies to come to an end.

Somebody else needs to put on their big boy pants, in this case, and stand with the people who put them there, and stand up to the elites.

Do that, and I promise, I’ll ask Louise Lucas to stop calling you names.