Spanberger trying to split hairs on data center tax incentives

Gov. Abigail Spanberger issued a mealy-mouthed statement through her press office Friday evening about how data centers “need to pay their fair share for energy consumption,” I guess to make it seem like she’s being reasonable in her position that the state needs to keep giving out $1.9 billion a year in tax incentives to data center developers and operators.

“I have brought proposals to the table that would make data centers pay more for the energy they use and address environmental concerns, including their air pollution, water and energy use, and noise,” Spanberger said in the statement, which was issued after a frustrating day in the ongoing state budget negotiations, for both sides.

“I am confident that General Assembly leadership will get a bill on my desk that I can sign on time. Because there is no other option – those responsible for funding our government have an obligation to deliver,” Spanberger said.

I’m among those not so “confident” that we’ll get to an agreement on a budget.

There’s talk about doing something along the lines of what Congress does to punt the ball to the future, in the form of a continuing resolution to maintain spending from the soon-to-expire 2024-2026 biennial budget.

Over tax breaks for data centers, which two-thirds of us are dead set opposed to – but Spanberger is apparently willing to gamble her political future to protect.

“As governor, I’m not going to break a contract that the state has signed,” the governor told Cardinal News in an interview last week, getting at the heart of the issue between her and State Sen. Louise Lucas, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who wants the tax incentives that have been offered by the state since a 2008 law that was originally written to give a single rural county a shot at a single small data center done away with next year, several years ahead of the 2035 sunset in the current state code.

Spanberger wants to refocus the debate on the sunset to what we do with the incentives after 2035, which, conveniently, is well past her single four-year term as governor would have come to a conclusion in January 2030.

Polls have two-thirds of us on the side of Lucas on this.

At stake: Democrats in Virginia, in control of all three statewide offices and both chambers of the General Assembly, not being able to agree amongst themselves on the most basic of their responsibilities, a state budget.

Spanberger’s press statement was sent out to the media after Lucas had put out her own commentary on the stalemate via social media in which she cast Spanberger as “Data Center Diva” and House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott, who has been siding with the governor on the data center issue, as “Amazon Don.”

“Let me be clear – I came up with several compromises to get us out of this mess! These compromises didn’t give me everything. But Data Center Diva and Amazon Don couldn’t understand that this is about the policy – a fair taxation and protecting our resources and citizens,” Lucas said.