Richard Stuart Seeks to Sunset Benefits for Data Centers
The state senator would end retail sales and tax use exemption for data centers this summer, as opposed to 2035. He previously voted for the 2035 date.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Two bills introduced in the General Assembly by State Senator Richard Stuart could cause problems for localities hoping to attract data center development.
Curry Roberts, director of the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance at the University of Mary Washington, which works to foster regional job growth, is especially concerned with Senate Bill 1425.
This bill, of which Stuart is the chief patron, would amend existing legislation providing a retail sales and tax use exemption for data centers by sunsetting the exemption on June 30 of this year, instead of June 30, 2035. It also removes the option of extending the exemption by entering into a memorandum of understanding with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership Authority.
In 2016, Stuart voted for legislation extending the sunset date to June 30, 2035, and voted again in support of the legislation with that sunset date as recently as 2023.
“Virginia committed to extending the sales tax exemption to 2035,” Roberts said. “Now [Stuart] wants to sunset it on June 30. There are 20 other states that have this exemption. Doing this will do major reputational damage to the Commonwealth.”
Stuart, a Republican, represents State Senate District 25, which includes part of Spotsylvania and King and Queen counties, and all of Caroline, King George, Westmoreland, King William, Northumberland, Lancaster, Middlesex, Essex, and Richmond counties.
There are five data center projects currently approved in Spotsylvania, including one that is a joint project with Caroline County, and work is underway on one of them (the Cosner Tech campus).
There are six other rezoning projects under review in Spotsylvania that could include data centers, according to the Free Lance-Star.
In addition to the joint project with Spotsylvania—the Mattameade campus—Caroline County is considering several other data center projects.
In September of 2023, King George was the first locality in the Fredericksburg area to approve a rezoning making way for an Amazon data center campus, but in January of 2024, a new majority on the Board of Supervisors voted to reconsider a performance agreement with Amazon signed the previous month by the previous board.
In August of 2023, Stuart spoke “in [his] capacity as state senator” during a public hearing on the rezoning and comprehensive plan amendments related to the King George Amazon data center project. He expressed concerns, on behalf of “constituents of mine in King George County” with what route potential new power lines would take to provide electricity to the project, according to minutes from the August 15, 2023, Board of Supervisors meeting.
At the same January 2024 meeting in which they voted to reconsider the performance agreement, the King George supervisors appointed Stuart interim county attorney, a position he still holds.
Stuart was not acting as King George County attorney in 2023, when he voted in favor of extending the sales tax exemption for data center developments.
Stuart has introduced another bill this legislative session related to data centers—SB 976, which would remove a locality’s authority to make commitments related to accelerated permitting, property tax classifications, “and other such issues” in a performance agreement between the locality, a data center company, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, for purposes of accessing a state grant fund for cloud computing infrastructure.
Roberts said that Stuart’s proposed change “makes no sense” from an economic development perspective. “Localities enter into agreements all the time without this language,” he said.
SB 976 has been referred to the Committee on General Laws and Technology and SB 1425 has been referred to the Committee on Finance and Appropriations.
Stuart did not answer questions posed by the Advance on Friday regarding the intent of these two bills, including whether he expects them to pass or be signed into law by Governor Glenn Youngkin—who in March of last year delivered remarks at an event celebrating Amazon’s $35 billion investment in data center projects in Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline, and Louisa counties, calling it “transformational.”
This story has been updated to correct Roberts’s quote in the third paragraph from the bottom.
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