Category: Business and Economy
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Extended Teacher Leave Entitlement Could Hit Schools Hard
by Derrick A. Max The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran my guest column this morning that warns of the significant learning loss that will likely occur from the Paid Family and Medical Leave bill (SB2) that is quickly winding its way to the Governor’s desk for her promised signature. As I have written previously, the Virginia General Assembly is…
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Data Center Showdown
Tuesday, February 24 was cold and blustery at the Arlington Courthouse, where the Court of Appeals was meeting. Welcome to the front lines of the “Third Battle of Manassas,” which has been going on for 3.5 years — just a few months less than the American Civil War. What’s at stake? The future of western…
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Expanded PIPP Pulls $360 Million from Power Bill Piggy Bank
by Steve Haner The expansion of an existing state electricity-bill subsidy program under legislation pending at the 2026 General Assembly could add up to $360 million to the annual cost during its first full year of implementation. The Department of Planning and Budget (DPB) has produced a detailed fiscal impact analysis for House Bill 884,…
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Cost of Undergrounding Program is Mostly Profit to Lenders, Stockholders
by Steve Haner Dominion Energy Virginia’s ongoing program to place selected neighborhood service lines underground, spreading the bill for the upgrades onto all its 2.7 million customers, will cost another $3.8 billion if the General Assembly blesses its extension for another ten years. Of that, about $1.6 billion is the cost of the construction work…
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The Data Center Scapegoat Led to Two Different Sacrificial Altars
by Steve Haner Virginia’s world-leading data center industry, once a source of economic pride to our Commonwealth, has become the scapegoat of the 2026 General Assembly. The State Senate and House of Delegates have built different altars for its sacrifice. The Senate is about to vote to strip away the major sales and use tax…
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The General Assembly’s 22.5% “Labor Tax” Gamble
by Derrick A. Max As the Virginia General Assembly enters the final weeks of its 2026 session, a wave of new labor mandates is about to reach the Governor’s desk, two of which she has promised to sign, and one she seems inclined to support as well. House Bill 5 (Paid Sick Leave), Senate Bill 2 (Paid Family…
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It’s Just a Box!
Virginia is one of three states that require businesses that sell caskets to get a funeral director’s license.
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Tariff Ruling Correct, Good for Virginia
by Derrick A. Max The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump is a landmark reaffirmation of one of the Constitution’s most fundamental principles: the power to tax belongs to Congress alone. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly vests in the legislative branch the authority “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.” Tariffs…
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States Confront Rising Energy Costs
Data center demands create headaches for lawmakers by David J. Toscano As Donald Trump continues his campaign against offshore wind[1] and encourages the U.S. military to buy expensive, dirty coal[2], state governments are left to manage electricity affordability, reliability, and climate goals on their own. It is a delicate balance. Consumers naturally want lower rates and reliability.…
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Is Boeing Leaving Virginia?
Not exactly. Calm down. by Chris Saxman Boeing is relocating the headquarters of its Defense, Space & Security division from Arlington, Virginia back to St. Louis, Missouri to align leadership more closely with its primary engineering and manufacturing workforce. Company officials indicated the move is intended to improve operational focus, program execution, and proximity to…
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No, RTD, That Bill Does Not Cut Future Electric Rates
by Steve Haner The nonsense that the General Assembly is passing a bill to shift huge energy costs onto data centers and off all the other utility customers is going to be a bipartisan meme. A bill that merely punts that issue to the regulatory State Corporation Commission passed on a unanimous State Senate vote. …
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They Think Your Electric Bill is Just a Piggy Bank to Raid
by Steve Haner Key energy legislation poised to pass the 2026 General Assembly will increase your future electricity bills, not lower them. The bills will worsen price increases already caused by the Virginia Clean Economy Act, which passed the last time Virginia was under one-party control. As the Assembly crosses its first deadline, with…
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Don’t Mess With Texas Natural Gas
Natural gas kept the lights on in Texas during the coldest days of this past January, just the way it did in Virginia.The popular Democratic nonsense narrative that Texas is achieving energy nirvana with all its solar and wind and battery assets should just be disregarded. You can see above what was working during the…
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SCC Rejects Effort to Reverse Its Gas Plant Approval
by Steve Haner The Virginia State Corporation Commission has rejected a petition for reconsideration pushed by opponents of Dominion Energy’s planned Chesterfield natural gas generators. The environmental activist groups could now appeal the SCC’s approval of the plant to the Virginia Supreme Court. The SCC is a court, after all, so its decisions can be…
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Big Batteries Lose Big Energy Every Charging Cycle
by Steve Haner An inconvenient truth of utility-scale battery operations is that they take in more power than they later put out. From an energy grid operations point of view they are considered “net load” and certainly not a generation asset. In a previous post about the battery mandate legislation now poised for passage in…