At the Statehouse: General Assembly Comes to a Close

The 2027 session of the Virginia General Assembly ended on Saturday, March 14th. The deadline for action by legislative committees was March 9th, with 141 education bills still listed and thirteen education bills now in conference. These conference committees are temporary legislative panels that are formed to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of a bill that ensure both chambers agree on the final text before it becomes law. 

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Thirty-three education bills have been continued and consideration of those bills is postponed until 2027. One of those bills was the proposal to provide free breakfasts to public school students in all of Virginia. This is unfortunate in light of the federal cuts to the SNAP program that will result in more students going hungry. 

Fifty three education bills have passed both chambers and are awaiting the Governor’s action, while six are awaiting her signature. Thirty five bills have passed both chambers but their status has not yet advanced. The rest of the original education bills either passed in only one chamber, were defeated, were incorporated into other bills, or were left in committee, which ends their consideration unless they are reintroduced in a future year. 

Of the seven education bills that were considered priorities by 4 Public Education and the Virginia Grassroots Coalition, four are no longer being considered. Governor Spanberger has an April 13th deadline to decide on three other bills that passed both chambers. They are HB199 (Improving Transparency in College Partnership Laboratory schools, HB206 (Delaying for a year the start of the new growth assessment system until deficiencies are resolved), and SB33 (Allowing at-risk funding to pay for medical staff in schools).

The 2026 General Assembly session will end with the goal of having a unified budget for the conference committee to present to the Governor. The committee members appear to be close to agreement on some but not all items being discussed in the Conference. Both chambers agreed to raise salaries for educators and state employees, although the chambers differ in their proposed amounts: the House called for a 2% annual increase while the Senate called for a 3% annual increase. Also, both chambers agreed to reverse some previous budget cuts. Neither chamber proposed increasing taxes. However, even though a bill was continued that would have given each locality permission to vote on a local sales tax to fund school construction, both chambers favored giving permission for local referendums in the budget bill. Also, both chambers proposed increasing funds for the education of students with disabilities, and the amount was substantially greater in the House than the Senate. 

There is a major issue that must be resolved before the conference committee can submit a unified budget to the Governor, which involves the data center tax exemptions. According to Delegate Torian who is a co-chair of the Budget Conference, the chambers are having a hard time reaching an agreement on the Senate's proposal to eliminate the ‘sales tax and use’ exemption for data centers. 

The Senate has voted to end the tax break for data centers that would require them to pay a 5.3% sales tax. The senators argued that revenue raised by eliminating the exemption should be redirected to more important priorities such as public education, and they noted that other states are considering similar proposals. However opponents in the conference and elsewhere warn that elimination of the tax exemption could drive the data center industry away from Virginia.

Both Governor Spanberger and Delegate Torian are against eliminating the exemption because the promise of tax exemption was made to these businesses to lure them to Virginia and removing the exemption would break a promise. However, most involved agree that data centers should pay their fair share of taxes.

The debate on data centers is taking place while Virginians are beginning to realize there are many negative impacts of data centers on their communities, including skyrocketing water and power bills for citizens, irreparable changes to land use, and deleterious impacts on water quality and power grids. As a result, not everyone believes that luring data centers to our Commonwealth was a good idea. 

It was in the evening on Saturday, March 14th, the last day of the session, that the General Assembly gaveled out without a unified budget agreement. As a result a special session will begin on April 23rd to finish the business of the General Assembly. The absolute deadline for a unified budget is July 1st, which designates the beginning of FY2027.