Spanberger Order Puts Virginia Data Centers on a Tighter Leash

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed Executive Order 22, creating a state AI task force and directing the executive branch to give local communities more say over data center development while banning executive branch officials from signing non-disclosure agreements.

Virginia has spent a decade as the physical center of the internet, and on Thursday its governor moved to change the terms on which that growth continues. Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, signed Executive Order 22, an order that creates a state artificial intelligence task force, bars executive branch officials from signing non-disclosure agreements, and directs the state government toward steps that would give local communities a larger voice in where and how data centers get built.

The order does not, by itself, stop a single project. But it changes the information environment around data center siting in the state that hosts what is routinely described as the data center capital of the world — and in this industry, information asymmetry has been one of the developer's most reliable advantages.

Why the NDA ban is the sharpest clause

Of everything in the order, the prohibition on executive branch officials signing non-disclosure agreements is the piece with the most immediate operational bite. Large data center deals are typically negotiated under code names. A developer approaches economic development officials, a confidentiality agreement is signed, and the load size, water draw, tax treatment and identity of the end customer stay sealed until a site plan lands in front of a county board. By then the deal is largely cooked, and the hearing is a formality.

Removing the state's ability to sign those agreements does not compel a company to disclose anything. It does mean state officials cannot contractually promise silence. For a hyperscaler weighing a Virginia campus against an alternative in another state, that is a real change in the calculus: the courtship phase becomes harder to keep quiet, and quiet has commercial value when you are assembling land parcels or negotiating an interconnection queue position.

It also cuts against the practice of pitting jurisdictions against one another. When the counterparty is anonymous, a county has no way to know whether the incentive package it is offering is competitive or generous. Transparency tends to compress incentives.

Local control is the slower, heavier lever

The second thread of the order — empowering localities in data center development — is the one with longer-dated consequences. Land use in Virginia is fundamentally a local function, exercised by boards of supervisors and city councils. What the state can do is shape the process: the studies required, the disclosures demanded, the standards applied to noise, water, and transmission line routing.

Every additional required study is time. Time is the scarce input in AI infrastructure right now, more than capital and arguably more than chips. Developers racing to energize capacity in 2027 and 2028 have been chasing jurisdictions that can move fast. An order that adds friction in Northern Virginia pushes marginal projects toward Georgia, Ohio, Texas and the Midwest — a migration that was already under way for power-availability reasons before any of this.

Spanberger's move, as The Verge reported, ordered the state government to take steps that could both strengthen the community voice and slow approvals. The word "could" is doing work: much depends on what the agencies actually promulgate.

The utility question behind the politics

The pressure driving this order is not really about buildings. It is about electricity bills. Data center load growth in Virginia has been the dominant variable in utility planning, and the political problem is straightforward: if new transmission and generation are built to serve computing demand, and the cost is spread across the general ratepayer base, households pay for a boom they do not participate in.

That is the fight playing out in statehouses across the country, with proposals to carve large-load customers into their own rate class so that the cost of serving them sits with them. Virginia's order does not resolve rate design — that runs through the State Corporation Commission and the legislature, not the governor's pen. But it establishes the governor's posture, and posture matters when a rate case is contested.

For utilities with heavy Virginia exposure, the read is nuanced rather than simply negative. Slower approvals mean a longer runway for load forecasts, which can be a good thing for a utility that has been struggling to build fast enough. What a utility does not want is a settlement in which it has built for demand that a county then declines to permit.

What the AI task force could actually produce

State AI task forces have a mixed record. Many produce a report and dissolve. The ones that matter tend to have a narrow remit and a deadline. In Virginia's case, the task force sits alongside the concrete data center provisions, which suggests the state is treating AI policy and physical infrastructure policy as one file rather than two — a more coherent framing than most jurisdictions have managed.

The questions worth watching are whether the task force takes up procurement standards for state agency AI use, whether it addresses the grid and water consequences of model training directly, and whether it produces recommendations with statutory teeth attached before the next legislative session.

How the tape read it

Markets treated the news as policy noise rather than a repricing event, which is the correct first-order response to an executive order that delegates most of its substance to future agency action. At the last trade on Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:52:30 GMT, the Nasdaq 100 tracker (NASDAQ: QQQ) was at $719.02, up 0.29% from the prior close of $716.92, inside a day range of $715.08 to $720.20. The S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) was at $761.32, down 0.17%, and the Dow tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) was at $516.45, down 0.37%.

That split — tech up, the industrial average down — is not a verdict on Virginia. It is a reminder that the AI infrastructure trade has been running on capital expenditure announcements, and a state-level friction measure does not yet register against that.

What to watch next

• Whether state agencies translate the order into binding siting or disclosure requirements, or stop at guidance.
• Whether Northern Virginia boards of supervisors use the new posture to impose conditions that developers cannot meet on their timelines.
• Whether the NDA prohibition prompts companies to route early-stage conversations through counties instead of the state.
• Rate-class proceedings separating large-load customers from residential ratepayers, which would do more to the economics than any siting rule.
• Whether the next Virginia legislative session codifies any of this, which would survive a change of administration in a way an executive order would not.

The through-line is that data center development is shifting from an economic development story to a utility and land use story. In Virginia, more than anywhere else in the country, that shift has real money attached.

Key facts

• Order: Virginia Executive Order 22, signed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D)
• Key provision: Bans executive branch officials from signing non-disclosure agreements
• Also created: A state artificial intelligence task force
• Market backdrop: QQQ $719.02, +0.29%; SPY $761.32, -0.17% (as of 18 Sep 2026 18:52:30 GMT)

Frequently asked questions

What does Virginia Executive Order 22 do?

Executive Order 22, signed by Gov. Abigail Spanberger, directs the Virginia state government to take steps that could give local communities a larger say in data center development, potentially slowing approvals. It also bars executive branch officials from signing non-disclosure agreements and establishes a state artificial intelligence task force.

Why does the non-disclosure agreement ban matter?

Large data center projects are usually negotiated under confidentiality agreements that keep the developer's identity, power demand and incentive package secret until late in the process. Barring state executive branch officials from signing NDAs means the state can no longer contractually promise that silence, which shifts information toward local boards and residents earlier in a deal.

Does the order block new data centers in Virginia?

No. The order does not halt any project. Land use approvals in Virginia are made by local boards of supervisors and city councils, not the governor. What the order does is change the process and information environment around siting, which could add time and conditions to approvals depending on how state agencies implement it.

Why is Virginia called the data center capital of the world?

Northern Virginia hosts the world's densest concentration of data center capacity, built up over decades around internet exchange infrastructure, fiber routes and favorable tax treatment. That concentration makes the state the single most consequential jurisdiction for decisions about how AI and cloud computing capacity gets sited and powered.

How did markets react to the announcement?

There was no visible repricing tied to the order. At the last trade on 18 September 2026 at 18:52:30 GMT, the Nasdaq 100 tracker QQQ stood at $719.02, up 0.29%, while the S&P 500 tracker SPY was at $761.32, down 0.17%, and the Dow tracker DIA was at $516.45, down 0.37%.

What is the electricity bill angle in this debate?

Data centers draw very large amounts of power, requiring new generation and transmission. If those costs are spread across all utility customers, households effectively subsidize computing demand. The policy response being debated in several states is to place large-load customers in a separate rate class so they bear their own costs, a question decided in rate proceedings rather than by executive order.

Sources

• Virginia governor creates an AI task force and moves to restrain data centers — The Verge