Virginia General Assembly approves budget days before potential partial government shutdown – WTOP News

Virginia lawmakers approved a two-year spending plan Monday, ending months of negotiations as the deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown approached.

The Senate approved the plan with a 23-16 vote, and the House of Delegates passed it 71-22. Now it heads to Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s desk.

The votes end a saga that included name-calling and finger-pointing, as senators hoped to end a sales tax exemption for data centers. The House and Spanberger expressed concerns about the potential consequence of taking that step, hoping to keep existing agreements in tact.

The compromise, detailed late last week, keeps the sales tax exemption in place but calls for a new data center electricity consumption tax. The $0.011 fee per kilowatt-hour of electricity used is expected to generate $600 million in revenue each of the next two years.

“This conference report took longer than most, but the senate conferees and I spent a lot of time trying to find the right balance between compromising with the House and the governor and having something that made the data centers pay their fair share,” Sen. Louise Lucas said. “This budget achieves that right balance, and the Senate and House and the governor’s office all had input into this final project.”

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