Big tech companies and real estate speculators use tax revenue as one of their main inducements to attract data centers. Virginia and many municipalities created tax incentives for data centers in 2010. However, when those tax exemptions continue beyond their usefulness, leaders should scrutinize these giveaways. The state tax exemption has ballooned to $1.9 billion per year and is rising, making it the largest exemption in Virginia for any industry. Keeping or eliminating it

Stafford residents continue to hear more about proposed data center projects across the county, but the information can be difficult to sort through. Some applications have changed, county standards have been updated, and many residents are trying to understand what all of this means for their neighborhoods and for Stafford’s future. To help clarify the current landscape, Protect Stafford is hosting another Data Center Public Information Meeting on Saturday, June 6, 2026, at

A recent Virginia Department of Environmental Quality enforcement action involving Amazon Data Services at the Cosner Tech Campus in Spotsylvania County shows, in a specific local case, why residents are asking careful questions about data center impacts in our region. Of course, this violation does not mean every data center will violate its permits. But it does show that these concerns are not hypothetical for residents in the Fredericksburg region (Stafford, Spotsylvania,