Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Politics:

Spanberger signs bill to add restrictions on speed cameras. — The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot (paywall).

Spanberger acts on immigration bills, seeks changes to ICE-related measures. — Virginia Mercury.

Trump falsely claimed Spanberger added taxes. Here are the facts. — The Washington Post (paywall).

Local:

Patrick County appoints interim supervisor after resignation. — Martinsville Bulletin (paywall).

Economy:

In this U.S. hot spot for data centers, voters have turned against them. — The Washington Post (paywall).

Sports:

Gate City native Mac McClung joins new DUNKMAN professional dunking league. — WCYB-TV.

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: Spanberger signs bill to add restrictions on speed cameras; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is a reason it seems mighty early to be talking about 90-degree high temperatures. Because it is.

Many locations in Southwest and Southside Virginia from the Roanoke Valley eastward across the relatively lower terrain east of the Blue Ridge, and maybe a couple spots farther west, are expected to reach or exceed 90 degrees one or more days in the Wednesday to Saturday period this week. It will be in the 80s everywhere else, excluding somewhat cooler high ridgetops.

High pressure ballooning over the Southeast U.S. is bringing an early “heat wave” somewhat similar to what much of the Western states experienced in the latter part of March. 

A late weekend cold front will cut down the heat wave, and there might even be some frost in outlying areas by Tuesday morning next week.

Long term, there are growing signals of a cooler and perhaps damper pattern setting in by late month into early May, but this is iffy at this point, and even more unclear than temperatures is whether it might be wet enough to ease ongoing drought.

First April 90s in more than a decade

South Boston in Halifax County has already reached the 90-degree mark this year, back on March 11, when most of our region soared into the 80s and then many locations experienced snowfall the next day.

Any day 90 degrees or above this week would be the earliest since 2013 at Roanoke and Lynchburg, when it reached that mark on April 10, and the earliest since 2010 at Danville and Martinsville, when the year’s first 90-plus high temperature came on April 2 and April 7, respectively.

Lynchburg managed a 90-degree high as early as April 24 in 2022, but for the most part, the recent first 90-plus days have been coming in late May and June.

Lynchburg and Danville didn’t reach 90 until July 2 three years ago in 2023. That was tied for latest on record at Danville with another year in the last decade, 2017, and it was the fifth latest and the latest in 50 years at Lynchburg.

90s highs haven’t been getting earlier

While many regional climate statistics have tilted to warmer temperatures earlier, longer and more often, consistent with warming global trends, the advent of the year’s 90-degree day has not trended similarly in our region.

In more than a century of weather records, the first 90-degree day has averaged May 10 at Danville, May 20 at Roanoke, and May 24 at Lynchburg. But since 2000, the average first 90-degree day has been much later at Danville — May 25 — and a few days later at Roanoke (May 24) and Lynchburg (May 27).

It’s even stranger over the past decade, when the two July 2 dates for the first 90 have pulled Danville’s average first-90 date all the way to June 6, while Lynchburg’s has been June 2 and Roanoke’s is May 30.

It’s not that recent springs have been cool. March to May 2024 was Roanoke’s warmest spring on record for average temperature, with 2025 and 2019 each in the top 10. 2022, 2024 and 2025 are among the 10 warmest spring seasons on record at Lynchburg, and spring seasons in 2024 and 2025 ranked 12^th and 15^th respectively at Danville.

Five-year average spring temperatures are the warmest they have ever been in recorded weather history going back to 1912 at Roanoke, and the warmest they have been since the 1940s at Lynchburg and Danville.

Little correlation between April heat and summer highs

The recent seasonal warmth is not coming from early extreme heat spikes so much as it is two factors: The month of March leaning to being warm rather than wintry in recent years, and some frequently sticky, rainy patterns in May with warm low temperatures.

We could probably use some sticky, rainy patterns in May given how dry it’s been. But for the next few days, the region will be unseasonably hot and continue to be extremely dry.

Oh, and in case you wonder, having 90-degree weather in April appears to have no significant correlation to how hot the summer will be. Previous examples of 90-degree weather in late March through mid-April in our region have been followed by summers scattered across the spectrum from very hot to abnormally cool.

The rest of spring and summer will still be up in the air, no matter how hot it gets in April.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Mid-April will feel more like midsummer this week appeared first on Cardinal News.

There is a reason it seems mighty early to be talking about 90-degree high temperatures. Because it is.

Many locations in Southwest and Southside Virginia from the Roanoke Valley eastward across the relatively lower terrain east of the Blue Ridge, and maybe a couple spots farther west, are expected to reach or exceed 90 degrees one or more days in the Wednesday to Saturday period this week. It will be in the 80s everywhere else, excluding somewhat cooler high ridgetops.

High pressure ballooning over the Southeast U.S. is bringing an early “heat wave” somewhat similar to what much of the Western states experienced in the latter part of March. 

A late weekend cold front will cut down the heat wave, and there might even be some frost in outlying areas by Tuesday morning next week.

Long term, there are growing signals of a cooler and perhaps damper pattern setting in by late month into early May, but this is iffy at this point, and even more unclear than temperatures is whether it might be wet enough to ease ongoing drought.

First April 90s in more than a decade

South Boston in Halifax County has already reached the 90-degree mark this year, back on March 11, when most of our region soared into the 80s and then many locations experienced snowfall the next day.

Any day 90 degrees or above this week would be the earliest since 2013 at Roanoke and Lynchburg, when it reached that mark on April 10, and the earliest since 2010 at Danville and Martinsville, when the year’s first 90-plus high temperature came on April 2 and April 7, respectively.

Lynchburg managed a 90-degree high as early as April 24 in 2022, but for the most part, the recent first 90-plus days have been coming in late May and June.

Lynchburg and Danville didn’t reach 90 until July 2 three years ago in 2023. That was tied for latest on record at Danville with another year in the last decade, 2017, and it was the fifth latest and the latest in 50 years at Lynchburg.

90s highs haven’t been getting earlier

While many regional climate statistics have tilted to warmer temperatures earlier, longer and more often, consistent with warming global trends, the advent of the year’s 90-degree day has not trended similarly in our region.

In more than a century of weather records, the first 90-degree day has averaged May 10 at Danville, May 20 at Roanoke, and May 24 at Lynchburg. But since 2000, the average first 90-degree day has been much later at Danville — May 25 — and a few days later at Roanoke (May 24) and Lynchburg (May 27).

It’s even stranger over the past decade, when the two July 2 dates for the first 90 have pulled Danville’s average first-90 date all the way to June 6, while Lynchburg’s has been June 2 and Roanoke’s is May 30.

It’s not that recent springs have been cool. March to May 2024 was Roanoke’s warmest spring on record for average temperature, with 2025 and 2019 each in the top 10. 2022, 2024 and 2025 are among the 10 warmest spring seasons on record at Lynchburg, and spring seasons in 2024 and 2025 ranked 12^th and 15^th respectively at Danville.

Five-year average spring temperatures are the warmest they have ever been in recorded weather history going back to 1912 at Roanoke, and the warmest they have been since the 1940s at Lynchburg and Danville.

Little correlation between April heat and summer highs

The recent seasonal warmth is not coming from early extreme heat spikes so much as it is two factors: The month of March leaning to being warm rather than wintry in recent years, and some frequently sticky, rainy patterns in May with warm low temperatures.

We could probably use some sticky, rainy patterns in May given how dry it’s been. But for the next few days, the region will be unseasonably hot and continue to be extremely dry.

Oh, and in case you wonder, having 90-degree weather in April appears to have no significant correlation to how hot the summer will be. Previous examples of 90-degree weather in late March through mid-April in our region have been followed by summers scattered across the spectrum from very hot to abnormally cool.

The rest of spring and summer will still be up in the air, no matter how hot it gets in April.

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Mid-April will feel more like midsummer this week appeared first on Cardinal News.

With temperatures expected to poke above 90 degrees at many Southwest and Southside Virginia locations this week, there is no better time to announce the winner of the 2025-26 Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest.

The contest came down to two Roanokers and their nearly identical predictions for Blacksburg and Lynchburg.

Bob Kolinski called for 12 inches for Lynchburg and 23 for Blacksburg. Twila DiMarco had 12 inches for Lynchburg and 24 inches for Blacksburg.

Rounded to the nearest inch, the Dec. 1 to March 31 snow totals for those two sites were 12 for Lynchburg (12.1 inches) and 23 for Blacksburg (23.1 inches). That gave Kolinski a narrow victory, with zero error points, while DiMarco missed Blacksburg by 1 inch.

They each also guessed snow totals for their home city, but were farther off: Kolinski 17 inches and DiMarco 22 inches, when Roanoke got 14 (13.9 inches). The two best guesses of three entered count initially in the contest, but Kolinski still would have won had that been a tie with a closer guess on Roanoke.

For his winter prognostication prowess, Kolinski wins a $25 gift card.

Dam Camden of Daleville and Barry Webb of Cave Spring were the next-best forecasters among 117 entries received by email in November. Each of them did well with the snowiest location among the contest’s 10 sites.

Webb guessed 40 inches for Burke’s Garden and Camden 41 inches, when the Tazewell County elevated valley location measured 39.8 inches from Dec. 1 and March 31, rounding up to 40. So Webb’s Burke’s Garden prediction was right on the nose while Camden was only 1 inch off.

Camden also had 13 inches for Roanoke, which was one off the 14 total, and Webb had 25 inches for Blacksburg, two off the 23 total, for a combined error score of 2 inches off in each case. (Third picks of 17 inches for Blacksburg by Camden and 20 inches for Roanoke by Webb were each off by six.)

There was someone else who did well picking Burke’s Garden: This writer. I also called for 40 inches.

Overall, this was my best winter thus far in picking snowfall totals for all 10 sites in the contest, correctly predicting Burke’s Garden and Martinsville (12 inches) and only two to four inches off seven of the eight other locations. 

While the idea expressed here back in early December (read the section at the end of the linked column) that this winter would be fairly similar to last year was a pretty good one, it’s always better to be lucky than good with snowfall prediction contests.

A degree or two warmer aloft could have scuttled two early season wet snows on Dec. 5 and 8 and scraped a few inches off these totals, and conversely, a somewhat colder atmosphere aloft on Jan. 24-25 or a slight north nudge in the storm track on Jan. 31 could have ratcheted up these snow totals considerably.

Snow totals from Dec. 1 to March 31, rounded to the nearest inch, for the 10 locations used in the contest are listed below, with my guess in parentheses.

·         Abingdon: 15  (Kevin: 18)

·         Appomattox: 16 (Kevin: 14)

·         Blacksburg: 23 (Kevin: 25)

·         Burke’s Garden: 40  (Kevin: 40)

·         Clintwood: 36 (Kevin: 45)

·         Danville: 13 (Kevin: 11)

·         Lynchburg: 12 (Kevin: 15)

·         Martinsville: 12 (Kevin: 12)

·         Roanoke: 14 (Kevin: 18)

·         Wytheville: 17 (Kevin: 21)

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snowfall contest decided by 1-inch difference between two Roanokers appeared first on Cardinal News.

With temperatures expected to poke above 90 degrees at many Southwest and Southside Virginia locations this week, there is no better time to announce the winner of the 2025-26 Cardinal Weather snowfall prediction contest.

The contest came down to two Roanokers and their nearly identical predictions for Blacksburg and Lynchburg.

Bob Kolinski called for 12 inches for Lynchburg and 23 for Blacksburg. Twila DiMarco had 12 inches for Lynchburg and 24 inches for Blacksburg.

Rounded to the nearest inch, the Dec. 1 to March 31 snow totals for those two sites were 12 for Lynchburg (12.1 inches) and 23 for Blacksburg (23.1 inches). That gave Kolinski a narrow victory, with zero error points, while DiMarco missed Blacksburg by 1 inch.

They each also guessed snow totals for their home city, but were farther off: Kolinski 17 inches and DiMarco 22 inches, when Roanoke got 14 (13.9 inches). The two best guesses of three entered count initially in the contest, but Kolinski still would have won had that been a tie with a closer guess on Roanoke.

For his winter prognostication prowess, Kolinski wins a $25 gift card.

Dam Camden of Daleville and Barry Webb of Cave Spring were the next-best forecasters among 117 entries received by email in November. Each of them did well with the snowiest location among the contest’s 10 sites.

Webb guessed 40 inches for Burke’s Garden and Camden 41 inches, when the Tazewell County elevated valley location measured 39.8 inches from Dec. 1 and March 31, rounding up to 40. So Webb’s Burke’s Garden prediction was right on the nose while Camden was only 1 inch off.

Camden also had 13 inches for Roanoke, which was one off the 14 total, and Webb had 25 inches for Blacksburg, two off the 23 total, for a combined error score of 2 inches off in each case. (Third picks of 17 inches for Blacksburg by Camden and 20 inches for Roanoke by Webb were each off by six.)

There was someone else who did well picking Burke’s Garden: This writer. I also called for 40 inches.

Overall, this was my best winter thus far in picking snowfall totals for all 10 sites in the contest, correctly predicting Burke’s Garden and Martinsville (12 inches) and only two to four inches off seven of the eight other locations. 

While the idea expressed here back in early December (read the section at the end of the linked column) that this winter would be fairly similar to last year was a pretty good one, it’s always better to be lucky than good with snowfall prediction contests.

A degree or two warmer aloft could have scuttled two early season wet snows on Dec. 5 and 8 and scraped a few inches off these totals, and conversely, a somewhat colder atmosphere aloft on Jan. 24-25 or a slight north nudge in the storm track on Jan. 31 could have ratcheted up these snow totals considerably.

Snow totals from Dec. 1 to March 31, rounded to the nearest inch, for the 10 locations used in the contest are listed below, with my guess in parentheses.

·         Abingdon: 15  (Kevin: 18)

·         Appomattox: 16 (Kevin: 14)

·         Blacksburg: 23 (Kevin: 25)

·         Burke’s Garden: 40  (Kevin: 40)

·         Clintwood: 36 (Kevin: 45)

·         Danville: 13 (Kevin: 11)

·         Lynchburg: 12 (Kevin: 15)

·         Martinsville: 12 (Kevin: 12)

·         Roanoke: 14 (Kevin: 18)

·         Wytheville: 17 (Kevin: 21)

Journalist Kevin Myatt has been writing about weather for 20 years. His weekly column, appearing on Wednesdays, is sponsored by Oakey’s, a family-run, locally-owned funeral home with locations throughout the Roanoke Valley.  

To submit a photo, send it to weather@cardinalnews.org or tweet it to @CardinalNewsVa or @KevinMyattWx. Please identify the location and date of the photo with each submission.

Sign up for his weekly newsletter:

The post Snowfall contest decided by 1-inch difference between two Roanokers appeared first on Cardinal News.

Updated 11:30 a.m. April 15: This story has been updated to add comments from Del. Eric Phillips and additional information about the current tax exemption status for the Stack project.

____________________

The Stack Infrastructure project at the Berry Hill megasite, which was expected to bring more than 2,000 jobs to Southside, may not happen if Virginia does away with data center tax exemptions, Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday morning. 

An affiliate of data center developer Stack Infrastructure plans to buy about 2,099 acres at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County.

It could be the largest economic development deal in Southside’s history, with an expected $73 billion in investment and 2,050 jobs over 30 years. 

But that might not happen if the state eliminates tax exemptions for data center projects earlier than planned, Sickles said. These exemptions are set to expire in 2035, but a proposal to end them early, in 2027, has caused a heated debate in the General Assembly. 

The House and Senate are diametrically opposed on this issue, and their disagreement has held up the General Assembly’s approval of a budget. 

Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said in March that she would not send a bill to the governor unless it included language to end the data center tax exemption next year. She has said that data center developments should be paying their fair share.

House leaders insist that the tax exemptions are kept, saying that they are critical to attracting a burgeoning industry to the state and their abolition would hurt Virginia’s relationships with other business sectors.

“With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away,” Sickles said. 

Data centers that meet certain criteria in Virginia, like investing at least $150 million and creating at least 50 jobs, are exempt from paying state retail sales and use tax on computers and other equipment. In economically distressed localities, the criteria are at least $70 million in investment and at least 10 jobs. 

Kevin Hughes, the chief external affairs officer for Stack Americas, said that the tax exemption has been “critical to the creation of the Virginia market and essential to the viability of Stack’s proposed data center campus at Berry Hill.”

This is the first acknowledgment of the project being a data center campus, as the nature of the development had previously not been revealed and a formal announcement had yet to be made.

“If it was eliminated, we would expect the market to see a significant loss of proposed and active projects across the Commonwealth and eventually rising vacancies in the operating facilities within Virginia,” Hughes wrote in an email.

The Stack Infrastructure project in Pittsylvania is currently exempt from state retail taxes until at least 2040 under a separate deal with different criteria — a capital investment of at least $35 billion and the creation of at least 1,000 new jobs with average wages that are at least 1.5 times the prevailing wage in the locality. That exemption could be extended to 2050 if those figures are exceeded by a certain amount. 

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that changing the “landscape” of data center tax exemptions “at the very early stages of a company making a large scale and monument investment … could really negatively impact that particular investment.”

In March, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facilities Authority unanimously approved a sale of almost all of the remaining available land at the 3,528-acre Berry Hill site to SAC III Acquisition Co., an affiliate of Colorado-based Stack Infrastructure. 

A draft performance agreement has not yet been signed by local officials. 

RIFA chairman Vic Ingram said in March that the board would likely call a special meeting to sign the performance agreement ahead of its next regularly scheduled meeting. That did not happen, and the item was not on the agenda at the board’s regular meeting Monday. 

Ingram did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry County, said Wednesday morning that he hopes legislators can get the tax exemptions worked out in the budget soon. 

“It’s been good enough for every other part of the state since 2010,” Phillips said. “Now that it would benefit rural Southside and Southwest communities that are finally garnering data center interest, they want to do away with it.” 

Phillips said that the tax exemption program provided about $1.9 billion in tax relief in 2025, according to a January state report. Data center developers have invested more than $80 billion in just the last two years, the report says. 

The potential Stack Infrastructure project could bring another almost $80 billion investment “by itself if the exemption stays in place,” Phillips said. 

“From a business standpoint, this is a no-brainer,” he said. “The long-term economic and tax benefits to our localities and the commonwealth far outweigh the cost of the incentive. I am hopeful the House, Senate and the administration can come together, find common ground, and keep this tool in place so Southern Virginia has a real shot at landing this transformational project.”

The Berry Hill Megasite is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, and more than $214 million in public and private funds has been spent on site prep since its acquisition. 

The Stack Infrastructure project would be the second at the site, after Tennessee-based Microporous, a lithium-ion battery separator manufacturer, announced a facility there in 2024. 

At the time, this was the largest economic development announcement in Southside, initially promising $1.3 billion in investment and the creation of 2,015 jobs. Those figures have since changed to $1.6 billion and a minimum of 1,732 jobs. 

“Community leaders have worked so hard to bring [the Stack Infrastructure project] to Southside Virginia,” Spanberger said. “Any endangerment of it would be very, very detrimental to the local economy and the local communities and frankly the investments that they have intended to make with the expected revenue from that project.”

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said he’s not sure if the tax exemptions are critical to making the Berry Hill project happen. 

“Does [Sickles] have any basis for that statement?” Deeds said in an interview Tuesday. “Data centers like Virginia, they like the environment, they like the workforce, so I don’t know.”

The tax exemption has “probably been one of the most successful incentives we’ve ever had in Virginia,” Sickles said at the meeting.

“That’s why we oppose such an abrupt change,” he said. 

The data center industry contributes about $9 billion annually to Virginia’s gross domestic product, he said. 

Danville officials are hoping to get in on the economic boost that data centers provide to a locality through tax revenue, Sickles said. 

“It’s trying to be copied today in Danville at the Berry Hill site, which we tried to market for years and years,” he said. “They’re very excited about it. With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away. That’s 2,050 jobs right there in Danville.”

The post Megasite project could be in jeopardy if data center tax exemptions are ended, finance secretary warns appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Stack Infrastructure project at the Berry Hill megasite, which was expected to bring more than 2,000 jobs to Southside, may not happen if Virginia does away with data center tax exemptions, Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday morning. 

An affiliate of data center developer Stack Infrastructure plans to buy about 2,099 acres at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County.

It could be the largest economic development deal in Southside’s history, with an expected $73 billion in investment and 2,050 jobs over 30 years. 

But that might not happen if the state eliminates tax exemptions for data center projects earlier than planned, Sickles said. These exemptions are set to expire in 2035, but a proposal to end them early, in 2027, has caused a heated debate in the General Assembly. 

The House and Senate are diametrically opposed on this issue, and their disagreement has held up the General Assembly’s approval of a budget. 

Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said in March that she would not send a bill to the governor unless it included language to end the data center tax exemption next year. She has said that data center developments should be paying their fair share.

House leaders insist that the tax exemptions are kept, saying that they are critical to attracting a burgeoning industry to the state and their abolition would hurt Virginia’s relationships with other business sectors.

“With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away,” Sickles said. 

Data centers that meet certain criteria in Virginia, like investing at least $150 million and creating at least 50 jobs, are exempt from paying state retail sales and use tax on computers and other equipment. In economically distressed localities, the criteria are at least $70 million in investment and at least 10 jobs. 

Kevin Hughes, the chief external affairs officer for Stack Americas, said that the tax exemption has been “critical to the creation of the Virginia market and essential to the viability of Stack’s proposed data center campus at Berry Hill.”

This is the first acknowledgment of the project being a data center campus, as the nature of the development had previously not been revealed and a formal announcement had yet to be made.

“If it was eliminated, we would expect the market to see a significant loss of proposed and active projects across the Commonwealth and eventually rising vacancies in the operating facilities within Virginia,” wrote Hughes in an email.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that changing the “landscape” of data center tax exemptions “at the very early stages of a company making a large scale and monument investment … could really negatively impact that particular investment.”

In March, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facilities Authority unanimously approved a sale of almost all of the remaining available land at the 3,528-acre Berry Hill site to SAC III Acquisition Co., an affiliate of Colorado-based Stack Infrastructure. 

A draft performance agreement has not yet been signed by local officials. 

RIFA chairman Vic Ingram said in March that the board would likely call a special meeting to sign the performance agreement ahead of its next regularly scheduled meeting. That did not happen, and the item was not on the agenda at the board’s regular meeting Monday. 

Ingram did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry County, also did not respond to a request for comment. 

The Berry Hill Megasite is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, and more than $214 million in public and private funds has been spent on site prep since its acquisition. 

The Stack Infrastructure project would be the second at the site, after Tennessee-based Microporous, a lithium-ion battery separator manufacturer, announced a facility there in 2024. 

At the time, this was the largest economic development announcement in Southside, initially promising $1.3 billion in investment and the creation of 2,015 jobs. Those figures have since changed to $1.6 billion and a minimum of 1,732 jobs. 

“Community leaders have worked so hard to bring [the Stack Infrastructure project] to Southside Virginia,” Spanberger said. “Any endangerment of it would be very, very detrimental to the local economy and the local communities and frankly the investments that they have intended to make with the expected revenue from that project.”

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said he’s not sure if the tax exemptions are critical to making the Berry Hill project happen. 

“Does [Sickles] have any basis for that statement?” Deeds said in an interview Tuesday. “Data centers like Virginia, they like the environment, they like the workforce, so I don’t know.”

The tax exemption has “probably been one of the most successful incentives we’ve ever had in Virginia,” Sickles said at the meeting.

“That’s why we oppose such an abrupt change,” he said. 

The data center industry contributes about $9 million annually to Virginia’s gross domestic product, he said. 

Danville officials are hoping to get in on the economic boost that data centers provide to a locality through tax revenue, Sickles said. 

“It’s trying to be copied today in Danville at the Berry Hill site, which we tried to market for years and years,” he said. “They’re very excited about it. With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away. That’s 2,050 jobs right there in Danville.”

The post Megasite project could be in jeopardy if data center tax exemptions are ended, finance secretary warns appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Stack Infrastructure project at the Berry Hill megasite, which was expected to bring more than 2,000 jobs to Southside, may not happen if Virginia does away with data center tax exemptions, Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday morning. 

An affiliate of data center developer Stack Infrastructure plans to buy about 2,099 acres at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County.

It could be the largest economic development deal in Southside’s history, with an expected $73 billion in investment and 2,050 jobs over 30 years. 

But that might not happen if the state eliminates tax exemptions for data center projects earlier than planned, Sickles said. These exemptions are set to expire in 2035, but a proposal to end them early, in 2027, has caused a heated debate in the General Assembly. 

The House and Senate are diametrically opposed on this issue, and their disagreement has held up the General Assembly’s approval of a budget. 

Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said in March that she would not send a bill to the governor unless it included language to end the data center tax exemption next year. She has said that data center developments should be paying their fair share.

House leaders insist that the tax exemptions are kept, saying that they are critical to attracting a burgeoning industry to the state and their abolition would hurt Virginia’s relationships with other business sectors.

“With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away,” Sickles said. 

Data centers that meet certain criteria in Virginia, like investing at least $150 million and creating at least 50 jobs, are exempt from paying state retail sales and use tax on computers and other equipment. In economically distressed localities, the criteria are at least $70 million in investment and at least 10 jobs. 

Kevin Hughes, the chief external affairs officer for Stack Americas, said that the tax exemption has been “critical to the creation of the Virginia market and essential to the viability of Stack’s proposed data center campus at Berry Hill.”

This is the first acknowledgment of the project being a data center campus, as the nature of the development had previously not been revealed and a formal announcement had yet to be made.

“If it was eliminated, we would expect the market to see a significant loss of proposed and active projects across the Commonwealth and eventually rising vacancies in the operating facilities within Virginia,” Hughes wrote in an email.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that changing the “landscape” of data center tax exemptions “at the very early stages of a company making a large scale and monument investment … could really negatively impact that particular investment.”

In March, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facilities Authority unanimously approved a sale of almost all of the remaining available land at the 3,528-acre Berry Hill site to SAC III Acquisition Co., an affiliate of Colorado-based Stack Infrastructure. 

A draft performance agreement has not yet been signed by local officials. 

RIFA chairman Vic Ingram said in March that the board would likely call a special meeting to sign the performance agreement ahead of its next regularly scheduled meeting. That did not happen, and the item was not on the agenda at the board’s regular meeting Monday. 

Ingram did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry County, also did not respond to a request for comment. 

The Berry Hill Megasite is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, and more than $214 million in public and private funds has been spent on site prep since its acquisition. 

The Stack Infrastructure project would be the second at the site, after Tennessee-based Microporous, a lithium-ion battery separator manufacturer, announced a facility there in 2024. 

At the time, this was the largest economic development announcement in Southside, initially promising $1.3 billion in investment and the creation of 2,015 jobs. Those figures have since changed to $1.6 billion and a minimum of 1,732 jobs. 

“Community leaders have worked so hard to bring [the Stack Infrastructure project] to Southside Virginia,” Spanberger said. “Any endangerment of it would be very, very detrimental to the local economy and the local communities and frankly the investments that they have intended to make with the expected revenue from that project.”

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said he’s not sure if the tax exemptions are critical to making the Berry Hill project happen. 

“Does [Sickles] have any basis for that statement?” Deeds said in an interview Tuesday. “Data centers like Virginia, they like the environment, they like the workforce, so I don’t know.”

The tax exemption has “probably been one of the most successful incentives we’ve ever had in Virginia,” Sickles said at the meeting.

“That’s why we oppose such an abrupt change,” he said. 

The data center industry contributes about $9 million annually to Virginia’s gross domestic product, he said. 

Danville officials are hoping to get in on the economic boost that data centers provide to a locality through tax revenue, Sickles said. 

“It’s trying to be copied today in Danville at the Berry Hill site, which we tried to market for years and years,” he said. “They’re very excited about it. With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away. That’s 2,050 jobs right there in Danville.”

The post Megasite project could be in jeopardy if data center tax exemptions are ended, finance secretary warns appeared first on Cardinal News.

Updated 11:30 a.m. April 15: This story has been updated to add comments from Del. Eric Phillips and additional information about the current tax exemption status for the Stack project.

____________________

The Stack Infrastructure project at the Berry Hill megasite, which was expected to bring more than 2,000 jobs to Southside, may not happen if Virginia does away with data center tax exemptions, Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles told the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday morning. 

An affiliate of data center developer Stack Infrastructure plans to buy about 2,099 acres at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County.

It could be the largest economic development deal in Southside’s history, with an expected $73 billion in investment and 2,050 jobs over 30 years. 

But that might not happen if the state eliminates tax exemptions for data center projects earlier than planned, Sickles said. These exemptions are set to expire in 2035, but a proposal to end them early, in 2027, has caused a heated debate in the General Assembly. 

The House and Senate are diametrically opposed on this issue, and their disagreement has held up the General Assembly’s approval of a budget. 

Senate Finance Chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, said in March that she would not send a bill to the governor unless it included language to end the data center tax exemption next year. She has said that data center developments should be paying their fair share.

House leaders insist that the tax exemptions are kept, saying that they are critical to attracting a burgeoning industry to the state and their abolition would hurt Virginia’s relationships with other business sectors.

“With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away,” Sickles said. 

Data centers that meet certain criteria in Virginia, like investing at least $150 million and creating at least 50 jobs, are exempt from paying state retail sales and use tax on computers and other equipment. In economically distressed localities, the criteria are at least $70 million in investment and at least 10 jobs. 

Kevin Hughes, the chief external affairs officer for Stack Americas, said that the tax exemption has been “critical to the creation of the Virginia market and essential to the viability of Stack’s proposed data center campus at Berry Hill.”

This is the first acknowledgment of the project being a data center campus, as the nature of the development had previously not been revealed and a formal announcement had yet to be made.

“If it was eliminated, we would expect the market to see a significant loss of proposed and active projects across the Commonwealth and eventually rising vacancies in the operating facilities within Virginia,” Hughes wrote in an email.

The Stack Infrastructure project in Pittsylvania is currently exempt from state retail taxes until at least 2040 under a separate deal with different criteria — a capital investment of at least $35 billion and the creation of at least 1,000 new jobs with average wages that are at least 1.5 times the prevailing wage in the locality. That exemption could be extended to 2050 if those figures are exceeded by a certain amount. 

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Tuesday that changing the “landscape” of data center tax exemptions “at the very early stages of a company making a large scale and monument investment … could really negatively impact that particular investment.”

In March, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facilities Authority unanimously approved a sale of almost all of the remaining available land at the 3,528-acre Berry Hill site to SAC III Acquisition Co., an affiliate of Colorado-based Stack Infrastructure. 

A draft performance agreement has not yet been signed by local officials. 

RIFA chairman Vic Ingram said in March that the board would likely call a special meeting to sign the performance agreement ahead of its next regularly scheduled meeting. That did not happen, and the item was not on the agenda at the board’s regular meeting Monday. 

Ingram did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

Del. Eric Phillips, R-Henry County, said Wednesday morning that he hopes legislators can get the tax exemptions worked out in the budget soon. 

“It’s been good enough for every other part of the state since 2010,” Phillips said. “Now that it would benefit rural Southside and Southwest communities that are finally garnering data center interest, they want to do away with it.” 

Phillips said that the tax exemption program provided about $1.9 billion in tax relief in 2025, according to a January state report. Data center developers have invested more than $80 billion in just the last two years, the report says. 

The potential Stack Infrastructure project could bring another almost $80 billion investment “by itself if the exemption stays in place,” Phillips said. 

“From a business standpoint, this is a no-brainer,” he said. “The long-term economic and tax benefits to our localities and the commonwealth far outweigh the cost of the incentive. I am hopeful the House, Senate and the administration can come together, find common ground, and keep this tool in place so Southern Virginia has a real shot at landing this transformational project.”

The Berry Hill Megasite is jointly owned by Danville and Pittsylvania County, and more than $214 million in public and private funds has been spent on site prep since its acquisition. 

The Stack Infrastructure project would be the second at the site, after Tennessee-based Microporous, a lithium-ion battery separator manufacturer, announced a facility there in 2024. 

At the time, this was the largest economic development announcement in Southside, initially promising $1.3 billion in investment and the creation of 2,015 jobs. Those figures have since changed to $1.6 billion and a minimum of 1,732 jobs. 

“Community leaders have worked so hard to bring [the Stack Infrastructure project] to Southside Virginia,” Spanberger said. “Any endangerment of it would be very, very detrimental to the local economy and the local communities and frankly the investments that they have intended to make with the expected revenue from that project.”

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said he’s not sure if the tax exemptions are critical to making the Berry Hill project happen. 

“Does [Sickles] have any basis for that statement?” Deeds said in an interview Tuesday. “Data centers like Virginia, they like the environment, they like the workforce, so I don’t know.”

The tax exemption has “probably been one of the most successful incentives we’ve ever had in Virginia,” Sickles said at the meeting.

“That’s why we oppose such an abrupt change,” he said. 

The data center industry contributes about $9 billion annually to Virginia’s gross domestic product, he said. 

Danville officials are hoping to get in on the economic boost that data centers provide to a locality through tax revenue, Sickles said. 

“It’s trying to be copied today in Danville at the Berry Hill site, which we tried to market for years and years,” he said. “They’re very excited about it. With the end of the tax exemption, that project goes away. That’s 2,050 jobs right there in Danville.”

The post Megasite project could be in jeopardy if data center tax exemptions are ended, finance secretary warns appeared first on Cardinal News.

We now know more about the governor we elected.

That knowledge will not stop the debate over whether Abigail Spanberger is or is not as moderate or as bipartisan as she was portrayed in last fall’s election. On the contrary, that debate may intensify. However, we now have 1,102 data points with which to flesh out the picture — in the form of 972 bills she signed before Monday night’s deadline, 122 she sent back to the legislature with amendments and eight she vetoed outright (although two of those were duplicate bills, so it was really seven different policy items). The text of some of those amendments wasn’t available Tuesday, so it will be a while before we get a complete picture, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Spanberger signed most of the bills you’d expect a Democratic governor would

Increase in minimum wage? Signed. Restrictions on guns? Signed. Right to contraception established? Signed. Tax breaks for Confederate-themed organizations revoked? Signed. Doing away with license plates dedicated to the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? Signed. All those were bills that Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, vetoed. Think what you will of those measures, but no one should be surprised that Spanberger signed them. This is sort of what the election was about. Elections have consequences, we’re told. Here are some of them.

2. Some of the most disappointed legislators are Democrats, not Republicans

Republicans expected a Democratic governor to do things they didn’t like, so while they may be unhappy about many of Spanberger’s actions, they shouldn’t be surprised. Some Democrats are, though. Five of the eight (or seven) bills she vetoed were sponsored by Democrats. The three most high-profile: Authorizing a referendum on a Fairfax County casino, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. Legalizing so-called “skill” games, sponsored by Senate Privileges and Elections chair Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Prohibiting certain types of plea agreements, by Sen. Saddam Salin, D-Fairfax. Surovell wasn’t just disappointed, he issued a statement that said he was “deeply disappointed.”

The last time we had a Democratic trifecta in the governorship, House and Senate was the final two years of Gov. Ralph Northam’s term in 2020-21. He vetoed four bills the Democratic legislature sent him in 2020, none in 2021. Spanberger has vetoed seven (or maybe eight) in her first year — and there could be more to come if the legislature rejects her proposed amendments and the original bill comes back to her. That’s obviously way lower than the 201 vetoes that Youngkin inked in 2024 and the 157 he issued in 2025. 

Still, Spanberger vetoed and sent back some bills for amendments that Democratic legislators didn’t expect. 

3. Spanberger moderated some bills

Here are three notable ones. 

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, had introduced a bill that attempted to ban teachers from describing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol as a “peaceful protest” or saying that the 2020 presidential election was subject to “extensive election fraud.” Instead, the bill would have directed them to “describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Virginia Scope reports that PEN America, a literary group involved with issues of free expression, recently wrote to Spanberger to express concern with the bill. Spanberger’s amendment proposes a substitute that instead directs the board of education to take up “whether it would be necessary” to provide “additional instructional emphasis” on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, another bill that drew controversy in the recent session was another Helmer bill that set up a study of Virginia Military Institute. In its original form, the study group was directed to examine whether VMI should even remain a state institution. As ultimately passed, the bill called for the study to “determine the quality of VMI graduates” and include an examination of whether VMI “has initiated any substantial changes to its policies, values, and preventative, investigative, and disciplinary procedures to reduce acts within its student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault; has actively made efforts to distance itself from the Lost Cause narrative or other celebrations or promotions of the Confederacy in the American Civil War; has successfully made progress on these efforts and has a plan to address any remaining gaps; and possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

Spanberger’s amendments take out all that language and instead add that the task force should “determine if VMI has been successful in recruiting and admitting a more diverse body of students and if admissions priorities have shifted away from a focus on students with legacy status or other alumni relatives” and give the power to “include any such questions or concerns” in its purview. As I read the amendment, the task force could still do all the things the unamended bill did, but it’s not specifically directed to deal with Confederate-related issues at VMI.

Spanberger also proposed amendments that would delay full implementation of collective bargaining for public employees until 2030 — at which point there will be a new governor. Spanberger said the phase-in would give the state time to work out all the details, but Surovell said he was “very disappointed.” She also sent down amendments to some gun bills, but those details weren’t available Tuesday. She proposed amendments to turn a Prescription Drug Affordability Board from a regulatory board into an advisory board; the sponsors said that was essentially a veto by another name.

4. Spanberger wants to distance herself from the General Assembly on some issues

A recent poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University found that Spanberger has the lowest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor since the polling started in the early 1990s — and the highest disapproval rating. The consensus (which I agree with) has been that Spanberger, who had touted her bipartisan credentials during the campaign, has suffered because one of the first things she had to do was take a position on a highly partisan issue: redistricting. She’s also suffered because Republicans have been very effective in tying her to tax increases that were proposed in the General Assembly which didn’t pass, and which she never endorsed. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump, during an appearance in Charlottesville, blasted Spanberger for those measures as if they were actually bills she had signed.

On Monday, Spanberger’s office sent out an unusual press release headlined: “BREAKING: Governor Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.” It then listed nine bills that didn’t pass — all introduced by Democrats. Maybe this was a clever public relations move, maybe this was odd and awkward, but it’s still unusual to see a governor celebrate bills introduced by members of the governor’s own party that didn’t pass.

One bill that Republicans have delighted in talking about is a measure by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County, that would have created a mattress recycling program — with a fee attached. “They’re even taxing sleep,” former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares chortled at a recent appearance in Wytheville. Spanberger vetoed the bill. Maybe her policy concerns were legitimate, but the veto also deprives Republicans of a favorite talking point.

5. Some of Spanberger’s actions have budget implications, which might further complicate a budget deal

The General Assembly has yet to pass a budget. House and Senate budget negotiators haven’t even met yet because they remain far apart on one key issue: Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is insistent that Virginia eliminate its tax incentive for data centers and House budget conferees say that would send a bad signal to other business sectors and slow down what has been a productive revenue stream for Virginia. Until legislators know how much money they’ll have, it’s hard to put together a budget. 

At least two actions Spanberger took will widen the budget gap between the House and Senate. She vetoed skill games, on the grounds that there’s no gaming commission to regulate them. She also proposed amendments to delay the legalization of retail sales of cannabis from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027, and to reduce the number of licenses awarded. The language for that amendment wasn’t available Tuesday, but some cannabis advocates had urged a delay on the grounds that it would help small entrepreneurs to grow a crop; otherwise the only people with a legal crop ready to market would be medical marijuana companies. 

Both these actions also serve to reduce expected revenue. An economic impact study has projected skill games could bring in up to $249.6 million a year. A similar report on cannabis had projected $9.2 million tax revenues if sales had started Jan. 1; however, Spanberger proposes to delay that start date and reduce the number of licenses from 400 to 200, both of which would reduce the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers in 2027.

6. Some Democratic legislators aren’t happy with Spanberger 

Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, himself a former legislator, briefed the Senate Finance Committee on state revenues Tuesday and got an earful from some Democrats. Surovell complained about the number of amendments Spanberger had sent legislators. “We have a whole lot of new policy positions that were not communicated to us” until now, he said. “It’s hard to legislate when the governor doesn’t let us know what her position is on anything. We’re now trying to figure out a budget in a constrained time frame. It would be really helpful if the governor would let us know what her position is.”

Sickles attributed any lack of communication to the frenzy of a legislative session and pointed out that legislators had started their work before Spanberger had taken office. We should remember that Spanberger has never served in state government, and there’s a learning curve for any new governor. Still, this was a rare display of Democrats being frustrated with a Democratic governor. 

7. Spanberger still has a Lucas problem

Spanberger has to deal with the perception that she’s not the most powerful person in Richmond, Lucas is. Youngkin had that problem, too, after Lucas blocked consideration of a proposed sports arena in Alexandria. Now Spanberger has it, as well, with the added complication that Spanberger is a new governor and she and Lucas are in the same party. 

Lucas has already caused problems for Spanberger on redistricting. Spanberger said last summer she had no plans to push redistricting. However, Lucas did. Spanberger has certainly gone along with that, but she’s the one taking the political hit for it in the polls, not Lucas. 

Now Lucas is the one pushing to end the state’s tax incentives on data centers. That’s a complication for Spanberger, who has opposed an early phase-out — and has the job of selling Virginia to potential employers who might take a dim view of the state changing the rules of the game, even if it’s not their business sector. Spanberger, as governor, also has to look out for constituents who Lucas doesn’t — rural Virginia, where many localities want data centers and are just now attracting their attention. Some of those communities now worry that ending the tax incentives will deprive them of an opportunity right when it’s within their grasp. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, Lucas was trolling the governor online with this post: “Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.” Just in case that message wasn’t clear, Lucas followed up with another post: “The Senate budget asks the wealthiest corporations to pay sales tax just like every other business in Virginia. They can afford it.” Translation: Data centers will have to pay more taxes.

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling — a Republican — published a scathing review of Spanberger on social media, saying that she had already become “irrelevant” by taking a “passive” approach to the budget impasse. “Governor Spanberger needs to become actively involved in these negotiations and push the parties toward an agreement, but she doesn’t want to. Why? Because she has no experience in state government. She doesn’t understand how the process works, and how Governors have become involved in these disputes in the past. And because she doesn’t want to take sides between the State Senate and the House of Delegates. She doesn’t want to anger Senator Lucas or Speaker [Don] Scott. But that’s exactly what leadership requires.”

We shouldn’t expect a Republican to issue praise of a Democratic governor, but Bolling’s critique that Spanberger is too deferential to Lucas does fit the perception that Lucas is the one calling the shots at the State Capitol. Perception is not the same as reality, although in politics, sometimes it can be — and none of Spanberger’s actions on bills erase that perception. What Bolling calls a “passive” approach could also be read as a “patient” one, and perhaps standing back some from these legislative squabbles will wind up paying off. For now, though, we still don’t have a budget, or even any budget negotiations. For our new governor, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.  

For more on Virginia politics . . .

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The post 7 things to know about Spanberger’s action on bills the General Assembly passed appeared first on Cardinal News.

We now know more about the governor we elected.

That knowledge will not stop the debate over whether Abigail Spanberger is or is not as moderate or as bipartisan as she was portrayed in last fall’s election. On the contrary, that debate may intensify. However, we now have 1,102 data points with which to flesh out the picture — in the form of 972 bills she signed before Monday night’s deadline, 122 she sent back to the legislature with amendments and eight she vetoed outright (although two of those were duplicate bills, so it was really seven different policy items). The text of some of those amendments wasn’t available Tuesday, so it will be a while before we get a complete picture, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Spanberger signed most of the bills you’d expect a Democratic governor would

Increase in minimum wage? Signed. Restrictions on guns? Signed. Right to contraception established? Signed. Tax breaks for Confederate-themed organizations revoked? Signed. Doing away with license plates dedicated to the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? Signed. All those were bills that Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, vetoed. Think what you will of those measures, but no one should be surprised that Spanberger signed them. This is sort of what the election was about. Elections have consequences, we’re told. Here are some of them.

2. Some of the most disappointed legislators are Democrats, not Republicans

Republicans expected a Democratic governor to do things they didn’t like, so while they may be unhappy about many of Spanberger’s actions, they shouldn’t be surprised. Some Democrats are, though. Five of the eight (or seven) bills she vetoed were sponsored by Democrats. The three most high-profile: Authorizing a referendum on a Fairfax County casino, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. Legalizing so-called “skill” games, sponsored by Senate Privileges and Elections chair Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Prohibiting certain types of plea agreements, by Sen. Saddam Salin, D-Fairfax. Surovell wasn’t just disappointed, he issued a statement that said he was “deeply disappointed.”

The last time we had a Democratic trifecta in the governorship, House and Senate was the final two years of Gov. Ralph Northam’s term in 2020-21. He vetoed four bills the Democratic legislature sent him in 2020, none in 2021. Spanberger has vetoed seven (or maybe eight) in her first year — and there could be more to come if the legislature rejects her proposed amendments and the original bill comes back to her. That’s obviously way lower than the 201 vetoes that Youngkin inked in 2024 and the 157 he issued in 2025. 

Still, Spanberger vetoed and sent back some bills for amendments that Democratic legislators didn’t expect. 

3. Spanberger moderated some bills

Here are three notable ones. 

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, had introduced a bill that attempted to ban teachers from describing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol as a “peaceful protest” or saying that the 2020 presidential election was subject to “extensive election fraud.” Instead, the bill would have directed them to “describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Virginia Scope reports that PEN America, a literary group involved with issues of free expression, recently wrote to Spanberger to express concern with the bill. Spanberger’s amendment proposes a substitute that instead directs the board of education to take up “whether it would be necessary” to provide “additional instructional emphasis” on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, another bill that drew controversy in the recent session was another Helmer bill that set up a study of Virginia Military Institute. In its original form, the study group was directed to examine whether VMI should even remain a state institution. As ultimately passed, the bill called for the study to “determine the quality of VMI graduates” and include an examination of whether VMI “has initiated any substantial changes to its policies, values, and preventative, investigative, and disciplinary procedures to reduce acts within its student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault; has actively made efforts to distance itself from the Lost Cause narrative or other celebrations or promotions of the Confederacy in the American Civil War; has successfully made progress on these efforts and has a plan to address any remaining gaps; and possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

Spanberger’s amendments take out all that language and instead add that the task force should “determine if VMI has been successful in recruiting and admitting a more diverse body of students and if admissions priorities have shifted away from a focus on students with legacy status or other alumni relatives” and give the power to “include any such questions or concerns” in its purview. As I read the amendment, the task force could still do all the things the unamended bill did, but it’s not specifically directed to deal with Confederate-related issues at VMI.

Spanberger also proposed amendments that would delay full implementation of collective bargaining for public employees until 2030 — at which point there will be a new governor. Spanberger said the phase-in would give the state time to work out all the details, but Surovell said he was “very disappointed.” She also sent down amendments to some gun bills, but those details weren’t available Tuesday. She proposed amendments to turn a Prescription Drug Affordability Board from a regulatory board into an advisory board; the sponsors said that was essentially a veto by another name.

4. Spanberger wants to distance herself from the General Assembly on some issues

A recent poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University found that Spanberger has the lowest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor since the polling started in the early 1990s — and the highest disapproval rating. The consensus (which I agree with) has been that Spanberger, who had touted her bipartisan credentials during the campaign, has suffered because one of the first things she had to do was take a position on a highly partisan issue: redistricting. She’s also suffered because Republicans have been very effective in tying her to tax increases that were proposed in the General Assembly which didn’t pass, and which she never endorsed. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump, during an appearance in Charlottesville, blasted Spanberger for those measures as if they were actually bills she had signed.

On Monday, Spanberger’s office sent out an unusual press release headlined: “BREAKING: Governor Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.” It then listed nine bills that didn’t pass — all introduced by Democrats. Maybe this was a clever public relations move, maybe this was odd and awkward, but it’s still unusual to see a governor celebrate bills introduced by members of the governor’s own party that didn’t pass.

One bill that Republicans have delighted in talking about is a measure by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County, that would have created a mattress recycling program — with a fee attached. “They’re even taxing sleep,” former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares chortled at a recent appearance in Wytheville. Spanberger vetoed the bill. Maybe her policy concerns were legitimate, but the veto also deprives Republicans of a favorite talking point.

5. Some of Spanberger’s actions have budget implications, which might further complicate a budget deal

The General Assembly has yet to pass a budget. House and Senate budget negotiators haven’t even met yet because they remain far apart on one key issue: Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is insistent that Virginia eliminate its tax incentive for data centers and House budget conferees say that would send a bad signal to other business sectors and slow down what has been a productive revenue stream for Virginia. Until legislators know how much money they’ll have, it’s hard to put together a budget. 

At least two actions Spanberger took will widen the budget gap between the House and Senate. She vetoed skill games, on the grounds that there’s no gaming commission to regulate them. She also proposed amendments to delay the legalization of retail sales of cannabis from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027, and to reduce the number of licenses awarded. The language for that amendment wasn’t available Tuesday, but some cannabis advocates had urged a delay on the grounds that it would help small entrepreneurs to grow a crop; otherwise the only people with a legal crop ready to market would be medical marijuana companies. 

Both these actions also serve to reduce expected revenue. An economic impact study has projected skill games could bring in up to $249.6 million a year. A similar report on cannabis had projected $9.2 million tax revenues if sales had started Jan. 1; however, Spanberger proposes to delay that start date and reduce the number of licenses from 400 to 200, both of which would reduce the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers in 2027.

6. Some Democratic legislators aren’t happy with Spanberger 

Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, himself a former legislator, briefed the Senate Finance Committee on state revenues Tuesday and got an earful from some Democrats. Surovell complained about the number of amendments Spanberger had sent legislators. “We have a whole lot of new policy positions that were not communicated to us” until now, he said. “It’s hard to legislate when the governor doesn’t let us know what her position is on anything. We’re now trying to figure out a budget in a constrained time frame. It would be really helpful if the governor would let us know what her position is.”

Sickles attributed any lack of communication to the frenzy of a legislative session and pointed out that legislators had started their work before Spanberger had taken office. We should remember that Spanberger has never served in state government, and there’s a learning curve for any new governor. Still, this was a rare display of Democrats being frustrated with a Democratic governor. 

7. Spanberger still has a Lucas problem

Spanberger has to deal with the perception that she’s not the most powerful person in Richmond, Lucas is. Youngkin had that problem, too, after Lucas blocked consideration of a proposed sports arena in Alexandria. Now Spanberger has it, as well, with the added complication that Spanberger is a new governor and she and Lucas are in the same party. 

Lucas has already caused problems for Spanberger on redistricting. Spanberger said last summer she had no plans to push redistricting. However, Lucas did. Spanberger has certainly gone along with that, but she’s the one taking the political hit for it in the polls, not Lucas. 

Now Lucas is the one pushing to end the state’s tax incentives on data centers. That’s a complication for Spanberger, who has opposed an early phase-out — and has the job of selling Virginia to potential employers who might take a dim view of the state changing the rules of the game, even if it’s not their business sector. Spanberger, as governor, also has to look out for constituents who Lucas doesn’t — rural Virginia, where many localities want data centers and are just now attracting their attention. Some of those communities now worry that ending the tax incentives will deprive them of an opportunity right when it’s within their grasp. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, Lucas was trolling the governor online with this post: “Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.” Just in case that message wasn’t clear, Lucas followed up with another post: “The Senate budget asks the wealthiest corporations to pay sales tax just like every other business in Virginia. They can afford it.” Translation: Data centers will have to pay more taxes.

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling — a Republican — published a scathing review of Spanberger on social media, saying that she had already become “irrelevant” by taking a “passive” approach to the budget impasse. “Governor Spanberger needs to become actively involved in these negotiations and push the parties toward an agreement, but she doesn’t want to. Why? Because she has no experience in state government. She doesn’t understand how the process works, and how Governors have become involved in these disputes in the past. And because she doesn’t want to take sides between the State Senate and the House of Delegates. She doesn’t want to anger Senator Lucas or Speaker [Don] Scott. But that’s exactly what leadership requires.”

We shouldn’t expect a Republican to issue praise of a Democratic governor, but Bolling’s critique that Spanberger is too deferential to Lucas does fit the perception that Lucas is the one calling the shots at the State Capitol. Perception is not the same as reality, although in politics, sometimes it can be — and none of Spanberger’s actions on bills erase that perception. What Bolling calls a “passive” approach could also be read as a “patient” one, and perhaps standing back some from these legislative squabbles will wind up paying off. For now, though, we still don’t have a budget, or even any budget negotiations. For our new governor, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.  

For more on Virginia politics . . .

This is the last week of early voting before next Tuesday’s special election on redistricting. You can find the maps in our Voter Guide.

Got questions about redistricting? You can submit those here.

I’ll have my weekly update on early voting and other political news in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

• The Daily All of our latest stories, plus public notices, obituaries and opinion pieces. Sent every morning at 5 a.m.
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, plus word puzzles and obituaries. Sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather forecasts and updates, plus analysis on our region by Kevin Myatt. Sent Wednesdays.
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region. Sent Fridays.
• Your Weekend Plan your weekend ahead of time with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities and other events happening in our region, sent every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Dive into history with exclusive stories uncovering Virginia’s role in America’s path to independence. Sent monthly.
• Cardinal News NRV A weekly roundup of all the latest news stories from the New River Valley. Delivered Mondays at noon.

Sign up

The post 7 things to know about Spanberger’s action on bills the General Assembly passed appeared first on Cardinal News.

We now know more about the governor we elected.

That knowledge will not stop the debate over whether Abigail Spanberger is or is not as moderate or as bipartisan as she was portrayed in last fall’s election. On the contrary, that debate may intensify. However, we now have 1,102 data points with which to flesh out the picture — in the form of 972 bills she signed before Monday night’s deadline, 122 she sent back to the legislature with amendments and eight she vetoed outright (although two of those were duplicate bills, so it was really seven different policy items). The text of some of those amendments wasn’t available Tuesday, so it will be a while before we get a complete picture, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Spanberger signed most of the bills you’d expect a Democratic governor would

Increase in minimum wage? Signed. Restrictions on guns? Signed. Right to contraception established? Signed. Tax breaks for Confederate-themed organizations revoked? Signed. Doing away with license plates dedicated to the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? Signed. All those were bills that Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, vetoed. Think what you will of those measures, but no one should be surprised that Spanberger signed them. This is sort of what the election was about. Elections have consequences, we’re told. Here are some of them.

2. Some of the most disappointed legislators are Democrats, not Republicans

Republicans expected a Democratic governor to do things they didn’t like, so while they may be unhappy about many of Spanberger’s actions, they shouldn’t be surprised. Some Democrats are, though. Five of the eight (or seven) bills she vetoed were sponsored by Democrats. The three most high-profile: Authorizing a referendum on a Fairfax County casino, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. Legalizing so-called “skill” games, sponsored by Senate Privileges and Elections chair Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Prohibiting certain types of plea agreements, by Sen. Saddam Salin, D-Fairfax. Surovell wasn’t just disappointed, he issued a statement that said he was “deeply disappointed.”

The last time we had a Democratic trifecta in the governorship, House and Senate was the final two years of Gov. Ralph Northam’s term in 2020-21. He vetoed four bills the Democratic legislature sent him in 2020, none in 2021. Spanberger has vetoed seven (or maybe eight) in her first year — and there could be more to come if the legislature rejects her proposed amendments and the original bill comes back to her. That’s obviously way lower than the 201 vetoes that Youngkin inked in 2024 and the 157 he issued in 2025. 

Still, Spanberger vetoed and sent back some bills for amendments that Democratic legislators didn’t expect. 

3. Spanberger moderated some bills

Here are three notable ones. 

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, had introduced a bill that attempted to ban teachers from describing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol as a “peaceful protest” or saying that the 2020 presidential election was subject to “extensive election fraud.” Instead, the bill would have directed them to “describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Virginia Scope reports that PEN America, a literary group involved with issues of free expression, recently wrote to Spanberger to express concern with the bill. Spanberger’s amendment proposes a substitute that instead directs the board of education to take up “whether it would be necessary” to provide “additional instructional emphasis” on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, another bill that drew controversy in the recent session was another Helmer bill that set up a study of Virginia Military Institute. In its original form, the study group was directed to examine whether VMI should even remain a state institution. As ultimately passed, the bill called for the study to “determine the quality of VMI graduates” and include an examination of whether VMI “has initiated any substantial changes to its policies, values, and preventative, investigative, and disciplinary procedures to reduce acts within its student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault; has actively made efforts to distance itself from the Lost Cause narrative or other celebrations or promotions of the Confederacy in the American Civil War; has successfully made progress on these efforts and has a plan to address any remaining gaps; and possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

Spanberger’s amendments take out all that language and instead add that the task force should “determine if VMI has been successful in recruiting and admitting a more diverse body of students and if admissions priorities have shifted away from a focus on students with legacy status or other alumni relatives” and give the power to “include any such questions or concerns” in its purview. As I read the amendment, the task force could still do all the things the unamended bill did, but it’s not specifically directed to deal with Confederate-related issues at VMI.

Spanberger also proposed amendments that would delay full implementation of collective bargaining for public employees until 2030 — at which point there will be a new governor. Spanberger said the phase-in would give the state time to work out all the details, but Surovell said he was “very disappointed.” She also sent down amendments to some gun bills, but those details weren’t available Tuesday. She proposed amendments to turn a Prescription Drug Affordability Board from a regulatory board into an advisory board; the sponsors said that was essentially a veto by another name.

4. Spanberger wants to distance herself from the General Assembly on some issues

A recent poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University found that Spanberger has the lowest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor since the polling started in the early 1990s — and the highest disapproval rating. The consensus (which I agree with) has been that Spanberger, who had touted her bipartisan credentials during the campaign, has suffered because one of the first things she had to do was take a position on a highly partisan issue: redistricting. She’s also suffered because Republicans have been very effective in tying her to tax increases that were proposed in the General Assembly which didn’t pass, and which she never endorsed. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump, during an appearance in Charlottesville, blasted Spanberger for those measures as if they were actually bills she had signed.

On Monday, Spanberger’s office sent out an unusual press release headlined: “BREAKING: Governor Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.” It then listed nine bills that didn’t pass — all introduced by Democrats. Maybe this was a clever public relations move, maybe this was odd and awkward, but it’s still unusual to see a governor celebrate bills introduced by members of the governor’s own party that didn’t pass.

One bill that Republicans have delighted in talking about is a measure by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County, that would have created a mattress recycling program — with a fee attached. “They’re even taxing sleep,” former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares chortled at a recent appearance in Wytheville. Spanberger vetoed the bill. Maybe her policy concerns were legitimate, but the veto also deprives Republicans of a favorite talking point.

5. Some of Spanberger’s actions have budget implications, which might further complicate a budget deal

The General Assembly has yet to pass a budget. House and Senate budget negotiators haven’t even met yet because they remain far apart on one key issue: Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is insistent that Virginia eliminate its tax incentive for data centers and House budget conferees say that would send a bad signal to other business sectors and slow down what has been a productive revenue stream for Virginia. Until legislators know how much money they’ll have, it’s hard to put together a budget. 

At least two actions Spanberger took will widen the budget gap between the House and Senate. She vetoed skill games, on the grounds that there’s no gaming commission to regulate them. She also proposed amendments to delay the legalization of retail sales of cannabis from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027, and to reduce the number of licenses awarded. The language for that amendment wasn’t available Tuesday, but some cannabis advocates had urged a delay on the grounds that it would help small entrepreneurs to grow a crop; otherwise the only people with a legal crop ready to market would be medical marijuana companies. 

Both these actions also serve to reduce expected revenue. An economic impact study has projected skill games could bring in up to $249.6 million a year. A similar report on cannabis had projected $9.2 million tax revenues if sales had started Jan. 1; however, Spanberger proposes to delay that start date and reduce the number of licenses from 400 to 200, both of which would reduce the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers in 2027.

6. Some Democratic legislators aren’t happy with Spanberger 

Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, himself a former legislator, briefed the Senate Finance Committee on state revenues Tuesday and got an earful from some Democrats. Surovell complained about the number of amendments Spanberger had sent legislators. “We have a whole lot of new policy positions that were not communicated to us” until now, he said. “It’s hard to legislate when the governor doesn’t let us know what her position is on anything. We’re now trying to figure out a budget in a constrained time frame. It would be really helpful if the governor would let us know what her position is.”

Sickles attributed any lack of communication to the frenzy of a legislative session and pointed out that legislators had started their work before Spanberger had taken office. We should remember that Spanberger has never served in state government, and there’s a learning curve for any new governor. Still, this was a rare display of Democrats being frustrated with a Democratic governor. 

7. Spanberger still has a Lucas problem

Spanberger has to deal with the perception that she’s not the most powerful person in Richmond, Lucas is. Youngkin had that problem, too, after Lucas blocked consideration of a proposed sports arena in Alexandria. Now Spanberger has it, as well, with the added complication that Spanberger is a new governor and she and Lucas are in the same party. 

Lucas has already caused problems for Spanberger on redistricting. Spanberger said last summer she had no plans to push redistricting. However, Lucas did. Spanberger has certainly gone along with that, but she’s the one taking the political hit for it in the polls, not Lucas. 

Now Lucas is the one pushing to end the state’s tax incentives on data centers. That’s a complication for Spanberger, who has opposed an early phase-out — and has the job of selling Virginia to potential employers who might take a dim view of the state changing the rules of the game, even if it’s not their business sector. Spanberger, as governor, also has to look out for constituents who Lucas doesn’t — rural Virginia, where many localities want data centers and are just now attracting their attention. Some of those communities now worry that ending the tax incentives will deprive them of an opportunity right when it’s within their grasp. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, Lucas was trolling the governor online with this post: “Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.” Just in case that message wasn’t clear, Lucas followed up with another post: “The Senate budget asks the wealthiest corporations to pay sales tax just like every other business in Virginia. They can afford it.” Translation: Data centers will have to pay more taxes.

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling — a Republican — published a scathing review of Spanberger on social media, saying that she had already become “irrelevant” by taking a “passive” approach to the budget impasse. “Governor Spanberger needs to become actively involved in these negotiations and push the parties toward an agreement, but she doesn’t want to. Why? Because she has no experience in state government. She doesn’t understand how the process works, and how Governors have become involved in these disputes in the past. And because she doesn’t want to take sides between the State Senate and the House of Delegates. She doesn’t want to anger Senator Lucas or Speaker [Don] Scott. But that’s exactly what leadership requires.”

We shouldn’t expect a Republican to issue praise of a Democratic governor, but Bolling’s critique that Spanberger is too deferential to Lucas does fit the perception that Lucas is the one calling the shots at the State Capitol. Perception is not the same as reality, although in politics, sometimes it can be — and none of Spanberger’s actions on bills erase that perception. What Bolling calls a “passive” approach could also be read as a “patient” one, and perhaps standing back some from these legislative squabbles will wind up paying off. For now, though, we still don’t have a budget, or even any budget negotiations. For our new governor, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.  

For more on Virginia politics . . .

This is the last week of early voting before next Tuesday’s special election on redistricting. You can find the maps in our Voter Guide.

Got questions about redistricting? You can submit those here.

I’ll have my weekly update on early voting and other political news in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

• The Daily All of our latest stories, plus public notices, obituaries and opinion pieces. Sent every morning at 5 a.m.
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, plus word puzzles and obituaries. Sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather forecasts and updates, plus analysis on our region by Kevin Myatt. Sent Wednesdays.
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region. Sent Fridays.
• Your Weekend Plan your weekend ahead of time with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities and other events happening in our region, sent every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Dive into history with exclusive stories uncovering Virginia’s role in America’s path to independence. Sent monthly.
• Cardinal News NRV A weekly roundup of all the latest news stories from the New River Valley. Delivered Mondays at noon.

Sign up

The post 7 things to know about Spanberger’s action on bills the General Assembly passed appeared first on Cardinal News.

We now know more about the governor we elected.

That knowledge will not stop the debate over whether Abigail Spanberger is or is not as moderate or as bipartisan as she was portrayed in last fall’s election. On the contrary, that debate may intensify. However, we now have 1,102 data points with which to flesh out the picture — in the form of 972 bills she signed before Monday night’s deadline, 122 she sent back to the legislature with amendments and eight she vetoed outright (although two of those were duplicate bills, so it was really seven different policy items). The text of some of those amendments wasn’t available Tuesday, so it will be a while before we get a complete picture, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Spanberger signed most of the bills you’d expect a Democratic governor would

Increase in minimum wage? Signed. Restrictions on guns? Signed. Right to contraception established? Signed. Tax breaks for Confederate-themed organizations revoked? Signed. Doing away with license plates dedicated to the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? Signed. All those were bills that Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, vetoed. Think what you will of those measures, but no one should be surprised that Spanberger signed them. This is sort of what the election was about. Elections have consequences, we’re told. Here are some of them.

2. Some of the most disappointed legislators are Democrats, not Republicans

Republicans expected a Democratic governor to do things they didn’t like, so while they may be unhappy about many of Spanberger’s actions, they shouldn’t be surprised. Some Democrats are, though. Five of the eight (or seven) bills she vetoed were sponsored by Democrats. The three most high-profile: Authorizing a referendum on a Fairfax County casino, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. Legalizing so-called “skill” games, sponsored by Senate Privileges and Elections chair Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Prohibiting certain types of plea agreements, by Sen. Saddam Salin, D-Fairfax. Surovell wasn’t just disappointed, he issued a statement that said he was “deeply disappointed.”

The last time we had a Democratic trifecta in the governorship, House and Senate was the final two years of Gov. Ralph Northam’s term in 2020-21. He vetoed four bills the Democratic legislature sent him in 2020, none in 2021. Spanberger has vetoed seven (or maybe eight) in her first year — and there could be more to come if the legislature rejects her proposed amendments and the original bill comes back to her. That’s obviously way lower than the 201 vetoes that Youngkin inked in 2024 and the 157 he issued in 2025. 

Still, Spanberger vetoed and sent back some bills for amendments that Democratic legislators didn’t expect. 

3. Spanberger moderated some bills

Here are three notable ones. 

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, had introduced a bill that attempted to ban teachers from describing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol as a “peaceful protest” or saying that the 2020 presidential election was subject to “extensive election fraud.” Instead, the bill would have directed them to “describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Virginia Scope reports that PEN America, a literary group involved with issues of free expression, recently wrote to Spanberger to express concern with the bill. Spanberger’s amendment proposes a substitute that instead directs the board of education to take up “whether it would be necessary” to provide “additional instructional emphasis” on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, another bill that drew controversy in the recent session was another Helmer bill that set up a study of Virginia Military Institute. In its original form, the study group was directed to examine whether VMI should even remain a state institution. As ultimately passed, the bill called for the study to “determine the quality of VMI graduates” and include an examination of whether VMI “has initiated any substantial changes to its policies, values, and preventative, investigative, and disciplinary procedures to reduce acts within its student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault; has actively made efforts to distance itself from the Lost Cause narrative or other celebrations or promotions of the Confederacy in the American Civil War; has successfully made progress on these efforts and has a plan to address any remaining gaps; and possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

Spanberger’s amendments take out all that language and instead add that the task force should “determine if VMI has been successful in recruiting and admitting a more diverse body of students and if admissions priorities have shifted away from a focus on students with legacy status or other alumni relatives” and give the power to “include any such questions or concerns” in its purview. As I read the amendment, the task force could still do all the things the unamended bill did, but it’s not specifically directed to deal with Confederate-related issues at VMI.

Spanberger also proposed amendments that would delay full implementation of collective bargaining for public employees until 2030 — at which point there will be a new governor. Spanberger said the phase-in would give the state time to work out all the details, but Surovell said he was “very disappointed.” She also sent down amendments to some gun bills, but those details weren’t available Tuesday. She proposed amendments to turn a Prescription Drug Affordability Board from a regulatory board into an advisory board; the sponsors said that was essentially a veto by another name.

4. Spanberger wants to distance herself from the General Assembly on some issues

A recent poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University found that Spanberger has the lowest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor since the polling started in the early 1990s — and the highest disapproval rating. The consensus (which I agree with) has been that Spanberger, who had touted her bipartisan credentials during the campaign, has suffered because one of the first things she had to do was take a position on a highly partisan issue: redistricting. She’s also suffered because Republicans have been very effective in tying her to tax increases that were proposed in the General Assembly which didn’t pass, and which she never endorsed. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump, during an appearance in Charlottesville, blasted Spanberger for those measures as if they were actually bills she had signed.

On Monday, Spanberger’s office sent out an unusual press release headlined: “BREAKING: Governor Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.” It then listed nine bills that didn’t pass — all introduced by Democrats. Maybe this was a clever public relations move, maybe this was odd and awkward, but it’s still unusual to see a governor celebrate bills introduced by members of the governor’s own party that didn’t pass.

One bill that Republicans have delighted in talking about is a measure by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County, that would have created a mattress recycling program — with a fee attached. “They’re even taxing sleep,” former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares chortled at a recent appearance in Wytheville. Spanberger vetoed the bill. Maybe her policy concerns were legitimate, but the veto also deprives Republicans of a favorite talking point.

5. Some of Spanberger’s actions have budget implications, which might further complicate a budget deal

The General Assembly has yet to pass a budget. House and Senate budget negotiators haven’t even met yet because they remain far apart on one key issue: Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is insistent that Virginia eliminate its tax incentive for data centers and House budget conferees say that would send a bad signal to other business sectors and slow down what has been a productive revenue stream for Virginia. Until legislators know how much money they’ll have, it’s hard to put together a budget. 

At least two actions Spanberger took will widen the budget gap between the House and Senate. She vetoed skill games, on the grounds that there’s no gaming commission to regulate them. She also proposed amendments to delay the legalization of retail sales of cannabis from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027, and to reduce the number of licenses awarded. The language for that amendment wasn’t available Tuesday, but some cannabis advocates had urged a delay on the grounds that it would help small entrepreneurs to grow a crop; otherwise the only people with a legal crop ready to market would be medical marijuana companies. 

Both these actions also serve to reduce expected revenue. An economic impact study has projected skill games could bring in up to $249.6 million a year. A similar report on cannabis had projected $9.2 million tax revenues if sales had started Jan. 1; however, Spanberger proposes to delay that start date and reduce the number of licenses from 400 to 200, both of which would reduce the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers in 2027.

6. Some Democratic legislators aren’t happy with Spanberger 

Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, himself a former legislator, briefed the Senate Finance Committee on state revenues Tuesday and got an earful from some Democrats. Surovell complained about the number of amendments Spanberger had sent legislators. “We have a whole lot of new policy positions that were not communicated to us” until now, he said. “It’s hard to legislate when the governor doesn’t let us know what her position is on anything. We’re now trying to figure out a budget in a constrained time frame. It would be really helpful if the governor would let us know what her position is.”

Sickles attributed any lack of communication to the frenzy of a legislative session and pointed out that legislators had started their work before Spanberger had taken office. We should remember that Spanberger has never served in state government, and there’s a learning curve for any new governor. Still, this was a rare display of Democrats being frustrated with a Democratic governor. 

7. Spanberger still has a Lucas problem

Spanberger has to deal with the perception that she’s not the most powerful person in Richmond, Lucas is. Youngkin had that problem, too, after Lucas blocked consideration of a proposed sports arena in Alexandria. Now Spanberger has it, as well, with the added complication that Spanberger is a new governor and she and Lucas are in the same party. 

Lucas has already caused problems for Spanberger on redistricting. Spanberger said last summer she had no plans to push redistricting. However, Lucas did. Spanberger has certainly gone along with that, but she’s the one taking the political hit for it in the polls, not Lucas. 

Now Lucas is the one pushing to end the state’s tax incentives on data centers. That’s a complication for Spanberger, who has opposed an early phase-out — and has the job of selling Virginia to potential employers who might take a dim view of the state changing the rules of the game, even if it’s not their business sector. Spanberger, as governor, also has to look out for constituents who Lucas doesn’t — rural Virginia, where many localities want data centers and are just now attracting their attention. Some of those communities now worry that ending the tax incentives will deprive them of an opportunity right when it’s within their grasp. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, Lucas was trolling the governor online with this post: “Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.” Just in case that message wasn’t clear, Lucas followed up with another post: “The Senate budget asks the wealthiest corporations to pay sales tax just like every other business in Virginia. They can afford it.” Translation: Data centers will have to pay more taxes.

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling — a Republican — published a scathing review of Spanberger on social media, saying that she had already become “irrelevant” by taking a “passive” approach to the budget impasse. “Governor Spanberger needs to become actively involved in these negotiations and push the parties toward an agreement, but she doesn’t want to. Why? Because she has no experience in state government. She doesn’t understand how the process works, and how Governors have become involved in these disputes in the past. And because she doesn’t want to take sides between the State Senate and the House of Delegates. She doesn’t want to anger Senator Lucas or Speaker [Don] Scott. But that’s exactly what leadership requires.”

We shouldn’t expect a Republican to issue praise of a Democratic governor, but Bolling’s critique that Spanberger is too deferential to Lucas does fit the perception that Lucas is the one calling the shots at the State Capitol. Perception is not the same as reality, although in politics, sometimes it can be — and none of Spanberger’s actions on bills erase that perception. What Bolling calls a “passive” approach could also be read as a “patient” one, and perhaps standing back some from these legislative squabbles will wind up paying off. For now, though, we still don’t have a budget, or even any budget negotiations. For our new governor, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.  

For more on Virginia politics . . .

This is the last week of early voting before next Tuesday’s special election on redistricting. You can find the maps in our Voter Guide.

Got questions about redistricting? You can submit those here.

I’ll have my weekly update on early voting and other political news in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

• The Daily All of our latest stories, plus public notices, obituaries and opinion pieces. Sent every morning at 5 a.m.
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, plus word puzzles and obituaries. Sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather forecasts and updates, plus analysis on our region by Kevin Myatt. Sent Wednesdays.
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region. Sent Fridays.
• Your Weekend Plan your weekend ahead of time with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities and other events happening in our region, sent every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Dive into history with exclusive stories uncovering Virginia’s role in America’s path to independence. Sent monthly.
• Cardinal News NRV A weekly roundup of all the latest news stories from the New River Valley. Delivered Mondays at noon.

Sign up

The post 7 things to know about Spanberger’s action on bills the General Assembly passed appeared first on Cardinal News.

We now know more about the governor we elected.

That knowledge will not stop the debate over whether Abigail Spanberger is or is not as moderate or as bipartisan as she was portrayed in last fall’s election. On the contrary, that debate may intensify. However, we now have 1,102 data points with which to flesh out the picture — in the form of 972 bills she signed before Monday night’s deadline, 122 she sent back to the legislature with amendments and eight she vetoed outright (although two of those were duplicate bills, so it was really seven different policy items). The text of some of those amendments wasn’t available Tuesday, so it will be a while before we get a complete picture, but here’s what we know so far:

1. Spanberger signed most of the bills you’d expect a Democratic governor would

Increase in minimum wage? Signed. Restrictions on guns? Signed. Right to contraception established? Signed. Tax breaks for Confederate-themed organizations revoked? Signed. Doing away with license plates dedicated to the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? Signed. All those were bills that Spanberger’s predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, vetoed. Think what you will of those measures, but no one should be surprised that Spanberger signed them. This is sort of what the election was about. Elections have consequences, we’re told. Here are some of them.

2. Some of the most disappointed legislators are Democrats, not Republicans

Republicans expected a Democratic governor to do things they didn’t like, so while they may be unhappy about many of Spanberger’s actions, they shouldn’t be surprised. Some Democrats are, though. Five of the eight (or seven) bills she vetoed were sponsored by Democrats. The three most high-profile: Authorizing a referendum on a Fairfax County casino, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County. Legalizing so-called “skill” games, sponsored by Senate Privileges and Elections chair Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach. Prohibiting certain types of plea agreements, by Sen. Saddam Salin, D-Fairfax. Surovell wasn’t just disappointed, he issued a statement that said he was “deeply disappointed.”

The last time we had a Democratic trifecta in the governorship, House and Senate was the final two years of Gov. Ralph Northam’s term in 2020-21. He vetoed four bills the Democratic legislature sent him in 2020, none in 2021. Spanberger has vetoed seven (or maybe eight) in her first year — and there could be more to come if the legislature rejects her proposed amendments and the original bill comes back to her. That’s obviously way lower than the 201 vetoes that Youngkin inked in 2024 and the 157 he issued in 2025. 

Still, Spanberger vetoed and sent back some bills for amendments that Democratic legislators didn’t expect. 

3. Spanberger moderated some bills

Here are three notable ones. 

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, had introduced a bill that attempted to ban teachers from describing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol as a “peaceful protest” or saying that the 2020 presidential election was subject to “extensive election fraud.” Instead, the bill would have directed them to “describe the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol as an unprecedented, violent attack on United States democratic institutions, infrastructure, and representatives for the purpose of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

Virginia Scope reports that PEN America, a literary group involved with issues of free expression, recently wrote to Spanberger to express concern with the bill. Spanberger’s amendment proposes a substitute that instead directs the board of education to take up “whether it would be necessary” to provide “additional instructional emphasis” on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, another bill that drew controversy in the recent session was another Helmer bill that set up a study of Virginia Military Institute. In its original form, the study group was directed to examine whether VMI should even remain a state institution. As ultimately passed, the bill called for the study to “determine the quality of VMI graduates” and include an examination of whether VMI “has initiated any substantial changes to its policies, values, and preventative, investigative, and disciplinary procedures to reduce acts within its student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault; has actively made efforts to distance itself from the Lost Cause narrative or other celebrations or promotions of the Confederacy in the American Civil War; has successfully made progress on these efforts and has a plan to address any remaining gaps; and possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

Spanberger’s amendments take out all that language and instead add that the task force should “determine if VMI has been successful in recruiting and admitting a more diverse body of students and if admissions priorities have shifted away from a focus on students with legacy status or other alumni relatives” and give the power to “include any such questions or concerns” in its purview. As I read the amendment, the task force could still do all the things the unamended bill did, but it’s not specifically directed to deal with Confederate-related issues at VMI.

Spanberger also proposed amendments that would delay full implementation of collective bargaining for public employees until 2030 — at which point there will be a new governor. Spanberger said the phase-in would give the state time to work out all the details, but Surovell said he was “very disappointed.” She also sent down amendments to some gun bills, but those details weren’t available Tuesday. She proposed amendments to turn a Prescription Drug Affordability Board from a regulatory board into an advisory board; the sponsors said that was essentially a veto by another name.

4. Spanberger wants to distance herself from the General Assembly on some issues

A recent poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School at George Mason University found that Spanberger has the lowest early-term approval rating of any Virginia governor since the polling started in the early 1990s — and the highest disapproval rating. The consensus (which I agree with) has been that Spanberger, who had touted her bipartisan credentials during the campaign, has suffered because one of the first things she had to do was take a position on a highly partisan issue: redistricting. She’s also suffered because Republicans have been very effective in tying her to tax increases that were proposed in the General Assembly which didn’t pass, and which she never endorsed. Over the weekend, President Donald Trump, during an appearance in Charlottesville, blasted Spanberger for those measures as if they were actually bills she had signed.

On Monday, Spanberger’s office sent out an unusual press release headlined: “BREAKING: Governor Spanberger Does Not Sign Tax Bills the General Assembly Never Passed.” It then listed nine bills that didn’t pass — all introduced by Democrats. Maybe this was a clever public relations move, maybe this was odd and awkward, but it’s still unusual to see a governor celebrate bills introduced by members of the governor’s own party that didn’t pass.

One bill that Republicans have delighted in talking about is a measure by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County, that would have created a mattress recycling program — with a fee attached. “They’re even taxing sleep,” former Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares chortled at a recent appearance in Wytheville. Spanberger vetoed the bill. Maybe her policy concerns were legitimate, but the veto also deprives Republicans of a favorite talking point.

5. Some of Spanberger’s actions have budget implications, which might further complicate a budget deal

The General Assembly has yet to pass a budget. House and Senate budget negotiators haven’t even met yet because they remain far apart on one key issue: Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is insistent that Virginia eliminate its tax incentive for data centers and House budget conferees say that would send a bad signal to other business sectors and slow down what has been a productive revenue stream for Virginia. Until legislators know how much money they’ll have, it’s hard to put together a budget. 

At least two actions Spanberger took will widen the budget gap between the House and Senate. She vetoed skill games, on the grounds that there’s no gaming commission to regulate them. She also proposed amendments to delay the legalization of retail sales of cannabis from Jan. 1, 2027, to July 1, 2027, and to reduce the number of licenses awarded. The language for that amendment wasn’t available Tuesday, but some cannabis advocates had urged a delay on the grounds that it would help small entrepreneurs to grow a crop; otherwise the only people with a legal crop ready to market would be medical marijuana companies. 

Both these actions also serve to reduce expected revenue. An economic impact study has projected skill games could bring in up to $249.6 million a year. A similar report on cannabis had projected $9.2 million tax revenues if sales had started Jan. 1; however, Spanberger proposes to delay that start date and reduce the number of licenses from 400 to 200, both of which would reduce the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers in 2027.

6. Some Democratic legislators aren’t happy with Spanberger 

Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, himself a former legislator, briefed the Senate Finance Committee on state revenues Tuesday and got an earful from some Democrats. Surovell complained about the number of amendments Spanberger had sent legislators. “We have a whole lot of new policy positions that were not communicated to us” until now, he said. “It’s hard to legislate when the governor doesn’t let us know what her position is on anything. We’re now trying to figure out a budget in a constrained time frame. It would be really helpful if the governor would let us know what her position is.”

Sickles attributed any lack of communication to the frenzy of a legislative session and pointed out that legislators had started their work before Spanberger had taken office. We should remember that Spanberger has never served in state government, and there’s a learning curve for any new governor. Still, this was a rare display of Democrats being frustrated with a Democratic governor. 

7. Spanberger still has a Lucas problem

Spanberger has to deal with the perception that she’s not the most powerful person in Richmond, Lucas is. Youngkin had that problem, too, after Lucas blocked consideration of a proposed sports arena in Alexandria. Now Spanberger has it, as well, with the added complication that Spanberger is a new governor and she and Lucas are in the same party. 

Lucas has already caused problems for Spanberger on redistricting. Spanberger said last summer she had no plans to push redistricting. However, Lucas did. Spanberger has certainly gone along with that, but she’s the one taking the political hit for it in the polls, not Lucas. 

Now Lucas is the one pushing to end the state’s tax incentives on data centers. That’s a complication for Spanberger, who has opposed an early phase-out — and has the job of selling Virginia to potential employers who might take a dim view of the state changing the rules of the game, even if it’s not their business sector. Spanberger, as governor, also has to look out for constituents who Lucas doesn’t — rural Virginia, where many localities want data centers and are just now attracting their attention. Some of those communities now worry that ending the tax incentives will deprive them of an opportunity right when it’s within their grasp. 

Late Tuesday afternoon, Lucas was trolling the governor online with this post: “Now that you have read each bill line by line, it’s time to focus on the budget. Your Secretary of Finance says that we need more revenue and the House budget is negative by $400M in the out years. That’s not fiscally responsible and won’t happen on my watch.” Just in case that message wasn’t clear, Lucas followed up with another post: “The Senate budget asks the wealthiest corporations to pay sales tax just like every other business in Virginia. They can afford it.” Translation: Data centers will have to pay more taxes.

Last week, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling — a Republican — published a scathing review of Spanberger on social media, saying that she had already become “irrelevant” by taking a “passive” approach to the budget impasse. “Governor Spanberger needs to become actively involved in these negotiations and push the parties toward an agreement, but she doesn’t want to. Why? Because she has no experience in state government. She doesn’t understand how the process works, and how Governors have become involved in these disputes in the past. And because she doesn’t want to take sides between the State Senate and the House of Delegates. She doesn’t want to anger Senator Lucas or Speaker [Don] Scott. But that’s exactly what leadership requires.”

We shouldn’t expect a Republican to issue praise of a Democratic governor, but Bolling’s critique that Spanberger is too deferential to Lucas does fit the perception that Lucas is the one calling the shots at the State Capitol. Perception is not the same as reality, although in politics, sometimes it can be — and none of Spanberger’s actions on bills erase that perception. What Bolling calls a “passive” approach could also be read as a “patient” one, and perhaps standing back some from these legislative squabbles will wind up paying off. For now, though, we still don’t have a budget, or even any budget negotiations. For our new governor, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.  

For more on Virginia politics . . .

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The post 7 things to know about Spanberger’s action on bills the General Assembly passed appeared first on Cardinal News.

Correction, April 15, 10:00 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of retail stores included in the marijuana framework legislation as it passed the General Assembly.

The morning after the dust settled following Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s actions on more than a thousand pieces of legislation, Democratic senators expressed their disapproval of her vetoes and amendments. 

Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee meeting hammered Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, a member of Spanberger’s cabinet, Tuesday morning over the governor’s veto of a bill that would have legalized skill games and an amendment to the cannabis retail framework bill that would push the start of recreational sale to July 2027. 

Her actions on both of those bills, they said, would make it more difficult for budget conferees to balance the biennial spending bill. The two chambers don’t appear any closer to an agreement on the budget than in mid March, when the 2026 regular legislative session concluded. The General Assembly is slated to gavel in for a special session to tackle the budget on April 23. 

“The only new revenue source in the House budget was skill games — has been vetoed,” said Sen. Creigh Deeds, of Charlottesville, while posing a question about available revenue sources in the budget to Sickles during the Senate committee meeting. “You’ve taken skill games off the table. What’s on the table?”

Sickles said that the administration is “working with the revenues that we have.”

“We are doing well and we probably need, over the future, to look at things if the governor has a goal to help reform the K-12 funding formula… that’s probably going to take more revenue to do so,” he said. 

Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who patroned the Senate bill to legalize skill games, reiterated Deeds’ question. 

“If the conferees could meet, and start working together, maybe we would find compromise and I think we need to start doing our work. Conferees haven’t met yet,” Sickles said. He added that the administration had not considered alternative revenue sources before vetoing Rouse’s skill games bill. 

In conversation later that day, Deeds, a budget conferee, said that the group tasked with smoothing over the budget differences has met but that it’s difficult to negotiate a budget in earnest without a full picture of the revenue that they will be able to work with. 

“The governor has now taken one majority revenue source out, she has proposed to delay cannabis by a significant period of time plus scale back the number of licenses available which was another major revenue source we were planning on,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, during the finance committee meeting. “It makes it very hard for us to plan when things like that are revealed to us after we’ve already passed bills.”

The Department of Planning and Budget had estimated that the tax revenue brought in by skill games could have been upwards of $249 million. The cannabis framework bill, as passed by the General Assembly, would have allowed recreational sales to begin — and therefore tax revenue of those sales to begin — in January 2027. Spanberger’s amendment pushed the start of recreational sales to July of that year. 

Sickles told Surovell that the legislators can accept or not accept the amendments. 

“Twenty-one votes will vote it down,” he said. 

The General Assembly is slated to reconvene on April 22, ahead of the special session, to take up Spanberger’s actions. The legislative body can reject an amendment from the governor with a majority vote but it would take a two-thirds vote to enact the bill without the governor’s amendment. If the General Assembly rejects an amendment with a simple majority vote, then the bill is sent back to the governor who can then sign it without the amendment or veto it. 

Not all of the governor’s party colleagues are upset, however. 

Among the hundreds of bills that Spanberger signed were energy-related legislation that included efforts to create an online dashboard of utility disconnection data, increase the amount of battery energy storage that Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power should aim to add to their portfolios, and create a task force to study how to get more low-income residents to enroll in energy-efficiency and weatherization programs.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

Some bills have been sent back to the General Assembly with generally small amendments. Those include bills to fast-track adding battery energy storage to utility-scale solar sites, allowing Virginians to use plug-in “balcony solar” devices to more easily generate solar power at home, and to require localities to individually consider utility-scale solar proposals instead of banning them outright.

“The Governor’s amendments are minor technical changes — the FAST Act is fully intact and Virginia is still making history,” Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, said about her actions on his bill, HB 1065. 

The bill directs Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to assess their available interconnection capacity — locations where new power generation resources could more easily be added to the grid because the grid can handle more electricity there than it’s already receiving — and propose pilot programs for adding solar power and battery storage at those locations.

“We’re the first state in the nation to pass something like this, and for good reason: we don’t need to wait years and spend billions to build from scratch when there’s capacity already sitting on the grid. This gets power to Virginians faster and at lower cost. That’s the whole ballgame,” Hernandez added. 

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, agreed that the governor’s amendments were mostly technical adjustments. VanValkenburg patroned SB 508 — the cognate to HB 1065 — and SB 347, which also received an amendment. 

SB 347 would prevent local governments from banning utility-scale solar outright, instead requiring project proposals to be reviewed individually. It would create standardized guidelines for setbacks and other aspects of development that localities could use. It would require localities that reject solar proposals to explain why to the State Corporation Commission, which would create a database tracking such rejections.

“I’m excited that we are going to have a good energy session that I think is going to increase energy supply in the two ways that we know are the cheapest and are going to do the most to keep ratepayer bills down and that’s by building up solar and modernizing the grid that we already have,” VanValkenburg said. 

Cannabis, collective bargaining amendments draw ire

Spanberger issued amendments to the cannabis retail framework legislation that bill patrons Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Henrico County, and Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County, said falls short of the standard established in the bill as it passed the General Assembly. 

Spanberger’s changes to the legislation include:

• Pushing the start of retail sales from January 2027 to July 2027; 
• Reducing the possession limit from 2.5 to 2 ounces; 
• Reducing the number of retail stores from 350 to 200; 
• Eliminating dedicated allocations for cannabis tax revenues (previously 40% of cannabis tax revenues directed to early childhood care and education, and 30% to support the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund);
• Eliminating detailed statutory licensing framework, shifting key decisions to regulatory action which the lawmakers said would create confusion and lack of clarity for prospective businesses;
• Eliminating support for Cannabis Impact Business Support Team, helping small businesses receive the support they need entering the marketplace; and
• Changes in criminal penalties. 

“The Governor’s Substitute represents a significant departure from the framework passed by the General Assembly, raising serious concerns about fairness, access and public safety,” Aird said in a statement. “By making the legal market harder to access, this proposal allows the illicit market to continue to thrive in every corner store in our Commonwealth.”

Spanberger’s amendments undermine the core goals of legalization and increase the likelihood of untested products, inconsistent potency, and lack of consumer protections. It also weakens safeguards designed to prevent youth access and ensure accountability ultimately posing a risk to public health and safety, she said. 

“The proposal creates a less accessible legal marketplace,” Krizek said in a statement. “These changes reduce the number of available licenses, delay the launch of retail sales and impose high barriers to entry, resulting in revenue losses, delayed economic opportunity for market participants and the elimination of investment to small businesses. These barriers do not eliminate demand, it simply redirects it back to the illicit market.”

Amendments to bills that would allow collective bargaining for public employees would extend the local government compliance requirement to 2030 and would give the governor more power over the policy details of implementation, Surovell, patron of SB 378, said. 

“I’m very disappointed,” he said in an emailed statement. “Few of her suggestions were proposed or discussed during session including in the governor’s feedback during session which was incorporated in the final version that passed. Most of her proposals are nonstarters.”

“There are over 750,000 Virginians who work for state or local government who have been waiting for a seat at the negotiating table since 1949 and they don’t want to wait another four years,” he added. 

Additional bill actions; lawmaker and advocate responses 

Here are some of the key bills that the governor vetoed or amended:

Animals

Roadside zoos

SB 344, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County
HB 112, by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

Bills aimed at roadside zoos and others that are trading captive wildlife would ban separating baby wild mammals from their mothers before 4 months of age, unless medically necessary, with exceptions including agricultural animals and noncommercial trades between accredited zoological facilities. Also prohibited would be so-called hybridization, or intentionally breeding wild mammals of different species.

Status: Both received amendments by the governor. 

Laufer said that the governor’s amendments the bill received are largely technical in nature and do not change the overall intent of the bill. 

“I thank the Governor’s administration for their collaboration,” she said. 

Education

College board appointments

HB 1385, by Del. Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County

This bill would change the appointment process to make it clear that gubernatorial appointees do not take office until they are confirmed by the General Assembly. Previously, they took office immediately.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

VMI study

HB 1377, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

This bill would initiate a study “to determine VMI’s responsiveness to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2021 report on the institution and to explore changes to be made to distance VMI from the Lost Cause.” Initially, the bill directed the task force to examine whether VMI should receive state funding, but that provision was removed, and VMI later endorsed the bill.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

Jeremiah Woods, a graduate of VMI and proponent of Helmer’s bill who has spoken in support of the legislation at committee meetings, said he does not support the governor’s amendments. 

“The original legislation moved toward independent oversight and accountability at [VMI],” he said in a text message. “The substitute shifts that responsibility to the VMI Board of Visitors, asking the institution to evaluate itself. That change raises serious concerns about transparency and whether meaningful accountability can be achieved through an internal review process.”

Electricity

Balcony solar

HB 395, by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County
SB 250, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

These bills would allow Virginians to use small portable solar generation devices that plug into a standard electric outlet, potentially saving money on electric bills, without entering into a contract with an electric utility. The devices are commonly called “balcony solar” because, rather than requiring solar panels to be installed on a roof or mounted on the ground, their relatively small size allows them to be used in many locations, such as an apartment balcony.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Surovell said amendments to SB 250 were largely technical in nature. 

Battery energy storage systems on solar farms

HB 891, by Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County
SB 443, by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County

These bills fast-track adding battery energy storage systems, which store excess energy to be deployed as needed, to existing utility-scale solar facilities by saying battery storage is allowed as an accessory use wherever solar farms already have been approved.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

McPike said Spanberger’s amendment appeared mostly technical. 

“I’m still taking a look at the language and some of the implications, but I think the governor’s trying to strike a balance with some of the feedback from localities, and it looks like she’s done that,” he said in an interview. He added that he is likely to support the amendments. 

Dominion Energy’s largest customers pay certain costs

SB 253, by Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth
HB 1393, by Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico County

The bills would direct state regulators to decide whether Dominion Energy’s largest category of customers, most of which are data centers, should pay certain costs related to ensuring that power is available even during peak demand times and related to infrastructure needed to connect those customers to the electric grid. It also would expand Dominion’s and Appalachian Power’s energy assistance and weatherization programs and extend the timeline for a Dominion program that buries vulnerable overhead power lines. Critics had argued that the rising cost of the undergrounding program would eventually negate savings from the cost shift to data centers.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

LeVere Bolling said that she will be respectfully asking that the majority of the governor’s amendments to HB 1393 be rejected, after an initial assessment. 

“Many of the proposed amendments go beyond technical edits and instead make significant policy shifts, altering cost recovery structures, changing key thresholds, and revising how the State Corporation Commission evaluates utility investments and customer impacts. These changes materially impact the balance that the General Assembly worked to achieve,” she said in a statement. 

She added that she was not “provided with the opportunity to discuss these amendments with the governor or her team prior to their release, which is particularly concerning given the scope of the changes.”

Energy efficiency upgrades

HB 2, by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County (now Secretary of Finance)
SB 72, by Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun County

The bills would require Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to help some low-income residents who use oil and propane heat transition to energy-efficient electric heat pumps.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Srinivasan said that the governor’s amendment to SB 72 is a “simple, technical update that makes no substantive changes.” 

“I look forward to accepting the amendment next week, and helping deliver meaningful reductions in heating costs for low-income Virginians through targeted, cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades,” he added. 

Gaming

Fairfax County casino

SB 756, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

This bill would add Fairfax County to the list of localities eligible to host a casino.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

“Skill” games

SB 661, by Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach

This bill would legalize and regulate the so-called electronic skill games often found in convenience stores.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

Guns

Assault weapons ban

HB 217, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

SB 749, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

These bills would make it a misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase or transfer an assault firearm.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“I thank Gov. Spanberger for proposing amendments that are consistent with my goal when I wrote the bill: to end the sale of these weapons without criminalizing what people own today or infringing their 2nd Amendment rights,” Salim said in a statement. 

Health care

Prescription drug affordability board

SB 271 by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville
HB 483, by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax County

This bill would create a state-run prescription drug affordability board that would review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. This is the fourth attempt to create such a board; Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Deeds said that the governor’s amendment turns the board into a strictly advisory board. 

“That’s what New Hampshire had adopted and repealed because it was totally ineffective,” he said. “The governor’s amendments, in my view, are basically a veto. I do not intend to support the amendments.”

Delaney said that she is disappointed that the governor’s amendments “do not align with the solution we spent years crafting, and achieved, with immense bipartisan support.” 

The General Assembly has voted on this bill five years in a row, and meanwhile Virginians’ medicines have become more and more expensive. Our constituents cannot wait another year for prescription drug relief,” she added. 

Labor

Paid family medical leave

HB 1207, by Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William County
SB 2, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County

These bills would create a paid family medical leave program, including a tax on employers and employees.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“While this is not the bill I originally wrote, I am grateful for Governor Spanberger’s partnership in advancing this commonsense legislation,” Sewell said in a statement. 

She added that the bill would support 3.4 million Virginians who “have too often been forced to choose between their livelihoods and caring for their loved ones. This program is not only the right thing to do, but it is also vital for a healthy workforce and a stronger economy.”

Freedom Virginia said in a statement that the amendments to the legislation are largely technical in nature. Freedom Virginia is a 501(c)(4) organization, lobbies in support of “economic advancement policies.”

Face coverings

HB 1482, by Del. Charlie Schmidt, D-Richmond
SB 352, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

The House bill would ban state and local police officers from wearing face coverings. The Senate bill applies to federal officers operating in Virginia.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“These bills were meant to draw a clear line against abuse, fear, and unnecessary cruelty. The amendments would make the bills toothless, a right without a remedy,” Salim said in a statement. 

“I appreciate anyone who is willing to engage in good-faith efforts to improve these bills, but on this issue I am not interested in symbolism or half-measures. If we are serious about peace, justice, and the rule of law, then we must be willing to stand firmly behind protections that actually work in practice, not just on paper,” he added.

Staff writer Matt Busse contributed to this report.

The post Spanberger riles up Democrats on Senate Finance Committee for reducing expected revenues appeared first on Cardinal News.

Correction, April 15, 10:00 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of retail stores included in the marijuana framework legislation as it passed the General Assembly.

The morning after the dust settled following Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s actions on more than a thousand pieces of legislation, Democratic senators expressed their disapproval of her vetoes and amendments. 

Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee meeting hammered Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, a member of Spanberger’s cabinet, Tuesday morning over the governor’s veto of a bill that would have legalized skill games and an amendment to the cannabis retail framework bill that would push the start of recreational sale to July 2027. 

Her actions on both of those bills, they said, would make it more difficult for budget conferees to balance the biennial spending bill. The two chambers don’t appear any closer to an agreement on the budget than in mid March, when the 2026 regular legislative session concluded. The General Assembly is slated to gavel in for a special session to tackle the budget on April 23. 

“The only new revenue source in the House budget was skill games — has been vetoed,” said Sen. Creigh Deeds, of Charlottesville, while posing a question about available revenue sources in the budget to Sickles during the Senate committee meeting. “You’ve taken skill games off the table. What’s on the table?”

Sickles said that the administration is “working with the revenues that we have.”

“We are doing well and we probably need, over the future, to look at things if the governor has a goal to help reform the K-12 funding formula… that’s probably going to take more revenue to do so,” he said. 

Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who patroned the Senate bill to legalize skill games, reiterated Deeds’ question. 

“If the conferees could meet, and start working together, maybe we would find compromise and I think we need to start doing our work. Conferees haven’t met yet,” Sickles said. He added that the administration had not considered alternative revenue sources before vetoing Rouse’s skill games bill. 

In conversation later that day, Deeds, a budget conferee, said that the group tasked with smoothing over the budget differences has met but that it’s difficult to negotiate a budget in earnest without a full picture of the revenue that they will be able to work with. 

“The governor has now taken one majority revenue source out, she has proposed to delay cannabis by a significant period of time plus scale back the number of licenses available which was another major revenue source we were planning on,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, during the finance committee meeting. “It makes it very hard for us to plan when things like that are revealed to us after we’ve already passed bills.”

The Department of Planning and Budget had estimated that the tax revenue brought in by skill games could have been upwards of $249 million. The cannabis framework bill, as passed by the General Assembly, would have allowed recreational sales to begin — and therefore tax revenue of those sales to begin — in January 2027. Spanberger’s amendment pushed the start of recreational sales to July of that year. 

Sickles told Surovell that the legislators can accept or not accept the amendments. 

“Twenty-one votes will vote it down,” he said. 

The General Assembly is slated to reconvene on April 22, ahead of the special session, to take up Spanberger’s actions. The legislative body can reject an amendment from the governor with a majority vote but it would take a two-thirds vote to enact the bill without the governor’s amendment. If the General Assembly rejects an amendment with a simple majority vote, then the bill is sent back to the governor who can then sign it without the amendment or veto it. 

Not all of the governor’s party colleagues are upset, however. 

Among the hundreds of bills that Spanberger signed were energy-related legislation that included efforts to create an online dashboard of utility disconnection data, increase the amount of battery energy storage that Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power should aim to add to their portfolios, and create a task force to study how to get more low-income residents to enroll in energy-efficiency and weatherization programs.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

Some bills have been sent back to the General Assembly with generally small amendments. Those include bills to fast-track adding battery energy storage to utility-scale solar sites, allowing Virginians to use plug-in “balcony solar” devices to more easily generate solar power at home, and to require localities to individually consider utility-scale solar proposals instead of banning them outright.

“The Governor’s amendments are minor technical changes — the FAST Act is fully intact and Virginia is still making history,” Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, said about her actions on his bill, HB 1065. 

The bill directs Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to assess their available interconnection capacity — locations where new power generation resources could more easily be added to the grid because the grid can handle more electricity there than it’s already receiving — and propose pilot programs for adding solar power and battery storage at those locations.

“We’re the first state in the nation to pass something like this, and for good reason: we don’t need to wait years and spend billions to build from scratch when there’s capacity already sitting on the grid. This gets power to Virginians faster and at lower cost. That’s the whole ballgame,” Hernandez added. 

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, agreed that the governor’s amendments were mostly technical adjustments. VanValkenburg patroned SB 508 — the cognate to HB 1065 — and SB 347, which also received an amendment. 

SB 347 would prevent local governments from banning utility-scale solar outright, instead requiring project proposals to be reviewed individually. It would create standardized guidelines for setbacks and other aspects of development that localities could use. It would require localities that reject solar proposals to explain why to the State Corporation Commission, which would create a database tracking such rejections.

“I’m excited that we are going to have a good energy session that I think is going to increase energy supply in the two ways that we know are the cheapest and are going to do the most to keep ratepayer bills down and that’s by building up solar and modernizing the grid that we already have,” VanValkenburg said. 

Cannabis, collective bargaining amendments draw ire

Spanberger issued amendments to the cannabis retail framework legislation that bill patrons Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Henrico County, and Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County, said falls short of the standard established in the bill as it passed the General Assembly. 

Spanberger’s changes to the legislation include:

• Pushing the start of retail sales from January 2027 to July 2027; 
• Reducing the possession limit from 2.5 to 2 ounces; 
• Reducing the number of retail stores from 350 to 200; 
• Eliminating dedicated allocations for cannabis tax revenues (previously 40% of cannabis tax revenues directed to early childhood care and education, and 30% to support the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund);
• Eliminating detailed statutory licensing framework, shifting key decisions to regulatory action which the lawmakers said would create confusion and lack of clarity for prospective businesses;
• Eliminating support for Cannabis Impact Business Support Team, helping small businesses receive the support they need entering the marketplace; and
• Changes in criminal penalties. 

“The Governor’s Substitute represents a significant departure from the framework passed by the General Assembly, raising serious concerns about fairness, access and public safety,” Aird said in a statement. “By making the legal market harder to access, this proposal allows the illicit market to continue to thrive in every corner store in our Commonwealth.”

Spanberger’s amendments undermine the core goals of legalization and increase the likelihood of untested products, inconsistent potency, and lack of consumer protections. It also weakens safeguards designed to prevent youth access and ensure accountability ultimately posing a risk to public health and safety, she said. 

“The proposal creates a less accessible legal marketplace,” Krizek said in a statement. “These changes reduce the number of available licenses, delay the launch of retail sales and impose high barriers to entry, resulting in revenue losses, delayed economic opportunity for market participants and the elimination of investment to small businesses. These barriers do not eliminate demand, it simply redirects it back to the illicit market.”

Amendments to bills that would allow collective bargaining for public employees would extend the local government compliance requirement to 2030 and would give the governor more power over the policy details of implementation, Surovell, patron of SB 378, said. 

“I’m very disappointed,” he said in an emailed statement. “Few of her suggestions were proposed or discussed during session including in the governor’s feedback during session which was incorporated in the final version that passed. Most of her proposals are nonstarters.”

“There are over 750,000 Virginians who work for state or local government who have been waiting for a seat at the negotiating table since 1949 and they don’t want to wait another four years,” he added. 

Additional bill actions; lawmaker and advocate responses 

Here are some of the key bills that the governor vetoed or amended:

Animals

Roadside zoos

SB 344, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County
HB 112, by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

Bills aimed at roadside zoos and others that are trading captive wildlife would ban separating baby wild mammals from their mothers before 4 months of age, unless medically necessary, with exceptions including agricultural animals and noncommercial trades between accredited zoological facilities. Also prohibited would be so-called hybridization, or intentionally breeding wild mammals of different species.

Status: Both received amendments by the governor. 

Laufer said that the governor’s amendments the bill received are largely technical in nature and do not change the overall intent of the bill. 

“I thank the Governor’s administration for their collaboration,” she said. 

Education

College board appointments

HB 1385, by Del. Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County

This bill would change the appointment process to make it clear that gubernatorial appointees do not take office until they are confirmed by the General Assembly. Previously, they took office immediately.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

VMI study

HB 1377, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

This bill would initiate a study “to determine VMI’s responsiveness to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2021 report on the institution and to explore changes to be made to distance VMI from the Lost Cause.” Initially, the bill directed the task force to examine whether VMI should receive state funding, but that provision was removed, and VMI later endorsed the bill.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

Jeremiah Woods, a graduate of VMI and proponent of Helmer’s bill who has spoken in support of the legislation at committee meetings, said he does not support the governor’s amendments. 

“The original legislation moved toward independent oversight and accountability at [VMI],” he said in a text message. “The substitute shifts that responsibility to the VMI Board of Visitors, asking the institution to evaluate itself. That change raises serious concerns about transparency and whether meaningful accountability can be achieved through an internal review process.”

Electricity

Balcony solar

HB 395, by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County
SB 250, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

These bills would allow Virginians to use small portable solar generation devices that plug into a standard electric outlet, potentially saving money on electric bills, without entering into a contract with an electric utility. The devices are commonly called “balcony solar” because, rather than requiring solar panels to be installed on a roof or mounted on the ground, their relatively small size allows them to be used in many locations, such as an apartment balcony.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Surovell said amendments to SB 250 were largely technical in nature. 

Battery energy storage systems on solar farms

HB 891, by Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County
SB 443, by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County

These bills fast-track adding battery energy storage systems, which store excess energy to be deployed as needed, to existing utility-scale solar facilities by saying battery storage is allowed as an accessory use wherever solar farms already have been approved.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

McPike said Spanberger’s amendment appeared mostly technical. 

“I’m still taking a look at the language and some of the implications, but I think the governor’s trying to strike a balance with some of the feedback from localities, and it looks like she’s done that,” he said in an interview. He added that he is likely to support the amendments. 

Dominion Energy’s largest customers pay certain costs

SB 253, by Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth
HB 1393, by Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico County

The bills would direct state regulators to decide whether Dominion Energy’s largest category of customers, most of which are data centers, should pay certain costs related to ensuring that power is available even during peak demand times and related to infrastructure needed to connect those customers to the electric grid. It also would expand Dominion’s and Appalachian Power’s energy assistance and weatherization programs and extend the timeline for a Dominion program that buries vulnerable overhead power lines. Critics had argued that the rising cost of the undergrounding program would eventually negate savings from the cost shift to data centers.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

LeVere Bolling said that she will be respectfully asking that the majority of the governor’s amendments to HB 1393 be rejected, after an initial assessment. 

“Many of the proposed amendments go beyond technical edits and instead make significant policy shifts, altering cost recovery structures, changing key thresholds, and revising how the State Corporation Commission evaluates utility investments and customer impacts. These changes materially impact the balance that the General Assembly worked to achieve,” she said in a statement. 

She added that she was not “provided with the opportunity to discuss these amendments with the governor or her team prior to their release, which is particularly concerning given the scope of the changes.”

Energy efficiency upgrades

HB 2, by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County (now Secretary of Finance)
SB 72, by Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun County

The bills would require Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to help some low-income residents who use oil and propane heat transition to energy-efficient electric heat pumps.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Srinivasan said that the governor’s amendment to SB 72 is a “simple, technical update that makes no substantive changes.” 

“I look forward to accepting the amendment next week, and helping deliver meaningful reductions in heating costs for low-income Virginians through targeted, cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades,” he added. 

Gaming

Fairfax County casino

SB 756, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

This bill would add Fairfax County to the list of localities eligible to host a casino.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

“Skill” games

SB 661, by Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach

This bill would legalize and regulate the so-called electronic skill games often found in convenience stores.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

Guns

Assault weapons ban

HB 217, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

SB 749, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

These bills would make it a misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase or transfer an assault firearm.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“I thank Gov. Spanberger for proposing amendments that are consistent with my goal when I wrote the bill: to end the sale of these weapons without criminalizing what people own today or infringing their 2nd Amendment rights,” Salim said in a statement. 

Health care

Prescription drug affordability board

SB 271 by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville
HB 483, by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax County

This bill would create a state-run prescription drug affordability board that would review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. This is the fourth attempt to create such a board; Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Deeds said that the governor’s amendment turns the board into a strictly advisory board. 

“That’s what New Hampshire had adopted and repealed because it was totally ineffective,” he said. “The governor’s amendments, in my view, are basically a veto. I do not intend to support the amendments.”

Delaney said that she is disappointed that the governor’s amendments “do not align with the solution we spent years crafting, and achieved, with immense bipartisan support.” 

The General Assembly has voted on this bill five years in a row, and meanwhile Virginians’ medicines have become more and more expensive. Our constituents cannot wait another year for prescription drug relief,” she added. 

Labor

Paid family medical leave

HB 1207, by Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William County
SB 2, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County

These bills would create a paid family medical leave program, including a tax on employers and employees.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“While this is not the bill I originally wrote, I am grateful for Governor Spanberger’s partnership in advancing this commonsense legislation,” Sewell said in a statement. 

She added that the bill would support 3.4 million Virginians who “have too often been forced to choose between their livelihoods and caring for their loved ones. This program is not only the right thing to do, but it is also vital for a healthy workforce and a stronger economy.”

Freedom Virginia said in a statement that the amendments to the legislation are largely technical in nature. Freedom Virginia is a 501(c)(4) organization, lobbies in support of “economic advancement policies.”

Face coverings

HB 1482, by Del. Charlie Schmidt, D-Richmond
SB 352, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

The House bill would ban state and local police officers from wearing face coverings. The Senate bill applies to federal officers operating in Virginia.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“These bills were meant to draw a clear line against abuse, fear, and unnecessary cruelty. The amendments would make the bills toothless, a right without a remedy,” Salim said in a statement. 

“I appreciate anyone who is willing to engage in good-faith efforts to improve these bills, but on this issue I am not interested in symbolism or half-measures. If we are serious about peace, justice, and the rule of law, then we must be willing to stand firmly behind protections that actually work in practice, not just on paper,” he added.

The post Spanberger riles up Democrats on Senate Finance Committee for reducing expected revenues appeared first on Cardinal News.

The morning after the dust settled following Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s actions on more than a thousand pieces of legislation, Democratic senators expressed their disapproval of her vetoes and amendments. 

Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee meeting hammered Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, a member of Spanberger’s cabinet, Tuesday morning over the governor’s veto of a bill that would have legalized skill games and an amendment to the cannabis retail framework bill that would push the start of recreational sale to July 2027. 

Her actions on both of those bills, they said, would make it more difficult for budget conferees to balance the biennial spending bill. The two chambers don’t appear any closer to an agreement on the budget than in mid March, when the 2026 regular legislative session concluded. The General Assembly is slated to gavel in for a special session to tackle the budget on April 23. 

“The only new revenue source in the House budget was skill games — has been vetoed,” said Sen. Creigh Deeds, of Charlottesville, while posing a question about available revenue sources in the budget to Sickles during the Senate committee meeting. “You’ve taken skill games off the table. What’s on the table?”

Sickles said that the administration is “working with the revenues that we have.”

“We are doing well and we probably need, over the future, to look at things if the governor has a goal to help reform the K-12 funding formula… that’s probably going to take more revenue to do so,” he said. 

Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who patroned the Senate bill to legalize skill games, reiterated Deeds’ question. 

“If the conferees could meet, and start working together, maybe we would find compromise and I think we need to start doing our work. Conferees haven’t met yet,” Sickles said. He added that the administration had not considered alternative revenue sources before vetoing Rouse’s skill games bill. 

In conversation later that day, Deeds, a budget conferee, said that the group tasked with smoothing over the budget differences has met but that it’s difficult to negotiate a budget in earnest without a full picture of the revenue that they will be able to work with. 

“The governor has now taken one majority revenue source out, she has proposed to delay cannabis by a significant period of time plus scale back the number of licenses available which was another major revenue source we were planning on,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, during the finance committee meeting. “It makes it very hard for us to plan when things like that are revealed to us after we’ve already passed bills.”

The Department of Planning and Budget had estimated that the tax revenue brought in by skill games could have been upwards of $249 million. The cannabis framework bill, as passed by the General Assembly, would have allowed recreational sales to begin — and therefore tax revenue of those sales to begin — in January 2027. Spanberger’s amendment pushed the start of recreational sales to July of that year. 

Sickles told Surovell that the legislators can accept or not accept the amendments. 

“Twenty-one votes will vote it down,” he said. 

The General Assembly is slated to reconvene on April 22, ahead of the special session, to take up Spanberger’s actions. The legislative body can reject an amendment from the governor with a majority vote but it would take a two-thirds vote to enact the bill without the governor’s amendment. If the General Assembly rejects an amendment with a simple majority vote, then the bill is sent back to the governor who can then sign it without the amendment or veto it. 

Not all of the governor’s party colleagues are upset, however. 

Among the hundreds of bills that Spanberger signed were energy-related legislation that included efforts to create an online dashboard of utility disconnection data, increase the amount of battery energy storage that Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power should aim to add to their portfolios, and create a task force to study how to get more low-income residents to enroll in energy-efficiency and weatherization programs.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

Some bills have been sent back to the General Assembly with generally small amendments. Those include bills to fast-track adding battery energy storage to utility-scale solar sites, allowing Virginians to use plug-in “balcony solar” devices to more easily generate solar power at home, and to require localities to individually consider utility-scale solar proposals instead of banning them outright.

“The Governor’s amendments are minor technical changes — the FAST Act is fully intact and Virginia is still making history,” Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, said about her actions on his bill, HB 1065. 

The bill directs Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to assess their available interconnection capacity — locations where new power generation resources could more easily be added to the grid because the grid can handle more electricity there than it’s already receiving — and propose pilot programs for adding solar power and battery storage at those locations.

“We’re the first state in the nation to pass something like this, and for good reason: we don’t need to wait years and spend billions to build from scratch when there’s capacity already sitting on the grid. This gets power to Virginians faster and at lower cost. That’s the whole ballgame,” Hernandez added. 

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, agreed that the governor’s amendments were mostly technical adjustments. VanValkenburg patroned SB 508 — the cognate to HB 1065 — and SB 347, which also received an amendment. 

SB 347 would prevent local governments from banning utility-scale solar outright, instead requiring project proposals to be reviewed individually. It would create standardized guidelines for setbacks and other aspects of development that localities could use. It would require localities that reject solar proposals to explain why to the State Corporation Commission, which would create a database tracking such rejections.

“I’m excited that we are going to have a good energy session that I think is going to increase energy supply in the two ways that we know are the cheapest and are going to do the most to keep ratepayer bills down and that’s by building up solar and modernizing the grid that we already have,” VanValkenburg said. 

Cannabis, collective bargaining amendments draw ire

Spanberger issued amendments to the cannabis retail framework legislation that bill patrons Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Henrico County, and Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County, said falls short of the standard established in the bill as it passed the General Assembly. 

Spanberger’s changes to the legislation include:

• Pushing the start of retail sales from January 2027 to July 2027; 
• Reducing the possession limit from 2.5 to 2 ounces; 
• Reducing the number of retail stores from 400 to 200; 
• Eliminating dedicated allocations for cannabis tax revenues (previously 40% of cannabis tax revenues directed to early childhood care and education, and 30% to support the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund);
• Eliminating detailed statutory licensing framework, shifting key decisions to regulatory action which the lawmakers said would create confusion and lack of clarity for prospective businesses;
• Eliminating support for Cannabis Impact Business Support Team, helping small businesses receive the support they need entering the marketplace; and
• Changes in criminal penalties. 

“The Governor’s Substitute represents a significant departure from the framework passed by the General Assembly, raising serious concerns about fairness, access and public safety,” Aird said in a statement. “By making the legal market harder to access, this proposal allows the illicit market to continue to thrive in every corner store in our Commonwealth.”

Spanberger’s amendments undermine the core goals of legalization and increase the likelihood of untested products, inconsistent potency, and lack of consumer protections. It also weakens safeguards designed to prevent youth access and ensure accountability ultimately posing a risk to public health and safety, she said. 

“The proposal creates a less accessible legal marketplace,” Krizek said in a statement. “These changes reduce the number of available licenses, delay the launch of retail sales and impose high barriers to entry, resulting in revenue losses, delayed economic opportunity for market participants and the elimination of investment to small businesses. These barriers do not eliminate demand, it simply redirects it back to the illicit market.”

Amendments to bills that would allow collective bargaining for public employees would extend the local government compliance requirement to 2030 and would give the governor more power over the policy details of implementation, Surovell, patron of SB 378, said. 

“I’m very disappointed,” he said in an emailed statement. “Few of her suggestions were proposed or discussed during session including in the governor’s feedback during session which was incorporated in the final version that passed. Most of her proposals are nonstarters.”

“There are over 750,000 Virginians who work for state or local government who have been waiting for a seat at the negotiating table since 1949 and they don’t want to wait another four years,” he added. 

Additional bill actions; lawmaker and advocate responses 

Here are some of the key bills that the governor vetoed or amended:

Animals

Roadside zoos

SB 344, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County
HB 112, by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

Bills aimed at roadside zoos and others that are trading captive wildlife would ban separating baby wild mammals from their mothers before 4 months of age, unless medically necessary, with exceptions including agricultural animals and noncommercial trades between accredited zoological facilities. Also prohibited would be so-called hybridization, or intentionally breeding wild mammals of different species.

Status: Both received amendments by the governor. 

Laufer said that the governor’s amendments the bill received are largely technical in nature and do not change the overall intent of the bill. 

“I thank the Governor’s administration for their collaboration,” she said. 

Education

College board appointments

HB 1385, by Del. Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County

This bill would change the appointment process to make it clear that gubernatorial appointees do not take office until they are confirmed by the General Assembly. Previously, they took office immediately.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

VMI study

HB 1377, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

This bill would initiate a study “to determine VMI’s responsiveness to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2021 report on the institution and to explore changes to be made to distance VMI from the Lost Cause.” Initially, the bill directed the task force to examine whether VMI should receive state funding, but that provision was removed, and VMI later endorsed the bill.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

Jeremiah Woods, a graduate of VMI and proponent of Helmer’s bill who has spoken in support of the legislation at committee meetings, said he does not support the governor’s amendments. 

“The original legislation moved toward independent oversight and accountability at [VMI],” he said in a text message. “The substitute shifts that responsibility to the VMI Board of Visitors, asking the institution to evaluate itself. That change raises serious concerns about transparency and whether meaningful accountability can be achieved through an internal review process.”

Electricity

Balcony solar

HB 395, by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County
SB 250, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

These bills would allow Virginians to use small portable solar generation devices that plug into a standard electric outlet, potentially saving money on electric bills, without entering into a contract with an electric utility. The devices are commonly called “balcony solar” because, rather than requiring solar panels to be installed on a roof or mounted on the ground, their relatively small size allows them to be used in many locations, such as an apartment balcony.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Surovell said amendments to SB 250 were largely technical in nature. 

Battery energy storage systems on solar farms

HB 891, by Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County
SB 443, by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County

These bills fast-track adding battery energy storage systems, which store excess energy to be deployed as needed, to existing utility-scale solar facilities by saying battery storage is allowed as an accessory use wherever solar farms already have been approved.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

McPike said Spanberger’s amendment appeared mostly technical. 

“I’m still taking a look at the language and some of the implications, but I think the governor’s trying to strike a balance with some of the feedback from localities, and it looks like she’s done that,” he said in an interview. He added that he is likely to support the amendments. 

Dominion Energy’s largest customers pay certain costs

SB 253, by Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth
HB 1393, by Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico County

The bills would direct state regulators to decide whether Dominion Energy’s largest category of customers, most of which are data centers, should pay certain costs related to ensuring that power is available even during peak demand times and related to infrastructure needed to connect those customers to the electric grid. It also would expand Dominion’s and Appalachian Power’s energy assistance and weatherization programs and extend the timeline for a Dominion program that buries vulnerable overhead power lines. Critics had argued that the rising cost of the undergrounding program would eventually negate savings from the cost shift to data centers.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

LeVere Bolling said that she will be respectfully asking that the majority of the governor’s amendments to HB 1393 be rejected, after an initial assessment. 

“Many of the proposed amendments go beyond technical edits and instead make significant policy shifts, altering cost recovery structures, changing key thresholds, and revising how the State Corporation Commission evaluates utility investments and customer impacts. These changes materially impact the balance that the General Assembly worked to achieve,” she said in a statement. 

She added that she was not “provided with the opportunity to discuss these amendments with the governor or her team prior to their release, which is particularly concerning given the scope of the changes.”

Energy efficiency upgrades

HB 2, by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County (now Secretary of Finance)
SB 72, by Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun County

The bills would require Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to help some low-income residents who use oil and propane heat transition to energy-efficient electric heat pumps.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Srinivasan said that the governor’s amendment to SB 72 is a “simple, technical update that makes no substantive changes.” 

“I look forward to accepting the amendment next week, and helping deliver meaningful reductions in heating costs for low-income Virginians through targeted, cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades,” he added. 

Gaming

Fairfax County casino

SB 756, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

This bill would add Fairfax County to the list of localities eligible to host a casino.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

“Skill” games

SB 661, by Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach

This bill would legalize and regulate the so-called electronic skill games often found in convenience stores.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

Guns

Assault weapons ban

HB 217, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

SB 749, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

These bills would make it a misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase or transfer an assault firearm.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“I thank Gov. Spanberger for proposing amendments that are consistent with my goal when I wrote the bill: to end the sale of these weapons without criminalizing what people own today or infringing their 2nd Amendment rights,” Salim said in a statement. 

Health care

Prescription drug affordability board

SB 271 by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville
HB 483, by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax County

This bill would create a state-run prescription drug affordability board that would review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. This is the fourth attempt to create such a board; Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Deeds said that the governor’s amendment turns the board into a strictly advisory board. 

“That’s what New Hampshire had adopted and repealed because it was totally ineffective,” he said. “The governor’s amendments, in my view, are basically a veto. I do not intend to support the amendments.”

Delaney said that she is disappointed that the governor’s amendments “do not align with the solution we spent years crafting, and achieved, with immense bipartisan support.” 

The General Assembly has voted on this bill five years in a row, and meanwhile Virginians’ medicines have become more and more expensive. Our constituents cannot wait another year for prescription drug relief,” she added. 

Labor

Paid family medical leave

HB 1207, by Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William County
SB 2, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County

These bills would create a paid family medical leave program, including a tax on employers and employees.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“While this is not the bill I originally wrote, I am grateful for Governor Spanberger’s partnership in advancing this commonsense legislation,” Sewell said in a statement. 

She added that the bill would support 3.4 million Virginians who “have too often been forced to choose between their livelihoods and caring for their loved ones. This program is not only the right thing to do, but it is also vital for a healthy workforce and a stronger economy.”

Freedom Virginia said in a statement that the amendments to the legislation are largely technical in nature. Freedom Virginia is a 501(c)(4) organization, lobbies in support of “economic advancement policies.”

Face coverings

HB 1482, by Del. Charlie Schmidt, D-Richmond
SB 352, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

The House bill would ban state and local police officers from wearing face coverings. The Senate bill applies to federal officers operating in Virginia.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“These bills were meant to draw a clear line against abuse, fear, and unnecessary cruelty. The amendments would make the bills toothless, a right without a remedy,” Salim said in a statement. 

“I appreciate anyone who is willing to engage in good-faith efforts to improve these bills, but on this issue I am not interested in symbolism or half-measures. If we are serious about peace, justice, and the rule of law, then we must be willing to stand firmly behind protections that actually work in practice, not just on paper,” he added.

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The new publisher of the digital local news organization The Roanoke Rambler said Tuesday that contract proposals that led to the departure of the Rambler’s three staff journalists were necessary for the publication’s financial sustainability.

Ollie Howie, an entrepreneur who grew up in Roanoke, bought the Rambler on March 30 from Henri Gendreau, the Rambler’s founder. The sale price was not disclosed. 

The Rambler’s former managing editor, Todd Jackson, and two former reporters, Jeff Sturgeon and Sinclair Holian, said Monday that their employment was terminated Friday after they declined to sign the new contracts, which they said offered lower base pay and other changes.

In a news release Tuesday, Howie said that the Rambler’s finances couldn’t support the existing salaries and that the proposed new contracts offered “a livable hourly wage, equity participation, and performance-based incentives, a model designed to give journalists both immediate support and long-term ownership opportunities.”

Howie declined to provide further details Tuesday. Gendreau and Sturgeon — who sent a statement Monday on behalf of himself, Jackson and Holian — declined to comment Tuesday.

“The last few weeks have brought understandable concern,” Howie said in the release. “Change is never easy, especially in a newsroom that means as much to this community as the Rambler does. Our decisions have been guided by integrity, respect for our team, and a mission to ensure this publication thrives long-term.”

Gendreau said Monday that before the sale, he had felt assured that Jackson, Sturgeon and Holian would remain on board at their same compensation and that their termination left him feeling “shocked” and “betrayed.”

A “letter to our subscribers” published Tuesday under the Rambler’s byline said that the new leadership had always maintained that new contracts would be required because the Rambler’s monthly salary costs exceeded revenue.

“We also offered previous ownership an opportunity to buy the company back within the same week as the transaction, but we did not hear back from him regarding the offer,” the letter states.

The Rambler’s revenue comes from recurring subscriptions, one-time donations of varying amounts, advertisements, sponsorships and grants. The website states that most of its money comes from paying members.

The Rambler’s website states that it has more than 11,000 email newsletter subscribers. Not all are paying members.

The letter stated that the Rambler has nearly 830 paying subscribers who generate about $6,800 in monthly revenue but said that the Rambler costs about $4,000 per week to operate, “a challenge for any independent news source.”

“We’re building forward. The new corporate structure allows us to offer competitive hourly pay that is better than or on par with local living-wage hourly standards, and equity opportunities which we offered to the team, so our journalists can be true partners in the Rambler’s future,” the letter states.

The Rambler plans to announce a new slate of reporters soon, according to the news release, and will begin offering “‘Community Correspondent’ opportunities for local writers to participate in coverage.”

It plans to hold annual community forums, question-and-answer sessions with readers and annual financial updates “to show where resources are being reinvested in journalism,” according to the news release.

Gendreau had published financial updates three times a year but stopped in late 2024, saying the breakdown of revenue and expenses changed little. 

Howie said Tuesday that Roanoke “shaped who I am” and that he takes seriously “the responsibility to keep its stories alive.”

“We’re rebuilding with care, accountability, and deep respect for our readers and contributors. This is a moment not of loss, but renewal,” he said.

Howie graduated from William Fleming High School and Harvard University. He is the founder and managing partner of Mount Auburn Venture Partners, which invests in startups and established companies, according to its website. He serves on Roanoke’s economic development authority.

Gendreau, a former reporter for The Roanoke Times, founded the Rambler in 2021 to focus on local investigative journalism and literature. Through its website, weekly email newsletter and social media channels, the Rambler has featured work from freelance journalists in addition to its regular staff. 

Jackson and Sturgeon also formerly worked for The Roanoke Times. Holian came to the Rambler via Report for America, a national program that helps place journalists in local newsrooms.

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Correction, April 15, 10:00 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect the correct number of retail stores included in the marijuana framework legislation as it passed the General Assembly.

The morning after the dust settled following Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s actions on more than a thousand pieces of legislation, Democratic senators expressed their disapproval of her vetoes and amendments. 

Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee meeting hammered Secretary of Finance Mark Sickles, a member of Spanberger’s cabinet, Tuesday morning over the governor’s veto of a bill that would have legalized skill games and an amendment to the cannabis retail framework bill that would push the start of recreational sale to July 2027. 

Her actions on both of those bills, they said, would make it more difficult for budget conferees to balance the biennial spending bill. The two chambers don’t appear any closer to an agreement on the budget than in mid March, when the 2026 regular legislative session concluded. The General Assembly is slated to gavel in for a special session to tackle the budget on April 23. 

“The only new revenue source in the House budget was skill games — has been vetoed,” said Sen. Creigh Deeds, of Charlottesville, while posing a question about available revenue sources in the budget to Sickles during the Senate committee meeting. “You’ve taken skill games off the table. What’s on the table?”

Sickles said that the administration is “working with the revenues that we have.”

“We are doing well and we probably need, over the future, to look at things if the governor has a goal to help reform the K-12 funding formula… that’s probably going to take more revenue to do so,” he said. 

Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach, who patroned the Senate bill to legalize skill games, reiterated Deeds’ question. 

“If the conferees could meet, and start working together, maybe we would find compromise and I think we need to start doing our work. Conferees haven’t met yet,” Sickles said. He added that the administration had not considered alternative revenue sources before vetoing Rouse’s skill games bill. 

In conversation later that day, Deeds, a budget conferee, said that the group tasked with smoothing over the budget differences has met but that it’s difficult to negotiate a budget in earnest without a full picture of the revenue that they will be able to work with. 

“The governor has now taken one majority revenue source out, she has proposed to delay cannabis by a significant period of time plus scale back the number of licenses available which was another major revenue source we were planning on,” said Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, during the finance committee meeting. “It makes it very hard for us to plan when things like that are revealed to us after we’ve already passed bills.”

The Department of Planning and Budget had estimated that the tax revenue brought in by skill games could have been upwards of $249 million. The cannabis framework bill, as passed by the General Assembly, would have allowed recreational sales to begin — and therefore tax revenue of those sales to begin — in January 2027. Spanberger’s amendment pushed the start of recreational sales to July of that year. 

Sickles told Surovell that the legislators can accept or not accept the amendments. 

“Twenty-one votes will vote it down,” he said. 

The General Assembly is slated to reconvene on April 22, ahead of the special session, to take up Spanberger’s actions. The legislative body can reject an amendment from the governor with a majority vote but it would take a two-thirds vote to enact the bill without the governor’s amendment. If the General Assembly rejects an amendment with a simple majority vote, then the bill is sent back to the governor who can then sign it without the amendment or veto it. 

Not all of the governor’s party colleagues are upset, however. 

Among the hundreds of bills that Spanberger signed were energy-related legislation that included efforts to create an online dashboard of utility disconnection data, increase the amount of battery energy storage that Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power should aim to add to their portfolios, and create a task force to study how to get more low-income residents to enroll in energy-efficiency and weatherization programs.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

Some bills have been sent back to the General Assembly with generally small amendments. Those include bills to fast-track adding battery energy storage to utility-scale solar sites, allowing Virginians to use plug-in “balcony solar” devices to more easily generate solar power at home, and to require localities to individually consider utility-scale solar proposals instead of banning them outright.

“The Governor’s amendments are minor technical changes — the FAST Act is fully intact and Virginia is still making history,” Del. Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, said about her actions on his bill, HB 1065. 

The bill directs Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to assess their available interconnection capacity — locations where new power generation resources could more easily be added to the grid because the grid can handle more electricity there than it’s already receiving — and propose pilot programs for adding solar power and battery storage at those locations.

“We’re the first state in the nation to pass something like this, and for good reason: we don’t need to wait years and spend billions to build from scratch when there’s capacity already sitting on the grid. This gets power to Virginians faster and at lower cost. That’s the whole ballgame,” Hernandez added. 

Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico County, agreed that the governor’s amendments were mostly technical adjustments. VanValkenburg patroned SB 508 — the cognate to HB 1065 — and SB 347, which also received an amendment. 

SB 347 would prevent local governments from banning utility-scale solar outright, instead requiring project proposals to be reviewed individually. It would create standardized guidelines for setbacks and other aspects of development that localities could use. It would require localities that reject solar proposals to explain why to the State Corporation Commission, which would create a database tracking such rejections.

“I’m excited that we are going to have a good energy session that I think is going to increase energy supply in the two ways that we know are the cheapest and are going to do the most to keep ratepayer bills down and that’s by building up solar and modernizing the grid that we already have,” VanValkenburg said. 

Cannabis, collective bargaining amendments draw ire

Spanberger issued amendments to the cannabis retail framework legislation that bill patrons Sen. Lashrecse Aird, D-Henrico County, and Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County, said falls short of the standard established in the bill as it passed the General Assembly. 

Spanberger’s changes to the legislation include:

• Pushing the start of retail sales from January 2027 to July 2027; 
• Reducing the possession limit from 2.5 to 2 ounces; 
• Reducing the number of retail stores from 350 to 200; 
• Eliminating dedicated allocations for cannabis tax revenues (previously 40% of cannabis tax revenues directed to early childhood care and education, and 30% to support the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund);
• Eliminating detailed statutory licensing framework, shifting key decisions to regulatory action which the lawmakers said would create confusion and lack of clarity for prospective businesses;
• Eliminating support for Cannabis Impact Business Support Team, helping small businesses receive the support they need entering the marketplace; and
• Changes in criminal penalties. 

“The Governor’s Substitute represents a significant departure from the framework passed by the General Assembly, raising serious concerns about fairness, access and public safety,” Aird said in a statement. “By making the legal market harder to access, this proposal allows the illicit market to continue to thrive in every corner store in our Commonwealth.”

Spanberger’s amendments undermine the core goals of legalization and increase the likelihood of untested products, inconsistent potency, and lack of consumer protections. It also weakens safeguards designed to prevent youth access and ensure accountability ultimately posing a risk to public health and safety, she said. 

“The proposal creates a less accessible legal marketplace,” Krizek said in a statement. “These changes reduce the number of available licenses, delay the launch of retail sales and impose high barriers to entry, resulting in revenue losses, delayed economic opportunity for market participants and the elimination of investment to small businesses. These barriers do not eliminate demand, it simply redirects it back to the illicit market.”

Amendments to bills that would allow collective bargaining for public employees would extend the local government compliance requirement to 2030 and would give the governor more power over the policy details of implementation, Surovell, patron of SB 378, said. 

“I’m very disappointed,” he said in an emailed statement. “Few of her suggestions were proposed or discussed during session including in the governor’s feedback during session which was incorporated in the final version that passed. Most of her proposals are nonstarters.”

“There are over 750,000 Virginians who work for state or local government who have been waiting for a seat at the negotiating table since 1949 and they don’t want to wait another four years,” he added. 

Additional bill actions; lawmaker and advocate responses 

Here are some of the key bills that the governor vetoed or amended:

Animals

Roadside zoos

SB 344, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County
HB 112, by Del. Amy Laufer, D-Albemarle County

Bills aimed at roadside zoos and others that are trading captive wildlife would ban separating baby wild mammals from their mothers before 4 months of age, unless medically necessary, with exceptions including agricultural animals and noncommercial trades between accredited zoological facilities. Also prohibited would be so-called hybridization, or intentionally breeding wild mammals of different species.

Status: Both received amendments by the governor. 

Laufer said that the governor’s amendments the bill received are largely technical in nature and do not change the overall intent of the bill. 

“I thank the Governor’s administration for their collaboration,” she said. 

Education

College board appointments

HB 1385, by Del. Lily Franklin, D-Montgomery County

This bill would change the appointment process to make it clear that gubernatorial appointees do not take office until they are confirmed by the General Assembly. Previously, they took office immediately.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

VMI study

HB 1377, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

This bill would initiate a study “to determine VMI’s responsiveness to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia’s 2021 report on the institution and to explore changes to be made to distance VMI from the Lost Cause.” Initially, the bill directed the task force to examine whether VMI should receive state funding, but that provision was removed, and VMI later endorsed the bill.

Status: Received amendments by the governor. 

Jeremiah Woods, an alumnus of VMI and proponent of Helmer’s bill who has spoken in support of the legislation at committee meetings, said he does not support the governor’s amendments. 

“The original legislation moved toward independent oversight and accountability at [VMI],” he said in a text message. “The substitute shifts that responsibility to the VMI Board of Visitors, asking the institution to evaluate itself. That change raises serious concerns about transparency and whether meaningful accountability can be achieved through an internal review process.”

Electricity

Balcony solar

HB 395, by Del. Paul Krizek, D-Fairfax County
SB 250, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

These bills would allow Virginians to use small portable solar generation devices that plug into a standard electric outlet, potentially saving money on electric bills, without entering into a contract with an electric utility. The devices are commonly called “balcony solar” because, rather than requiring solar panels to be installed on a roof or mounted on the ground, their relatively small size allows them to be used in many locations, such as an apartment balcony.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Surovell said amendments to SB 250 were largely technical in nature. 

Battery energy storage systems on solar farms

HB 891, by Del. Irene Shin, D-Fairfax County
SB 443, by Sen. Jeremy McPike, D-Prince William County

These bills fast-track adding battery energy storage systems, which store excess energy to be deployed as needed, to existing utility-scale solar facilities by saying battery storage is allowed as an accessory use wherever solar farms already have been approved.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

McPike said Spanberger’s amendment appeared mostly technical. 

“I’m still taking a look at the language and some of the implications, but I think the governor’s trying to strike a balance with some of the feedback from localities, and it looks like she’s done that,” he said in an interview. He added that he is likely to support the amendments. 

Dominion Energy’s largest customers pay certain costs

SB 253, by Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth
HB 1393, by Del. Destiny LeVere Bolling, D-Henrico County

The bills would direct state regulators to decide whether Dominion Energy’s largest category of customers, most of which are data centers, should pay certain costs related to ensuring that power is available even during peak demand times and related to infrastructure needed to connect those customers to the electric grid. It also would expand Dominion’s and Appalachian Power’s energy assistance and weatherization programs and extend the timeline for a Dominion program that buries vulnerable overhead power lines. Critics had argued that the rising cost of the undergrounding program would eventually negate savings from the cost shift to data centers.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

LeVere Bolling said that she will be respectfully asking that the majority of the governor’s amendments to HB 1393 be rejected, after an initial assessment. 

“Many of the proposed amendments go beyond technical edits and instead make significant policy shifts, altering cost recovery structures, changing key thresholds, and revising how the State Corporation Commission evaluates utility investments and customer impacts. These changes materially impact the balance that the General Assembly worked to achieve,” she said in a statement. 

She added that she was not “provided with the opportunity to discuss these amendments with the governor or her team prior to their release, which is particularly concerning given the scope of the changes.”

Energy efficiency upgrades

HB 2, by Del. Mark Sickles, D-Fairfax County (now Secretary of Finance)
SB 72, by Sen. Kannan Srinivasan, D-Loudoun County

The bills would require Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power to help some low-income residents who use oil and propane heat transition to energy-efficient electric heat pumps.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Srinivasan said that the governor’s amendment to SB 72 is a “simple, technical update that makes no substantive changes.” 

“I look forward to accepting the amendment next week, and helping deliver meaningful reductions in heating costs for low-income Virginians through targeted, cost-effective energy efficiency upgrades,” he added. 

Gaming

Fairfax County casino

SB 756, by Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County

This bill would add Fairfax County to the list of localities eligible to host a casino.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

“Skill” games

SB 661, by Sen. Aaron Rouse, D-Virginia Beach

This bill would legalize and regulate the so-called electronic skill games often found in convenience stores.

Status: Vetoed by the the governor. 

Guns

Assault weapons ban

HB 217, by Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County

SB 749, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

These bills would make it a misdemeanor to import, sell, manufacture, purchase or transfer an assault firearm.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“I thank Gov. Spanberger for proposing amendments that are consistent with my goal when I wrote the bill: to end the sale of these weapons without criminalizing what people own today or infringing their 2nd Amendment rights,” Salim said in a statement. 

Health care

Prescription drug affordability board

SB 271 by Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville
HB 483, by Del. Karrie Delaney, D-Fairfax County

This bill would create a state-run prescription drug affordability board that would review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. This is the fourth attempt to create such a board; Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

Status: Both bills received amendments by the governor. 

Deeds said that the governor’s amendment turns the board into a strictly advisory board. 

“That’s what New Hampshire had adopted and repealed because it was totally ineffective,” he said. “The governor’s amendments, in my view, are basically a veto. I do not intend to support the amendments.”

Delaney said that she is disappointed that the governor’s amendments “do not align with the solution we spent years crafting, and achieved, with immense bipartisan support.” 

The General Assembly has voted on this bill five years in a row, and meanwhile Virginians’ medicines have become more and more expensive. Our constituents cannot wait another year for prescription drug relief,” she added. 

Labor

Paid family medical leave

HB 1207, by Del. Briana Sewell, D-Prince William County
SB 2, by Sen. Jennifer Boysko, D-Fairfax County

These bills would create a paid family medical leave program, including a tax on employers and employees.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“While this is not the bill I originally wrote, I am grateful for Governor Spanberger’s partnership in advancing this commonsense legislation,” Sewell said in a statement. 

She added that the bill would support 3.4 million Virginians who “have too often been forced to choose between their livelihoods and caring for their loved ones. This program is not only the right thing to do, but it is also vital for a healthy workforce and a stronger economy.”

Freedom Virginia said in a statement that the amendments to the legislation are largely technical in nature. Freedom Virginia is a 501(c)(4) organization, lobbies in support of “economic advancement policies.”

Face coverings

HB 1482, by Del. Charlie Schmidt, D-Richmond
SB 352, by Sen. Saddam Salim, D-Falls Church

The House bill would ban state and local police officers from wearing face coverings. The Senate bill applies to federal officers operating in Virginia.

Status: Received amendments by the governor.

“These bills were meant to draw a clear line against abuse, fear, and unnecessary cruelty. The amendments would make the bills toothless, a right without a remedy,” Salim said in a statement. 

“I appreciate anyone who is willing to engage in good-faith efforts to improve these bills, but on this issue I am not interested in symbolism or half-measures. If we are serious about peace, justice, and the rule of law, then we must be willing to stand firmly behind protections that actually work in practice, not just on paper,” he added.

Staff writer Matt Busse contributed to this report.

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Hi, Cardinal readers, and welcome to this week’s installment of Tech Briefs. Got tips and/or questions? Reach out to me via tad@cardinalnews.org.

A $4.2 million grant from the GO Virginia economic initiative will fund a wide-ranging project to grow advanced manufacturing in much of Southwest and Southside Virginia.

The grant, bolstered by $2 million from other sources in the region, could create 100 jobs in its first two years while helping build a workforce for manufacturing and technology careers, according to a Virginia Tech news release.

The New River Valley Regional Commission will lead Virginia Tech and about a dozen other educational institutions, industrial groups and business accelerators in GO Virginia regions 2 and 3, all looking to expand the 3D-printing horizons of additive manufacturing and advanced materials, AM2 for short.

Region 2 covers the cities of Covington, Lynchburg, Radford, Roanoke and Salem, and the counties of Alleghany, Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford, Botetourt, Campbell, Craig, Floyd, Franklin, Giles, Montgomery, Pulaski and Roanoke. 

Region 3 is Danville and Martinsville, and the counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Halifax, Henry, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Patrick, Pittsylvania and Prince Edward.

According to the news release, the regional commission is employing a four-pronged strategy, starting with new innovation studios focused on AM2. The studios, which will offer help to manufacturers, will be at Danville’s Institute for Advanced Learning and Research and at facilities at Virginia Tech’s Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science’s Matter Labs.

AM2 Innovation Fellows, a group of industry experts, will center the second strategy, working with companies and helping accelerate the commercialization timelines. The Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance, Danville’s SOVA Innovation Hub, Virginia Tech’s Launch: Center for New Ventures, VTC Ventures and The Launch Place will help the innovation fellows connect companies with additive manufacturing, robotics and artificial intelligence support.

The third phase is an AM2 Career Network launch, where the grant partners will develop high school curriculum, paid internships and apprenticeships for students and workers. The network will look to fill niches in ninth- and 10th-grade programming.

Virginia Manufacturers Association and Manufacturing Skills Institute will develop the nation’s first industry-certified AM2 credential, collaborating with the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research’s Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing Program and multiple community colleges: Central Virginia, Danville, New River, Patrick & Henry and Virginia Western.

The fourth prong will see the growth of the AM2 Consortium, a coalition of industry and service providers. They will coordinate project activities, consortium meetings and networking, along with outreach and promotional efforts for the AM2 initiative and advanced manufacturing companies in regions 2 and 3.

The project should take several years to develop, with increasing numbers of AM2 products developed as the partners streamline technological adoption and build the nation’s leader in skilled workforce development, said Kevin Byrd, the New River Valley Regional Commission’s executive director.

“GO Virginia has been a terrific partner by championing and investing in our most promising opportunities in the New River Valley,” Byrd said. “Its support is advancing what we do as a region.”

More money could be coming. The AM2 Consortium in March applied for $44 million from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, according to a message to consortium members from Leo Priddy, the NRVRC’s economic development planning specialist and regional innovation officer.

FBRI at VTC opens clean room space

The seeds of another GO Virginia grant bore fruit last week with the opening of a clean room space at Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.

Clean rooms, crucial for making circuit boards, medical equipment, optical products, pharmaceuticals and more, require a contamination-free environment with heavily filtered air pumped into and out of the space. A $100,000 grant in late 2024 from GO Virginia, along with $221,500 in non-state money, launched the FBRI clean room project.

The lack of such facilities until recently forced companies to go elsewhere in order to manufacture clinical-grade materials that meet the U.S. Food and Drug Administration standards required for human and animal testing, project participants have said.

Some of those participants — from FBRI, Virginia Tech, Montgomery County, Roanoke, the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance and the Red Gates Foundation, along with other interested parties — got a look at the facility on April 9. 

The clean room is a critical step in moving discoveries from labs into the world via early-stage manufacturing, said FBRI Executive Director Michael Friedlander. 

“It grew out of real needs identified by academic researchers and companies in the region and reflects a collaborative effort to build the infrastructure required to support them,” Friedlander said in an FBRI news release.

Virginia Tech researchers on all campuses may use the facility, which will provide hands-on opportunities for students and trainees as well, thus strengthening the region’s biotechnology workforce, according to the news release.

It will be a “major attractor” for Biotechnology companies in the region and beyond, said Friedlander, who is also Virginia Tech’s vice president for health sciences and technology.
It is the second clean room project completed this year in Roanoke. Tiny Cargo Co., run by two FBRI researchers, opened its own facility in February, including offices, storage and shipping for cancer and cardiac therapies, in a 7,000-square-foot renovated building at Fugate Road Northeast, near Plantation Road.

The post Tech Briefs: Grant money flows to 3D manufacturing in Southwest, Southside appeared first on Cardinal News.

Roanoke’s six-month lane change demonstration on 2 miles of Williamson Road has come to an end, and despite heightened controversy and signs opposing changes lining the road, the city says it hasn’t seen substantive changes in traffic patterns.

Williamson Road is one of the valley’s major thoroughfares: About 600 businesses line its 10-mile length through Roanoke and Roanoke County, and it’s used by 15,000 vehicles per day, according to the city’s website.

It’s also been the site of numerous vehicle crashes over the years — something that residents and business owners attribute to difficult turns, poorly designed sidewalk crossings, frequent speeding and limited visibility due to closely packed buildings and signs.

Of the 49 people who died in traffic incidents in Roanoke between 2019 and 2023, 18% of those fatalities were on Williamson Road, in about a 3-mile stretch between Orange Avenue and Airport Road. A third of the city’s pedestrian fatalities during that timeframe happened on Williamson Road.

In 2020, the Roanoke City Council created a Vision Zero Action Plan, committing to a goal of zero traffic deaths and serious injuries citywide by 2035. 

Roanoke was one of 64 communities selected to receive technical assistance through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Thriving Communities Program, which helps cities design safer streets. In September, the city restriped 2 of its 4 miles of Williamson Road between Angell Avenue and Pocahontas Avenue. The changes included turning two of the four lanes into a center turn lane and adjusting traffic signal timing. 

Valerie Brown, executive director of the Greater Williamson Road Business Association, said that the city also received U.S. Department Of Transportation funding for an ongoing facade project, where property owners can receive help with painting, landscaping and signage. Brown said five businesses have been assisted through the facade program so far.

The association acts as a chamber of commerce for the businesses along the corridor, Brown said. The group consists of about 200 paid members but is in contact monthly with a little over 600 businesses, Brown said. She has heard mixed opinions from the business community about the lane changes.

“I just ask people to be patient,” she said of the traffic changes. “I think it’s working.” 

City reports little change in travel patterns

Ross Campbell, the city’s director of public works, said in an emailed statement that traffic engineers found traffic volume and travel times have not changed significantly as a result of the project. A March presentation to the steering committee, put together by the city, stated that any decreases in traffic volume were in line with expected seasonal variations.

That presentation also noted a slight increase in travel time along northbound Williamson Road during the evening peak hour, but a slight decrease in traffic time on the southbound side during that time.

Traffic engineers also found that travel speeds were generally unchanged by the lane changes. Updated crash data should be available from the Virginia Department of Transportation over the summer, Campbell said.

The city surveyed almost 1,000 people about the changes and talked with businesses and residents; feedback was evenly split between supporters and opponents to the changes, Campbell said. 

The road will remain paved as it is now until the steering committee, which consists of about 19 stakeholders, including residents and business owners, makes a recommendation to the city council for permanent changes over the summer.

Businesses, neighbors have mixed reactions to the changes

Vance Overstreet, president of Northwest Ace Hardware, said that he has seen congestion on the road increase throughout the last six months.

He said he is on board with safety improvements. His store hasn’t seen many direct effects from the project, he said, but it takes longer to get out onto the road from his parking lot.

He said he believes that the retiming of the lights has been beneficial, but that it shouldn’t have been completed at the same time as the road painting.

Road construction in general hurts businesses, Overstreet said, because drivers detour onto other streets. He said he hasn’t seen investments made to support those businesses during traffic changes and construction. 

Overstreet said he signed a petition of over 3,000 people who were opposed to the project.

Ben Burch, president of the neighborhood watch group in Airlee Court — which is bisected by Williamson Road — said he believes that the changes made it harder for emergency vehicles to get in and out of his neighborhood, and that he’s noticed more traffic on Plantation Road, Hershberger Road and through the neighborhood’s streets, as motorists try to avoid Williamson Road. 

He said he’d like to see the road go back to its original four lanes, with a multiuse path on one side for bikes and people. 

Hussain Ghanizada, who owns the A1 Afghan Grocery and Restaurant, said he thinks that the city did a great job with the changes, but that it will take time for people to get used to them. Ghanizada also owns a second business on Williamson Road, A1 Car Sales.

He said the only places he’s still noticing issues, like frequent horn-honking and near-accidents, are at either end of the 2-mile demonstration segment, where two lanes merge into one lane. Other than that, he said he’s seen a reduction in accidents over the last six months.

Ghanizada’s restaurant isn’t easy to miss — the building is bright purple, decorated with multicolored string lights and surrounded by a white picket fence. But he said he’s heard from some new customers who said they didn’t even see the business until they were forced to drive more slowly on a single lane. 

Brown said she also thinks people are recognizing other businesses that they wouldn’t have noticed before. She said she hopes that people will stop and shop, instead of just using the road to get from point A to point B. 

What’s next for Williamson Road

Brown said the existing changes are only “the tip of the iceberg” for the Williamson Road project.

The steering committee will next need to find money for sidewalks and landscaping, she said, and lane changes need to be considered for the rest of the road.

Roanoke County is also working on improving its 6-mile section of Williamson Road, though it’s not as busy as the city’s section.

That’s because the lots are larger, and there are fewer entrances onto the road, Megan Cronise, assistant director of planning in the county, said in an interview.

“It’s a different kind of footprint of development than in the city. … It’s really a little more suburban,” Cronise said.

She said the county is working on a state funding application to build a roundabout at Williamson Road and Peters Creek Road. The preapplication has been submitted, and the full application is due over the summer, she said.

The county unsuccessfully applied for the grant two years ago, she said, so it has broken the project into smaller pieces, the roundabout being the focus now, to have a better chance this time. 

She said she estimates that the project would cost from $20 million to $30 million to complete.

Cronise also said the county hears from residents who want the road to be more accessible — she said she often sees pedestrians and motorized wheelchairs on the road shoulder.

VDOT is constructing sidewalk extensions along a stretch less than a mile long on Williamson Road, from North Roanoke Assisted Living to Plymouth Drive, which will be completed later this year, she said. 

County roads are maintained through VDOT, and Cronise said the county has fewer opportunities to test new traffic scenarios as the city has done over the last six months. 

The Envision Williamson Road steering committee will meet over the summer before making a recommendation to the city to keep the changes or move in another direction. Campbell said sidewalk improvements in the city’s section of the road will be considered in future phases of the project. Brown said the majority of the road lacks sidewalks, and the existing sidewalks need to be replaced.

The post Controversial lane change test on Williamson Road had no substantial effect on traffic patterns, city says appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Politics:

Supreme Court ruling revives debate over conversion therapy bans, including in Virginia. — Virginia Mercury.

Ex-Pence aide Olivia Troye plans to run for Congress in Virginia as a Democrat. — The Washington Post (paywall).

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will visit Virginia, D.C. and New York. — The New York Times (paywall).

Economy:

Virginia poultry co-op to add 146 jobs, invest $113 million. — Virginia Business (paywall).

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: Supreme Court ruling revives debate over conversion therapy bans, including in Virginia; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Politics:

Supreme Court ruling revives debate over conversion therapy bans, including in Virginia. — Virginia Mercury.

Ex-Pence aide Olivia Troye plans to run for Congress in Virginia as a Democrat. — The Washington Post (paywall).

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will visit Virginia, D.C. and New York. — The New York Times (paywall).

Economy:

Virginia poultry co-op to add 146 jobs, invest $113 million. — Virginia Business (paywall).

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: Supreme Court ruling revives debate over conversion therapy bans, including in Virginia; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

Cumberland is a quiet county seat like many in rural Virginia, centered around a historic court house, old jail, clerk’s office, Civil War obelisk, and an official silver-and-black state historic marker. Another marker, differing in design, proclaims the “First Call for Independence.”

“Near this place from the porch of Effingham Tavern on 22 April 1776, Carter Henry Harrison… read the resolutions of Cumberland County to citizens gathered there. These resolutions called for the colonies to ‘abjure any allegiance to His Brittanick Majesty and bid him a goodnight forever.’ The freeholders approved these resolutions, and Harrison was instructed ‘positively to declare for an independency’ at the Virginia Convention. On this historic occasion Cumberland made the first call by a governmental body for independence from Great Britain. Donated by the Cumberland Ruritan Club January 2011.”

At the risk of stirring a minor controversy with our neighbors in the Tar Heel State, Cardinal News looked into Cumberland’s claim.

The heady tea of revolution had been brewing for several years before boiling over in the summer of 1776, when, on July 4, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Two months earlier, on May 15, the Fifth Virginia Convention, meeting in Williamsburg, voted unanimously to instruct Virginia’s representatives in Congress to introduce a motion for independence.

A number of county delegates at the Fifth Convention, which began May 6, had been instructed to call for independence. Cumberland’s instructions beat Charlotte County’s by one day. Cumberland’s claim is based on records from a meeting of Cumberland’s Committee of Safety on April 22. 

The resolutions were penned by committee member Carter Henry Harrison I. Among the First Families of Virginia — not first at Jamestown, but foremost among the Colonial aristocrats — Carter Henry Harrison I (1736–1793) was as blue-blooded as any, with ancestors among the Harrisons, Burwells and Carters, including the lordly “King” Carter of Corotoman. A link in a gold-plated genealogical chain, Harrison I promulgated a long line of Carter Henry Harrisons, including Carter Henry Harrison III and Carter Henry Harrison IV, both mayors of Chicago. IV’s son, V, died in 1964. The ancestral home of all these Carter Henry Harrisons, Clifton, still stands near Cartersville in Cumberland County.

In 2003, Michael Willis, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, commissioned Jeremiah D. Heaton, director of Cumberland County Office on Youth, to research Cumberland’s claim and verify whether Cumberland was in fact “the first governmental body to openly and publicly call for independence from Great Britain.”

Heaton compared Cumberland’s resolutions with the Halifax Resolves, passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, N.C., on April 12, 1776. That body “Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency…” NCpedia, official online encyclopedia of North Carolina, claims this document as “the first official action calling for independence.”

Heaton did not agree. “Although North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves antedates Cumberland’s declaration by 10 days,” he concluded, “it is not absolute.” North Carolina told her delegates to concur with other Colonies, whereas Cumberland’s men were exhorted to positively declare for independence. 

Jeremiah D. Heaton was elected to Cumberland’s board of supervisors in 2003, and lost an election to Congress from Virginia’s 9th District in 2010, running as an independent. According to his LinkedIn page, he is now the CEO of A to B Robotics in Abingdon. 

In an odd tangent to this story, Heaton, in 2014, went to Africa and claimed an arid 795-square-mile tract on the Egypt-Sudan border, known locally as Bir Tawil, as the “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess. “I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true,” he was quoted as saying, explaining that he picked the desolate expanse after searching the web for “terra nullius,” i.e., land unclaimed by any state. The story got worldwide media attention, but the Kingdom of North Sudan failed to win diplomatic recognition. A picture of Heaton in his royal regalia, not unlike that of His Brittanick Majesty, is here: Attempts to contact Heaton were not successful. 

Betty Sears, secretary-treasurer of Cumberland County Historical Society, said the Cumberland Ruritan Club proposed a state historic marker commemorating the resolutions, but the Department of Historic Resources turned it down. DHR received the proposal in 2009, according to file notes shared by Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager. 

“Marker staff advised sponsors that the text as written was a repeat and expansion of a topic already covered by the ‘Clifton’ (marker JE-36) state highway marker produced in 1947, and advised that production of a private marker would be the best alternative.” DHR staff reviewed the text for the private marker and found it to be accurate, according to the file notes.

In fact, the state’s endorsement of the claim, as displayed on the Clifton sign, is lukewarm at best. The original 1947 text said “Apparently this was the first of such declarations publicly approved.” Revised in 2017, it now says Cumberland’s were “among the earliest such instructions approved by a public body in Virginia.”

So who came first, Cumberland or North Carolina? As Heaton pointed out, if you ask who was first to positively declare for independence, rather than merely concur with other bodies, then Cumberland has a strong claim. As the state of a quantum particle depends on how you measure it, the answer to this question of revolutionary primacy depends on how you ask it.

The post Who declared for independence first — North Carolina, or this Virginia county? appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

Cumberland is a quiet county seat like many in rural Virginia, centered around a historic court house, old jail, clerk’s office, Civil War obelisk, and an official silver-and-black state historic marker. Another marker, differing in design, proclaims the “First Call for Independence.”

“Near this place from the porch of Effingham Tavern on 22 April 1776, Carter Henry Harrison… read the resolutions of Cumberland County to citizens gathered there. These resolutions called for the colonies to ‘abjure any allegiance to His Brittanick Majesty and bid him a goodnight forever.’ The freeholders approved these resolutions, and Harrison was instructed ‘positively to declare for an independency’ at the Virginia Convention. On this historic occasion Cumberland made the first call by a governmental body for independence from Great Britain. Donated by the Cumberland Ruritan Club January 2011.”

At the risk of stirring a minor controversy with our neighbors in the Tar Heel State, Cardinal News looked into Cumberland’s claim.

The heady tea of revolution had been brewing for several years before boiling over in the summer of 1776, when, on July 4, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Two months earlier, on May 15, the Fifth Virginia Convention, meeting in Williamsburg, voted unanimously to instruct Virginia’s representatives in Congress to introduce a motion for independence.

A number of county delegates at the Fifth Convention, which began May 6, had been instructed to call for independence. Cumberland’s instructions beat Charlotte County’s by one day. Cumberland’s claim is based on records from a meeting of Cumberland’s Committee of Safety on April 22. 

The resolutions were penned by committee member Carter Henry Harrison I. Among the First Families of Virginia — not first at Jamestown, but foremost among the Colonial aristocrats — Carter Henry Harrison I (1736–1793) was as blue-blooded as any, with ancestors among the Harrisons, Burwells and Carters, including the lordly “King” Carter of Corotoman. A link in a gold-plated genealogical chain, Harrison I promulgated a long line of Carter Henry Harrisons, including Carter Henry Harrison III and Carter Henry Harrison IV, both mayors of Chicago. IV’s son, V, died in 1964. The ancestral home of all these Carter Henry Harrisons, Clifton, still stands near Cartersville in Cumberland County.

In 2003, Michael Willis, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, commissioned Jeremiah D. Heaton, director of Cumberland County Office on Youth, to research Cumberland’s claim and verify whether Cumberland was in fact “the first governmental body to openly and publicly call for independence from Great Britain.”

Heaton compared Cumberland’s resolutions with the Halifax Resolves, passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, N.C., on April 12, 1776. That body “Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency…” NCpedia, official online encyclopedia of North Carolina, claims this document as “the first official action calling for independence.”

Heaton did not agree. “Although North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves antedates Cumberland’s declaration by 10 days,” he concluded, “it is not absolute.” North Carolina told her delegates to concur with other Colonies, whereas Cumberland’s men were exhorted to positively declare for independence. 

Jeremiah D. Heaton was elected to Cumberland’s board of supervisors in 2003, and lost an election to Congress from Virginia’s 9th District in 2010, running as an independent. According to his LinkedIn page, he is now the CEO of A to B Robotics in Abingdon. 

In an odd tangent to this story, Heaton, in 2014, went to Africa and claimed an arid 795-square-mile tract on the Egypt-Sudan border, known locally as Bir Tawil, as the “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess. “I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true,” he was quoted as saying, explaining that he picked the desolate expanse after searching the web for “terra nullius,” i.e., land unclaimed by any state. The story got worldwide media attention, but the Kingdom of North Sudan failed to win diplomatic recognition. A picture of Heaton in his royal regalia, not unlike that of His Brittanick Majesty, is here: Attempts to contact Heaton were not successful. 

Betty Sears, secretary-treasurer of Cumberland County Historical Society, said the Cumberland Ruritan Club proposed a state historic marker commemorating the resolutions, but the Department of Historic Resources turned it down. DHR received the proposal in 2009, according to file notes shared by Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager. 

“Marker staff advised sponsors that the text as written was a repeat and expansion of a topic already covered by the ‘Clifton’ (marker JE-36) state highway marker produced in 1947, and advised that production of a private marker would be the best alternative.” DHR staff reviewed the text for the private marker and found it to be accurate, according to the file notes.

In fact, the state’s endorsement of the claim, as displayed on the Clifton sign, is lukewarm at best. The original 1947 text said “Apparently this was the first of such declarations publicly approved.” Revised in 2017, it now says Cumberland’s were “among the earliest such instructions approved by a public body in Virginia.”

So who came first, Cumberland or North Carolina? As Heaton pointed out, if you ask who was first to positively declare for independence, rather than merely concur with other bodies, then Cumberland has a strong claim. As the state of a quantum particle depends on how you measure it, the answer to this question of revolutionary primacy depends on how you ask it.

The post Who declared for independence first — North Carolina, or this Virginia county? appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

Cumberland is a quiet county seat like many in rural Virginia, centered around a historic court house, old jail, clerk’s office, Civil War obelisk, and an official silver-and-black state historic marker. Another marker, differing in design, proclaims the “First Call for Independence.”

“Near this place from the porch of Effingham Tavern on 22 April 1776, Carter Henry Harrison… read the resolutions of Cumberland County to citizens gathered there. These resolutions called for the colonies to ‘abjure any allegiance to His Brittanick Majesty and bid him a goodnight forever.’ The freeholders approved these resolutions, and Harrison was instructed ‘positively to declare for an independency’ at the Virginia Convention. On this historic occasion Cumberland made the first call by a governmental body for independence from Great Britain. Donated by the Cumberland Ruritan Club January 2011.”

At the risk of stirring a minor controversy with our neighbors in the Tar Heel State, Cardinal News looked into Cumberland’s claim.

The heady tea of revolution had been brewing for several years before boiling over in the summer of 1776, when, on July 4, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Two months earlier, on May 15, the Fifth Virginia Convention, meeting in Williamsburg, voted unanimously to instruct Virginia’s representatives in Congress to introduce a motion for independence.

A number of county delegates at the Fifth Convention, which began May 6, had been instructed to call for independence. Cumberland’s instructions beat Charlotte County’s by one day. Cumberland’s claim is based on records from a meeting of Cumberland’s Committee of Safety on April 22. 

The resolutions were penned by committee member Carter Henry Harrison I. Among the First Families of Virginia — not first at Jamestown, but foremost among the Colonial aristocrats — Carter Henry Harrison I (1736–1793) was as blue-blooded as any, with ancestors among the Harrisons, Burwells and Carters, including the lordly “King” Carter of Corotoman. A link in a gold-plated genealogical chain, Harrison I promulgated a long line of Carter Henry Harrisons, including Carter Henry Harrison III and Carter Henry Harrison IV, both mayors of Chicago. IV’s son, V, died in 1964. The ancestral home of all these Carter Henry Harrisons, Clifton, still stands near Cartersville in Cumberland County.

In 2003, Michael Willis, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, commissioned Jeremiah D. Heaton, director of Cumberland County Office on Youth, to research Cumberland’s claim and verify whether Cumberland was in fact “the first governmental body to openly and publicly call for independence from Great Britain.”

Heaton compared Cumberland’s resolutions with the Halifax Resolves, passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, N.C., on April 12, 1776. That body “Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency…” NCpedia, official online encyclopedia of North Carolina, claims this document as “the first official action calling for independence.”

Heaton did not agree. “Although North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves antedates Cumberland’s declaration by 10 days,” he concluded, “it is not absolute.” North Carolina told her delegates to concur with other Colonies, whereas Cumberland’s men were exhorted to positively declare for independence. 

Jeremiah D. Heaton was elected to Cumberland’s board of supervisors in 2003, and lost an election to Congress from Virginia’s 9th District in 2010, running as an independent. According to his LinkedIn page, he is now the CEO of A to B Robotics in Abingdon. 

In an odd tangent to this story, Heaton, in 2014, went to Africa and claimed an arid 795-square-mile tract on the Egypt-Sudan border, known locally as Bir Tawil, as the “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess. “I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true,” he was quoted as saying, explaining that he picked the desolate expanse after searching the web for “terra nullius,” i.e., land unclaimed by any state. The story got worldwide media attention, but the Kingdom of North Sudan failed to win diplomatic recognition. A picture of Heaton in his royal regalia, not unlike that of His Brittanick Majesty, is here: Attempts to contact Heaton were not successful. 

Betty Sears, secretary-treasurer of Cumberland County Historical Society, said the Cumberland Ruritan Club proposed a state historic marker commemorating the resolutions, but the Department of Historic Resources turned it down. DHR received the proposal in 2009, according to file notes shared by Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager. 

“Marker staff advised sponsors that the text as written was a repeat and expansion of a topic already covered by the ‘Clifton’ (marker JE-36) state highway marker produced in 1947, and advised that production of a private marker would be the best alternative.” DHR staff reviewed the text for the private marker and found it to be accurate, according to the file notes.

In fact, the state’s endorsement of the claim, as displayed on the Clifton sign, is lukewarm at best. The original 1947 text said “Apparently this was the first of such declarations publicly approved.” Revised in 2017, it now says Cumberland’s were “among the earliest such instructions approved by a public body in Virginia.”

So who came first, Cumberland or North Carolina? As Heaton pointed out, if you ask who was first to positively declare for independence, rather than merely concur with other bodies, then Cumberland has a strong claim. As the state of a quantum particle depends on how you measure it, the answer to this question of revolutionary primacy depends on how you ask it.

The post Who declared for independence first — North Carolina, or this Virginia county? appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

Cumberland is a quiet county seat like many in rural Virginia, centered around a historic court house, old jail, clerk’s office, Civil War obelisk, and an official silver-and-black state historic marker. Another marker, differing in design, proclaims the “First Call for Independence.”

“Near this place from the porch of Effingham Tavern on 22 April 1776, Carter Henry Harrison… read the resolutions of Cumberland County to citizens gathered there. These resolutions called for the colonies to ‘abjure any allegiance to His Brittanick Majesty and bid him a goodnight forever.’ The freeholders approved these resolutions, and Harrison was instructed ‘positively to declare for an independency’ at the Virginia Convention. On this historic occasion Cumberland made the first call by a governmental body for independence from Great Britain. Donated by the Cumberland Ruritan Club January 2011.”

At the risk of stirring a minor controversy with our neighbors in the Tar Heel State, Cardinal News looked into Cumberland’s claim.

The heady tea of revolution had been brewing for several years before boiling over in the summer of 1776, when, on July 4, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Two months earlier, on May 15, the Fifth Virginia Convention, meeting in Williamsburg, voted unanimously to instruct Virginia’s representatives in Congress to introduce a motion for independence.

A number of county delegates at the Fifth Convention, which began May 6, had been instructed to call for independence. Cumberland’s instructions beat Charlotte County’s by one day. Cumberland’s claim is based on records from a meeting of Cumberland’s Committee of Safety on April 22. 

The resolutions were penned by committee member Carter Henry Harrison I. Among the First Families of Virginia — not first at Jamestown, but foremost among the Colonial aristocrats — Carter Henry Harrison I (1736–1793) was as blue-blooded as any, with ancestors among the Harrisons, Burwells and Carters, including the lordly “King” Carter of Corotoman. A link in a gold-plated genealogical chain, Harrison I promulgated a long line of Carter Henry Harrisons, including Carter Henry Harrison III and Carter Henry Harrison IV, both mayors of Chicago. IV’s son, V, died in 1964. The ancestral home of all these Carter Henry Harrisons, Clifton, still stands near Cartersville in Cumberland County.

In 2003, Michael Willis, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, commissioned Jeremiah D. Heaton, director of Cumberland County Office on Youth, to research Cumberland’s claim and verify whether Cumberland was in fact “the first governmental body to openly and publicly call for independence from Great Britain.”

Heaton compared Cumberland’s resolutions with the Halifax Resolves, passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, N.C., on April 12, 1776. That body “Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency…” NCpedia, official online encyclopedia of North Carolina, claims this document as “the first official action calling for independence.”

Heaton did not agree. “Although North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves antedates Cumberland’s declaration by 10 days,” he concluded, “it is not absolute.” North Carolina told her delegates to concur with other Colonies, whereas Cumberland’s men were exhorted to positively declare for independence. 

Jeremiah D. Heaton was elected to Cumberland’s board of supervisors in 2003, and lost an election to Congress from Virginia’s 9th District in 2010, running as an independent. According to his LinkedIn page, he is now the CEO of A to B Robotics in Abingdon. 

In an odd tangent to this story, Heaton, in 2014, went to Africa and claimed an arid 795-square-mile tract on the Egypt-Sudan border, known locally as Bir Tawil, as the “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess. “I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true,” he was quoted as saying, explaining that he picked the desolate expanse after searching the web for “terra nullius,” i.e., land unclaimed by any state. The story got worldwide media attention, but the Kingdom of North Sudan failed to win diplomatic recognition. A picture of Heaton in his royal regalia, not unlike that of His Brittanick Majesty, is here: Attempts to contact Heaton were not successful. 

Betty Sears, secretary-treasurer of Cumberland County Historical Society, said the Cumberland Ruritan Club proposed a state historic marker commemorating the resolutions, but the Department of Historic Resources turned it down. DHR received the proposal in 2009, according to file notes shared by Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager. 

“Marker staff advised sponsors that the text as written was a repeat and expansion of a topic already covered by the ‘Clifton’ (marker JE-36) state highway marker produced in 1947, and advised that production of a private marker would be the best alternative.” DHR staff reviewed the text for the private marker and found it to be accurate, according to the file notes.

In fact, the state’s endorsement of the claim, as displayed on the Clifton sign, is lukewarm at best. The original 1947 text said “Apparently this was the first of such declarations publicly approved.” Revised in 2017, it now says Cumberland’s were “among the earliest such instructions approved by a public body in Virginia.”

So who came first, Cumberland or North Carolina? As Heaton pointed out, if you ask who was first to positively declare for independence, rather than merely concur with other bodies, then Cumberland has a strong claim. As the state of a quantum particle depends on how you measure it, the answer to this question of revolutionary primacy depends on how you ask it.

The post Who declared for independence first — North Carolina, or this Virginia county? appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

Cumberland is a quiet county seat like many in rural Virginia, centered around a historic court house, old jail, clerk’s office, Civil War obelisk, and an official silver-and-black state historic marker. Another marker, differing in design, proclaims the “First Call for Independence.”

“Near this place from the porch of Effingham Tavern on 22 April 1776, Carter Henry Harrison… read the resolutions of Cumberland County to citizens gathered there. These resolutions called for the colonies to ‘abjure any allegiance to His Brittanick Majesty and bid him a goodnight forever.’ The freeholders approved these resolutions, and Harrison was instructed ‘positively to declare for an independency’ at the Virginia Convention. On this historic occasion Cumberland made the first call by a governmental body for independence from Great Britain. Donated by the Cumberland Ruritan Club January 2011.”

At the risk of stirring a minor controversy with our neighbors in the Tar Heel State, Cardinal News looked into Cumberland’s claim.

The heady tea of revolution had been brewing for several years before boiling over in the summer of 1776, when, on July 4, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, adopted the Declaration of Independence.

Two months earlier, on May 15, the Fifth Virginia Convention, meeting in Williamsburg, voted unanimously to instruct Virginia’s representatives in Congress to introduce a motion for independence.

A number of county delegates at the Fifth Convention, which began May 6, had been instructed to call for independence. Cumberland’s instructions beat Charlotte County’s by one day. Cumberland’s claim is based on records from a meeting of Cumberland’s Committee of Safety on April 22. 

The resolutions were penned by committee member Carter Henry Harrison I. Among the First Families of Virginia — not first at Jamestown, but foremost among the Colonial aristocrats — Carter Henry Harrison I (1736–1793) was as blue-blooded as any, with ancestors among the Harrisons, Burwells and Carters, including the lordly “King” Carter of Corotoman. A link in a gold-plated genealogical chain, Harrison I promulgated a long line of Carter Henry Harrisons, including Carter Henry Harrison III and Carter Henry Harrison IV, both mayors of Chicago. IV’s son, V, died in 1964. The ancestral home of all these Carter Henry Harrisons, Clifton, still stands near Cartersville in Cumberland County.

In 2003, Michael Willis, superintendent of Cumberland County Public Schools, commissioned Jeremiah D. Heaton, director of Cumberland County Office on Youth, to research Cumberland’s claim and verify whether Cumberland was in fact “the first governmental body to openly and publicly call for independence from Great Britain.”

Heaton compared Cumberland’s resolutions with the Halifax Resolves, passed by the North Carolina Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax, N.C., on April 12, 1776. That body “Resolved that the delegates for this Colony in the Continental Congress be impowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency…” NCpedia, official online encyclopedia of North Carolina, claims this document as “the first official action calling for independence.”

Heaton did not agree. “Although North Carolina’s Halifax Resolves antedates Cumberland’s declaration by 10 days,” he concluded, “it is not absolute.” North Carolina told her delegates to concur with other Colonies, whereas Cumberland’s men were exhorted to positively declare for independence. 

Jeremiah D. Heaton was elected to Cumberland’s board of supervisors in 2003, and lost an election to Congress from Virginia’s 9th District in 2010, running as an independent. According to his LinkedIn page, he is now the CEO of A to B Robotics in Abingdon. 

In an odd tangent to this story, Heaton, in 2014, went to Africa and claimed an arid 795-square-mile tract on the Egypt-Sudan border, known locally as Bir Tawil, as the “Kingdom of North Sudan,” with himself as king and his daughter, Emily, as princess. “I wanted to show my kids I will literally go to the ends of the earth to make their wishes and dreams come true,” he was quoted as saying, explaining that he picked the desolate expanse after searching the web for “terra nullius,” i.e., land unclaimed by any state. The story got worldwide media attention, but the Kingdom of North Sudan failed to win diplomatic recognition. A picture of Heaton in his royal regalia, not unlike that of His Brittanick Majesty, is here: Attempts to contact Heaton were not successful. 

Betty Sears, secretary-treasurer of Cumberland County Historical Society, said the Cumberland Ruritan Club proposed a state historic marker commemorating the resolutions, but the Department of Historic Resources turned it down. DHR received the proposal in 2009, according to file notes shared by Jennifer Loux, highway marker program manager. 

“Marker staff advised sponsors that the text as written was a repeat and expansion of a topic already covered by the ‘Clifton’ (marker JE-36) state highway marker produced in 1947, and advised that production of a private marker would be the best alternative.” DHR staff reviewed the text for the private marker and found it to be accurate, according to the file notes.

In fact, the state’s endorsement of the claim, as displayed on the Clifton sign, is lukewarm at best. The original 1947 text said “Apparently this was the first of such declarations publicly approved.” Revised in 2017, it now says Cumberland’s were “among the earliest such instructions approved by a public body in Virginia.”

So who came first, Cumberland or North Carolina? As Heaton pointed out, if you ask who was first to positively declare for independence, rather than merely concur with other bodies, then Cumberland has a strong claim. As the state of a quantum particle depends on how you measure it, the answer to this question of revolutionary primacy depends on how you ask it.

The post Who declared for independence first — North Carolina, or this Virginia county? appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

If Mary Bolling looked across her pasture on the morning of April 25, 1781, she would have seen a ragtag line of militia dug in at the foot of East Hill. Each man furnished his own linen knapsack, his own gun, a bayonet, a belt, a cartridge box, a wooden canteen with strap, a tomahawk and a blanket. They were local militia called up for 90 days to fight the invading British. One volunteer, Daniel Trabue, wrote in a memoir that their nerves were steadied by the large ration of rum doled out to them earlier that morning.  

Approximately 1,000 volunteers faced off against 2,500 British and Hessian regulars.

Looking eastward, Bolling would see that advancing British army slowly moving forward over the muddy ground. In the vanguard were German Jagers resplendent in their green coats trimmed in carmine. Behind them were red-coated English Light Infantry and Scottish Highlanders. Also on the field that day were the Loyalist Queen’s Rangers, also clad in green. 

Leading the British forces was Major General William Phillips. Fate would draw Phillips and Mrs. Bolling together.

Mary Bolling 

Mary Tabb was born in 1737 into a family of wealthy Virginia merchants and land owners in Amelia County, west of Richmond.  In 1758, she married merchant Robert Bolling III, the owner of Bollingbrook plantation in Blandford, just east of Petersburg (Blandford is part of Petersburg today).  

Both Mary Bolling and her husband supported the Patriot cause. When he died in 1775, he left her Bollingbrook, several tobacco warehouses, mills and other property, including enslaved servants. She was 38 at the time and the mother of six children.  

She proved a very able manager and astute investor. The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Bollingbrook in 1782, wrote that “she knows perfectly well how to manage her immense fortune.”

Little is known about Bolling’s day-to-day management of Bollingbrook, but we can gain insight from her neighbor and contemporary, Mary Willing Byrd. Byrd, also a widow, ran the palatial Westover plantation on the James River for 37 years.  

According to Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, professor of history at the University of Toledo, “Byrd made the decisions about what crops were planted on the plantation. She also arranged for their sale to merchants.”

In addition, “Byrd made decisions about clothing, food, and medical care for the enslaved community at Westover,” said Pflugrad-Jackisch in an email.

If Chastellux is any judge of character, it is likely that Bolling managed her property in a similar manner.

Bollingbrook

Bollingbrook stood at the summit of East Hill in today’s Petersburg. Small in comparison to some of the magnificent plantation homes of the time, Bollingbrook consisted of two rectangular, one-story, wood-framed houses aligned side by side facing south. Neither house is still standing.

The east house, built about 1750, where Mary Bolling resided, contained only four rooms: a dining room, drawing room and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was used as a dressing chamber and the other served as a bedroom for Mrs. Bolling and her four daughters. A central hall ran from the front entrance to the back door. It was a cramped arrangement even in the best of times, showing the close quarters in which some Virginia elite lived at the time. 

The west house was slightly smaller, but of a similar layout, with at least one room used for storage. Bolling also owned a tobacco warehouse across the road from her house, and several throughout Petersburg.  

Outbuildings on the property included a school, kitchen, dairy and quarters for enslaved people, whose opinion of the approaching British army would be decidedly different from Bolling’s.  

The loss of human property

Most residents of Petersburg and Blandford fled before the British attack. Bolling decided to stay. Central to Mary Bolling’s decision probably was concern over losing control of her enslaved servants and workers. She couldn’t prevent their leaving, but she might negotiate to get them back. When British forces approached plantations, Blacks self-emancipated and made their way to the British lines, offering their services to soldiers and their families. Captain Johann Ewald, a Hessian officer serving in Phillips’ forces, said that Blacks were so numerous that most soldiers and even their wives traveling with them employed emancipated servants.   

The difference now was that these newly liberated people had agency. Ewald relates the story of a Black man who approached him saying he had important information, and that he would impart it for two guineas. “I quickly opened my purse,” wrote Ewald, “and handed him the money.” The man reported that over 600 enemy riflemen and horsemen were nearby, prompting British troops to mount a quick attack, surprising the Americans and taking 23 prisoners and 43 horses.

Major General William Phillips

Phillips, the son and grandson of soldiers, was born in 1731, and entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich at age 16. Woolwich served as the training academy for artillery and engineering. He served with distinction as an artillery officer in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, fighting in the battles of Warburg and Minden. In 1774, he became a member of Parliament.

He was admired as a very able officer, but he was plagued with a violent temper that often got the better of him.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Phillips served as General John Burgoyne’s second-in-command during the British military campaign into New York, ending with the disastrous British defeat at Saratoga in September and October 1777.

For the next three years, Phillips was out of the fight, first as a prisoner in Massachusetts and later in Virginia. Ultimately, he was paroled to New York where he awaited a prisoner exchange. That exchange finally occurred in late 1780.

Once back with the British army, Phillips was sent to Virginia with a force of about 2,000 men, landing at Portsmouth on March 21, 1781. After meeting with General Benedict Arnold, the ranking British officer in Virginia at the time, they combined their forces under Phillips’ command. One of their objectives was to capture Petersburg.

The troops welcomed the change in leaders. Although Phillips was more of a disciplinarian than Arnold, his men considered him tough and fair. Fond of fine dining and Irish claret, he traveled amply supplied with china plates and bowls, and damask napkins. Every evening he invited 20 officers to dine with him regardless of rank. And he made a point to visit the sick and the wounded, offering them encouragement and sharing food with them.  

The Battle of Blandford

General Phillips landed his forces at City Point (today’s Hopewell) on April 25, 1781, after journeying up the James River from Portsmouth. The day was bright and sunny with patches of snow still visible in shady areas. Dogwoods were just starting to bud.   

His plan was to overwhelm the inexperienced American militia by marching his well-trained troops overland from the James. He also ordered gunboats up the Appomattox River to aid in the assault. 

Petersburg was defended by militia and a few regulars under the command of General von Steuben, who knew his ill-equipped and poorly trained troops were no match for British regulars.   

Von Steuben hoped to hold off  Phillips’ army as long as possible in a delaying action, and then beat an orderly retreat northward. To achieve this, he organized his troops into two lines on the south side of the Appomattox River and withdrew his artillery across the river to the heights overlooking Petersburg. 

The first line of troops, placed near Poor Creek on the outskirts of Blandford near today’s East Street, engaged the enemy then moved back to the second line, dug in on the west bank of Lieutenant’s Run at the foot of the hill on which Bollingbrook stood. That line stretched from the Appomattox river south to the still extant Blandford Church, running along today’s Madison Street, west of I-95.  

The second line held as long as it could, but Phillips moved his artillery to high ground greatly exposing the militia’s position. As planned, the second line retreated across the Appomattox, pulling up the planks of the bridge as they went.

Leaving Mary Bolling to her fate.

Von Steuben’s plan worked admirably, holding up the British for several hours, enough time, as it turned out, to allow troops led by the Marquis de Lafayette to arrive at Richmond, thus keeping the Virginia capital out of British hands.

Today, the battle is reenacted annually on the grounds of Battersea Plantation, a Palladian/Georgian home built in 1768 on the banks of the Appomattox. Reenactors from the 7^th Virginia Regiment of the Continental follow the Patriot battle plan with two lines of militia. 

“We do it in stages,” said Mike Cecere, regiment commander. “The British attack and we move back. It’s a fighting withdrawal.”

Although Battersea didn’t figure in the Battle of Blandford, today it offers one of the few locations in Petersburg unimpeded by modern buildings and traffic. The upcoming reenactment in 2026 marks the 245^th anniversary of the battle, usually held on the third weekend in April.

“There’s an intimacy in the battle performed at Battersea,” said Cecere. “People are close.”  

British headquarters

Bollingbrook’s size and locale atop a hill made it an ideal headquarters for the victorious Phillips. He installed his staff in the west house and himself in the east house, where Bolling lived with her four daughters. The Bolling family was allowed to remain in one of the back bedrooms. Nothing remains of either house, which stood in the vicinity of today’s Petersburg YMCA.

By all indications, the British treated Bolling and her daughters kindly, despite her pro-American sympathies, the courtly Phillips apparently addressing her as Lady Bolling. Yet, she was a prisoner in her own house. Arnold reportedly told her to avoid angering Phillips. Armed sentries guarded the doors of both houses, and by virtue of serving as British army headquarters, Bollingbrook faced the threat of American artillery from the heights north of the Appomattox River. 

From Mary Bolling’s perspective, this arrangement, while not ideal, would allow her to keep an eye on her property. Her presence, though, yielded mixed results: the British confiscated her horses and burned her fencing, and most of her enslaved servants escaped to the shelter of the British army. But she was able to save her warehouses by dumping the tobacco in the streets, allowing the British to burn it there.  

Phillips didn’t stay long initially at Bollingbrook. Once Petersburg was secured, his army marched northward toward Richmond. Bolling must have been relieved to see him go.  

Arriving at Richmond on May 1, Phillips saw that Lafayette’s forces had already secured the Virginia capital. Not wanting to risk his army by attacking the enemy’s well-defended positions, and after venting his infamous rage, he ordered his troops southward down the James River, intending to return to his base at Portsmouth. At this point, he began to complain of feeling ill.  

Phillips returns to Bollingbrook

For the next several days, sailing aboard the schooner Maria on the James River, Phillips felt worse. Around May 6, he received a message from Lord Cornwallis, whose army was engaged in North Carolina, ordering Phillips to return to Petersburg and await the arrival of Cornwallis’ army. Phillips’ forces reversed course, sailing back up the James, and disembarked at Brandon Plantation on the south bank for the 30-mile overland march to Petersburg.  

Mary Bolling found herself once again housing British officers. The now comatose Phillips was placed in the west room of the east house.

Phillips never regained consciousness and died three days later on May 13, likely from typhus. He was buried in the churchyard of Blandford Church in an unmarked grave, where he remains today. In 1914, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker in his honor.

Mary Bolling never remarried and continued managing her estate after the Revolution.    Accounts vary whether she recaptured any of the enslaved people who had sought refuge with the British, although we know that she never freed any of the people she enslaved. She died in 1814.

For more reading:

Raymond Chester, Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.

Suzanne Lebsock, “Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling,”  Dictionary of Virginia Biography.

Manning Voorhis ,“Bollingbrook,” The William and Mary Quarterly, v. 16., No. 4.

Charles Campbell, “Reminiscences of the British at Bollingbrook,” Southern Literary Messenger, Jan. 1840.

Capt. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal.

Robert P. Davis, Where a Man Can Go, Major General William Phillips.

John Graves Simcoe, Simcoe’s Military Journal.

The post How a Petersburg churchyard became the final resting place of a British general appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

If Mary Bolling looked across her pasture on the morning of April 25, 1781, she would have seen a ragtag line of militia dug in at the foot of East Hill. Each man furnished his own linen knapsack, his own gun, a bayonet, a belt, a cartridge box, a wooden canteen with strap, a tomahawk and a blanket. They were local militia called up for 90 days to fight the invading British. One volunteer, Daniel Trabue, wrote in a memoir that their nerves were steadied by the large ration of rum doled out to them earlier that morning.  

Approximately 1,000 volunteers faced off against 2,500 British and Hessian regulars.

Looking eastward, Bolling would see that advancing British army slowly moving forward over the muddy ground. In the vanguard were German Jagers resplendent in their green coats trimmed in carmine. Behind them were red-coated English Light Infantry and Scottish Highlanders. Also on the field that day were the Loyalist Queen’s Rangers, also clad in green. 

Leading the British forces was Major General William Phillips. Fate would draw Phillips and Mrs. Bolling together.

Mary Bolling 

Mary Tabb was born in 1737 into a family of wealthy Virginia merchants and land owners in Amelia County, west of Richmond.  In 1758, she married merchant Robert Bolling III, the owner of Bollingbrook plantation in Blandford, just east of Petersburg (Blandford is part of Petersburg today).  

Both Mary Bolling and her husband supported the Patriot cause. When he died in 1775, he left her Bollingbrook, several tobacco warehouses, mills and other property, including enslaved servants. She was 38 at the time and the mother of six children.  

She proved a very able manager and astute investor. The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Bollingbrook in 1782, wrote that “she knows perfectly well how to manage her immense fortune.”

Little is known about Bolling’s day-to-day management of Bollingbrook, but we can gain insight from her neighbor and contemporary, Mary Willing Byrd. Byrd, also a widow, ran the palatial Westover plantation on the James River for 37 years.  

According to Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, professor of history at the University of Toledo, “Byrd made the decisions about what crops were planted on the plantation. She also arranged for their sale to merchants.”

In addition, “Byrd made decisions about clothing, food, and medical care for the enslaved community at Westover,” said Pflugrad-Jackisch in an email.

If Chastellux is any judge of character, it is likely that Bolling managed her property in a similar manner.

Bollingbrook

Bollingbrook stood at the summit of East Hill in today’s Petersburg. Small in comparison to some of the magnificent plantation homes of the time, Bollingbrook consisted of two rectangular, one-story, wood-framed houses aligned side by side facing south. Neither house is still standing.

The east house, built about 1750, where Mary Bolling resided, contained only four rooms: a dining room, drawing room and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was used as a dressing chamber and the other served as a bedroom for Mrs. Bolling and her four daughters. A central hall ran from the front entrance to the back door. It was a cramped arrangement even in the best of times, showing the close quarters in which some Virginia elite lived at the time. 

The west house was slightly smaller, but of a similar layout, with at least one room used for storage. Bolling also owned a tobacco warehouse across the road from her house, and several throughout Petersburg.  

Outbuildings on the property included a school, kitchen, dairy and quarters for enslaved people, whose opinion of the approaching British army would be decidedly different from Bolling’s.  

The loss of human property

Most residents of Petersburg and Blandford fled before the British attack. Bolling decided to stay. Central to Mary Bolling’s decision probably was concern over losing control of her enslaved servants and workers. She couldn’t prevent their leaving, but she might negotiate to get them back. When British forces approached plantations, Blacks self-emancipated and made their way to the British lines, offering their services to soldiers and their families. Captain Johann Ewald, a Hessian officer serving in Phillips’ forces, said that Blacks were so numerous that most soldiers and even their wives traveling with them employed emancipated servants.   

The difference now was that these newly liberated people had agency. Ewald relates the story of a Black man who approached him saying he had important information, and that he would impart it for two guineas. “I quickly opened my purse,” wrote Ewald, “and handed him the money.” The man reported that over 600 enemy riflemen and horsemen were nearby, prompting British troops to mount a quick attack, surprising the Americans and taking 23 prisoners and 43 horses.

Major General William Phillips

Phillips, the son and grandson of soldiers, was born in 1731, and entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich at age 16. Woolwich served as the training academy for artillery and engineering. He served with distinction as an artillery officer in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, fighting in the battles of Warburg and Minden. In 1774, he became a member of Parliament.

He was admired as a very able officer, but he was plagued with a violent temper that often got the better of him.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Phillips served as General John Burgoyne’s second-in-command during the British military campaign into New York, ending with the disastrous British defeat at Saratoga in September and October 1777.

For the next three years, Phillips was out of the fight, first as a prisoner in Massachusetts and later in Virginia. Ultimately, he was paroled to New York where he awaited a prisoner exchange. That exchange finally occurred in late 1780.

Once back with the British army, Phillips was sent to Virginia with a force of about 2,000 men, landing at Portsmouth on March 21, 1781. After meeting with General Benedict Arnold, the ranking British officer in Virginia at the time, they combined their forces under Phillips’ command. One of their objectives was to capture Petersburg.

The troops welcomed the change in leaders. Although Phillips was more of a disciplinarian than Arnold, his men considered him tough and fair. Fond of fine dining and Irish claret, he traveled amply supplied with china plates and bowls, and damask napkins. Every evening he invited 20 officers to dine with him regardless of rank. And he made a point to visit the sick and the wounded, offering them encouragement and sharing food with them.  

The Battle of Blandford

General Phillips landed his forces at City Point (today’s Hopewell) on April 25, 1781, after journeying up the James River from Portsmouth. The day was bright and sunny with patches of snow still visible in shady areas. Dogwoods were just starting to bud.   

His plan was to overwhelm the inexperienced American militia by marching his well-trained troops overland from the James. He also ordered gunboats up the Appomattox River to aid in the assault. 

Petersburg was defended by militia and a few regulars under the command of General von Steuben, who knew his ill-equipped and poorly trained troops were no match for British regulars.   

Von Steuben hoped to hold off  Phillips’ army as long as possible in a delaying action, and then beat an orderly retreat northward. To achieve this, he organized his troops into two lines on the south side of the Appomattox River and withdrew his artillery across the river to the heights overlooking Petersburg. 

The first line of troops, placed near Poor Creek on the outskirts of Blandford near today’s East Street, engaged the enemy then moved back to the second line, dug in on the west bank of Lieutenant’s Run at the foot of the hill on which Bollingbrook stood. That line stretched from the Appomattox river south to the still extant Blandford Church, running along today’s Madison Street, west of I-95.  

The second line held as long as it could, but Phillips moved his artillery to high ground greatly exposing the militia’s position. As planned, the second line retreated across the Appomattox, pulling up the planks of the bridge as they went.

Leaving Mary Bolling to her fate.

Von Steuben’s plan worked admirably, holding up the British for several hours, enough time, as it turned out, to allow troops led by the Marquis de Lafayette to arrive at Richmond, thus keeping the Virginia capital out of British hands.

Today, the battle is reenacted annually on the grounds of Battersea Plantation, a Palladian/Georgian home built in 1768 on the banks of the Appomattox. Reenactors from the 7^th Virginia Regiment of the Continental follow the Patriot battle plan with two lines of militia. 

“We do it in stages,” said Mike Cecere, regiment commander. “The British attack and we move back. It’s a fighting withdrawal.”

Although Battersea didn’t figure in the Battle of Blandford, today it offers one of the few locations in Petersburg unimpeded by modern buildings and traffic. The upcoming reenactment in 2026 marks the 245^th anniversary of the battle, usually held on the third weekend in April.

“There’s an intimacy in the battle performed at Battersea,” said Cecere. “People are close.”  

British headquarters

Bollingbrook’s size and locale atop a hill made it an ideal headquarters for the victorious Phillips. He installed his staff in the west house and himself in the east house, where Bolling lived with her four daughters. The Bolling family was allowed to remain in one of the back bedrooms. Nothing remains of either house, which stood in the vicinity of today’s Petersburg YMCA.

By all indications, the British treated Bolling and her daughters kindly, despite her pro-American sympathies, the courtly Phillips apparently addressing her as Lady Bolling. Yet, she was a prisoner in her own house. Arnold reportedly told her to avoid angering Phillips. Armed sentries guarded the doors of both houses, and by virtue of serving as British army headquarters, Bollingbrook faced the threat of American artillery from the heights north of the Appomattox River. 

From Mary Bolling’s perspective, this arrangement, while not ideal, would allow her to keep an eye on her property. Her presence, though, yielded mixed results: the British confiscated her horses and burned her fencing, and most of her enslaved servants escaped to the shelter of the British army. But she was able to save her warehouses by dumping the tobacco in the streets, allowing the British to burn it there.  

Phillips didn’t stay long initially at Bollingbrook. Once Petersburg was secured, his army marched northward toward Richmond. Bolling must have been relieved to see him go.  

Arriving at Richmond on May 1, Phillips saw that Lafayette’s forces had already secured the Virginia capital. Not wanting to risk his army by attacking the enemy’s well-defended positions, and after venting his infamous rage, he ordered his troops southward down the James River, intending to return to his base at Portsmouth. At this point, he began to complain of feeling ill.  

Phillips returns to Bollingbrook

For the next several days, sailing aboard the schooner Maria on the James River, Phillips felt worse. Around May 6, he received a message from Lord Cornwallis, whose army was engaged in North Carolina, ordering Phillips to return to Petersburg and await the arrival of Cornwallis’ army. Phillips’ forces reversed course, sailing back up the James, and disembarked at Brandon Plantation on the south bank for the 30-mile overland march to Petersburg.  

Mary Bolling found herself once again housing British officers. The now comatose Phillips was placed in the west room of the east house.

Phillips never regained consciousness and died three days later on May 13, likely from typhus. He was buried in the churchyard of Blandford Church in an unmarked grave, where he remains today. In 1914, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker in his honor.

Mary Bolling never remarried and continued managing her estate after the Revolution.    Accounts vary whether she recaptured any of the enslaved people who had sought refuge with the British, although we know that she never freed any of the people she enslaved. She died in 1814.

For more reading:

Raymond Chester, Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.

Suzanne Lebsock, “Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling,”  Dictionary of Virginia Biography.

Manning Voorhis ,“Bollingbrook,” The William and Mary Quarterly, v. 16., No. 4.

Charles Campbell, “Reminiscences of the British at Bollingbrook,” Southern Literary Messenger, Jan. 1840.

Capt. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal.

Robert P. Davis, Where a Man Can Go, Major General William Phillips.

John Graves Simcoe, Simcoe’s Military Journal.

The post How a Petersburg churchyard became the final resting place of a British general appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

If Mary Bolling looked across her pasture on the morning of April 25, 1781, she would have seen a ragtag line of militia dug in at the foot of East Hill. Each man furnished his own linen knapsack, his own gun, a bayonet, a belt, a cartridge box, a wooden canteen with strap, a tomahawk and a blanket. They were local militia called up for 90 days to fight the invading British. One volunteer, Daniel Trabue, wrote in a memoir that their nerves were steadied by the large ration of rum doled out to them earlier that morning.  

Approximately 1,000 volunteers faced off against 2,500 British and Hessian regulars.

Looking eastward, Bolling would see that advancing British army slowly moving forward over the muddy ground. In the vanguard were German Jagers resplendent in their green coats trimmed in carmine. Behind them were red-coated English Light Infantry and Scottish Highlanders. Also on the field that day were the Loyalist Queen’s Rangers, also clad in green. 

Leading the British forces was Major General William Phillips. Fate would draw Phillips and Mrs. Bolling together.

Mary Bolling 

Mary Tabb was born in 1737 into a family of wealthy Virginia merchants and land owners in Amelia County, west of Richmond.  In 1758, she married merchant Robert Bolling III, the owner of Bollingbrook plantation in Blandford, just east of Petersburg (Blandford is part of Petersburg today).  

Both Mary Bolling and her husband supported the Patriot cause. When he died in 1775, he left her Bollingbrook, several tobacco warehouses, mills and other property, including enslaved servants. She was 38 at the time and the mother of six children.  

She proved a very able manager and astute investor. The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Bollingbrook in 1782, wrote that “she knows perfectly well how to manage her immense fortune.”

Little is known about Bolling’s day-to-day management of Bollingbrook, but we can gain insight from her neighbor and contemporary, Mary Willing Byrd. Byrd, also a widow, ran the palatial Westover plantation on the James River for 37 years.  

According to Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, professor of history at the University of Toledo, “Byrd made the decisions about what crops were planted on the plantation. She also arranged for their sale to merchants.”

In addition, “Byrd made decisions about clothing, food, and medical care for the enslaved community at Westover,” said Pflugrad-Jackisch in an email.

If Chastellux is any judge of character, it is likely that Bolling managed her property in a similar manner.

Bollingbrook

Bollingbrook stood at the summit of East Hill in today’s Petersburg. Small in comparison to some of the magnificent plantation homes of the time, Bollingbrook consisted of two rectangular, one-story, wood-framed houses aligned side by side facing south. Neither house is still standing.

The east house, built about 1750, where Mary Bolling resided, contained only four rooms: a dining room, drawing room and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was used as a dressing chamber and the other served as a bedroom for Mrs. Bolling and her four daughters. A central hall ran from the front entrance to the back door. It was a cramped arrangement even in the best of times, showing the close quarters in which some Virginia elite lived at the time. 

The west house was slightly smaller, but of a similar layout, with at least one room used for storage. Bolling also owned a tobacco warehouse across the road from her house, and several throughout Petersburg.  

Outbuildings on the property included a school, kitchen, dairy and quarters for enslaved people, whose opinion of the approaching British army would be decidedly different from Bolling’s.  

The loss of human property

Most residents of Petersburg and Blandford fled before the British attack. Bolling decided to stay. Central to Mary Bolling’s decision probably was concern over losing control of her enslaved servants and workers. She couldn’t prevent their leaving, but she might negotiate to get them back. When British forces approached plantations, Blacks self-emancipated and made their way to the British lines, offering their services to soldiers and their families. Captain Johann Ewald, a Hessian officer serving in Phillips’ forces, said that Blacks were so numerous that most soldiers and even their wives traveling with them employed emancipated servants.   

The difference now was that these newly liberated people had agency. Ewald relates the story of a Black man who approached him saying he had important information, and that he would impart it for two guineas. “I quickly opened my purse,” wrote Ewald, “and handed him the money.” The man reported that over 600 enemy riflemen and horsemen were nearby, prompting British troops to mount a quick attack, surprising the Americans and taking 23 prisoners and 43 horses.

Major General William Phillips

Phillips, the son and grandson of soldiers, was born in 1731, and entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich at age 16. Woolwich served as the training academy for artillery and engineering. He served with distinction as an artillery officer in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, fighting in the battles of Warburg and Minden. In 1774, he became a member of Parliament.

He was admired as a very able officer, but he was plagued with a violent temper that often got the better of him.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Phillips served as General John Burgoyne’s second-in-command during the British military campaign into New York, ending with the disastrous British defeat at Saratoga in September and October 1777.

For the next three years, Phillips was out of the fight, first as a prisoner in Massachusetts and later in Virginia. Ultimately, he was paroled to New York where he awaited a prisoner exchange. That exchange finally occurred in late 1780.

Once back with the British army, Phillips was sent to Virginia with a force of about 2,000 men, landing at Portsmouth on March 21, 1781. After meeting with General Benedict Arnold, the ranking British officer in Virginia at the time, they combined their forces under Phillips’ command. One of their objectives was to capture Petersburg.

The troops welcomed the change in leaders. Although Phillips was more of a disciplinarian than Arnold, his men considered him tough and fair. Fond of fine dining and Irish claret, he traveled amply supplied with china plates and bowls, and damask napkins. Every evening he invited 20 officers to dine with him regardless of rank. And he made a point to visit the sick and the wounded, offering them encouragement and sharing food with them.  

The Battle of Blandford

General Phillips landed his forces at City Point (today’s Hopewell) on April 25, 1781, after journeying up the James River from Portsmouth. The day was bright and sunny with patches of snow still visible in shady areas. Dogwoods were just starting to bud.   

His plan was to overwhelm the inexperienced American militia by marching his well-trained troops overland from the James. He also ordered gunboats up the Appomattox River to aid in the assault. 

Petersburg was defended by militia and a few regulars under the command of General von Steuben, who knew his ill-equipped and poorly trained troops were no match for British regulars.   

Von Steuben hoped to hold off  Phillips’ army as long as possible in a delaying action, and then beat an orderly retreat northward. To achieve this, he organized his troops into two lines on the south side of the Appomattox River and withdrew his artillery across the river to the heights overlooking Petersburg. 

The first line of troops, placed near Poor Creek on the outskirts of Blandford near today’s East Street, engaged the enemy then moved back to the second line, dug in on the west bank of Lieutenant’s Run at the foot of the hill on which Bollingbrook stood. That line stretched from the Appomattox river south to the still extant Blandford Church, running along today’s Madison Street, west of I-95.  

The second line held as long as it could, but Phillips moved his artillery to high ground greatly exposing the militia’s position. As planned, the second line retreated across the Appomattox, pulling up the planks of the bridge as they went.

Leaving Mary Bolling to her fate.

Von Steuben’s plan worked admirably, holding up the British for several hours, enough time, as it turned out, to allow troops led by the Marquis de Lafayette to arrive at Richmond, thus keeping the Virginia capital out of British hands.

Today, the battle is reenacted annually on the grounds of Battersea Plantation, a Palladian/Georgian home built in 1768 on the banks of the Appomattox. Reenactors from the 7^th Virginia Regiment of the Continental follow the Patriot battle plan with two lines of militia. 

“We do it in stages,” said Mike Cecere, regiment commander. “The British attack and we move back. It’s a fighting withdrawal.”

Although Battersea didn’t figure in the Battle of Blandford, today it offers one of the few locations in Petersburg unimpeded by modern buildings and traffic. The upcoming reenactment in 2026 marks the 245^th anniversary of the battle, usually held on the third weekend in April.

“There’s an intimacy in the battle performed at Battersea,” said Cecere. “People are close.”  

British headquarters

Bollingbrook’s size and locale atop a hill made it an ideal headquarters for the victorious Phillips. He installed his staff in the west house and himself in the east house, where Bolling lived with her four daughters. The Bolling family was allowed to remain in one of the back bedrooms. Nothing remains of either house, which stood in the vicinity of today’s Petersburg YMCA.

By all indications, the British treated Bolling and her daughters kindly, despite her pro-American sympathies, the courtly Phillips apparently addressing her as Lady Bolling. Yet, she was a prisoner in her own house. Arnold reportedly told her to avoid angering Phillips. Armed sentries guarded the doors of both houses, and by virtue of serving as British army headquarters, Bollingbrook faced the threat of American artillery from the heights north of the Appomattox River. 

From Mary Bolling’s perspective, this arrangement, while not ideal, would allow her to keep an eye on her property. Her presence, though, yielded mixed results: the British confiscated her horses and burned her fencing, and most of her enslaved servants escaped to the shelter of the British army. But she was able to save her warehouses by dumping the tobacco in the streets, allowing the British to burn it there.  

Phillips didn’t stay long initially at Bollingbrook. Once Petersburg was secured, his army marched northward toward Richmond. Bolling must have been relieved to see him go.  

Arriving at Richmond on May 1, Phillips saw that Lafayette’s forces had already secured the Virginia capital. Not wanting to risk his army by attacking the enemy’s well-defended positions, and after venting his infamous rage, he ordered his troops southward down the James River, intending to return to his base at Portsmouth. At this point, he began to complain of feeling ill.  

Phillips returns to Bollingbrook

For the next several days, sailing aboard the schooner Maria on the James River, Phillips felt worse. Around May 6, he received a message from Lord Cornwallis, whose army was engaged in North Carolina, ordering Phillips to return to Petersburg and await the arrival of Cornwallis’ army. Phillips’ forces reversed course, sailing back up the James, and disembarked at Brandon Plantation on the south bank for the 30-mile overland march to Petersburg.  

Mary Bolling found herself once again housing British officers. The now comatose Phillips was placed in the west room of the east house.

Phillips never regained consciousness and died three days later on May 13, likely from typhus. He was buried in the churchyard of Blandford Church in an unmarked grave, where he remains today. In 1914, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker in his honor.

Mary Bolling never remarried and continued managing her estate after the Revolution.    Accounts vary whether she recaptured any of the enslaved people who had sought refuge with the British, although we know that she never freed any of the people she enslaved. She died in 1814.

For more reading:

Raymond Chester, Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.

Suzanne Lebsock, “Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling,”  Dictionary of Virginia Biography.

Manning Voorhis ,“Bollingbrook,” The William and Mary Quarterly, v. 16., No. 4.

Charles Campbell, “Reminiscences of the British at Bollingbrook,” Southern Literary Messenger, Jan. 1840.

Capt. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal.

Robert P. Davis, Where a Man Can Go, Major General William Phillips.

John Graves Simcoe, Simcoe’s Military Journal.

The post How a Petersburg churchyard became the final resting place of a British general appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. This project is supported, in part, by a grant from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission. Find all our stories from this project on the Cardinal 250 page. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter:

If Mary Bolling looked across her pasture on the morning of April 25, 1781, she would have seen a ragtag line of militia dug in at the foot of East Hill. Each man furnished his own linen knapsack, his own gun, a bayonet, a belt, a cartridge box, a wooden canteen with strap, a tomahawk and a blanket. They were local militia called up for 90 days to fight the invading British. One volunteer, Daniel Trabue, wrote in a memoir that their nerves were steadied by the large ration of rum doled out to them earlier that morning.  

Approximately 1,000 volunteers faced off against 2,500 British and Hessian regulars.

Looking eastward, Bolling would see that advancing British army slowly moving forward over the muddy ground. In the vanguard were German Jagers resplendent in their green coats trimmed in carmine. Behind them were red-coated English Light Infantry and Scottish Highlanders. Also on the field that day were the Loyalist Queen’s Rangers, also clad in green. 

Leading the British forces was Major General William Phillips. Fate would draw Phillips and Mrs. Bolling together.

Mary Bolling 

Mary Tabb was born in 1737 into a family of wealthy Virginia merchants and land owners in Amelia County, west of Richmond.  In 1758, she married merchant Robert Bolling III, the owner of Bollingbrook plantation in Blandford, just east of Petersburg (Blandford is part of Petersburg today).  

Both Mary Bolling and her husband supported the Patriot cause. When he died in 1775, he left her Bollingbrook, several tobacco warehouses, mills and other property, including enslaved servants. She was 38 at the time and the mother of six children.  

She proved a very able manager and astute investor. The Marquis de Chastellux, who visited Bollingbrook in 1782, wrote that “she knows perfectly well how to manage her immense fortune.”

Little is known about Bolling’s day-to-day management of Bollingbrook, but we can gain insight from her neighbor and contemporary, Mary Willing Byrd. Byrd, also a widow, ran the palatial Westover plantation on the James River for 37 years.  

According to Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch, professor of history at the University of Toledo, “Byrd made the decisions about what crops were planted on the plantation. She also arranged for their sale to merchants.”

In addition, “Byrd made decisions about clothing, food, and medical care for the enslaved community at Westover,” said Pflugrad-Jackisch in an email.

If Chastellux is any judge of character, it is likely that Bolling managed her property in a similar manner.

Bollingbrook

Bollingbrook stood at the summit of East Hill in today’s Petersburg. Small in comparison to some of the magnificent plantation homes of the time, Bollingbrook consisted of two rectangular, one-story, wood-framed houses aligned side by side facing south. Neither house is still standing.

The east house, built about 1750, where Mary Bolling resided, contained only four rooms: a dining room, drawing room and two bedrooms. One of the bedrooms was used as a dressing chamber and the other served as a bedroom for Mrs. Bolling and her four daughters. A central hall ran from the front entrance to the back door. It was a cramped arrangement even in the best of times, showing the close quarters in which some Virginia elite lived at the time. 

The west house was slightly smaller, but of a similar layout, with at least one room used for storage. Bolling also owned a tobacco warehouse across the road from her house, and several throughout Petersburg.  

Outbuildings on the property included a school, kitchen, dairy and quarters for enslaved people, whose opinion of the approaching British army would be decidedly different from Bolling’s.  

The loss of human property

Most residents of Petersburg and Blandford fled before the British attack. Bolling decided to stay. Central to Mary Bolling’s decision probably was concern over losing control of her enslaved servants and workers. She couldn’t prevent their leaving, but she might negotiate to get them back. When British forces approached plantations, Blacks self-emancipated and made their way to the British lines, offering their services to soldiers and their families. Captain Johann Ewald, a Hessian officer serving in Phillips’ forces, said that Blacks were so numerous that most soldiers and even their wives traveling with them employed emancipated servants.   

The difference now was that these newly liberated people had agency. Ewald relates the story of a Black man who approached him saying he had important information, and that he would impart it for two guineas. “I quickly opened my purse,” wrote Ewald, “and handed him the money.” The man reported that over 600 enemy riflemen and horsemen were nearby, prompting British troops to mount a quick attack, surprising the Americans and taking 23 prisoners and 43 horses.

Major General William Phillips

Phillips, the son and grandson of soldiers, was born in 1731, and entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich at age 16. Woolwich served as the training academy for artillery and engineering. He served with distinction as an artillery officer in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, fighting in the battles of Warburg and Minden. In 1774, he became a member of Parliament.

He was admired as a very able officer, but he was plagued with a violent temper that often got the better of him.

At the beginning of the American Revolution, Phillips served as General John Burgoyne’s second-in-command during the British military campaign into New York, ending with the disastrous British defeat at Saratoga in September and October 1777.

For the next three years, Phillips was out of the fight, first as a prisoner in Massachusetts and later in Virginia. Ultimately, he was paroled to New York where he awaited a prisoner exchange. That exchange finally occurred in late 1780.

Once back with the British army, Phillips was sent to Virginia with a force of about 2,000 men, landing at Portsmouth on March 21, 1781. After meeting with General Benedict Arnold, the ranking British officer in Virginia at the time, they combined their forces under Phillips’ command. One of their objectives was to capture Petersburg.

The troops welcomed the change in leaders. Although Phillips was more of a disciplinarian than Arnold, his men considered him tough and fair. Fond of fine dining and Irish claret, he traveled amply supplied with china plates and bowls, and damask napkins. Every evening he invited 20 officers to dine with him regardless of rank. And he made a point to visit the sick and the wounded, offering them encouragement and sharing food with them.  

The Battle of Blandford

General Phillips landed his forces at City Point (today’s Hopewell) on April 25, 1781, after journeying up the James River from Portsmouth. The day was bright and sunny with patches of snow still visible in shady areas. Dogwoods were just starting to bud.   

His plan was to overwhelm the inexperienced American militia by marching his well-trained troops overland from the James. He also ordered gunboats up the Appomattox River to aid in the assault. 

Petersburg was defended by militia and a few regulars under the command of General von Steuben, who knew his ill-equipped and poorly trained troops were no match for British regulars.   

Von Steuben hoped to hold off  Phillips’ army as long as possible in a delaying action, and then beat an orderly retreat northward. To achieve this, he organized his troops into two lines on the south side of the Appomattox River and withdrew his artillery across the river to the heights overlooking Petersburg. 

The first line of troops, placed near Poor Creek on the outskirts of Blandford near today’s East Street, engaged the enemy then moved back to the second line, dug in on the west bank of Lieutenant’s Run at the foot of the hill on which Bollingbrook stood. That line stretched from the Appomattox river south to the still extant Blandford Church, running along today’s Madison Street, west of I-95.  

The second line held as long as it could, but Phillips moved his artillery to high ground greatly exposing the militia’s position. As planned, the second line retreated across the Appomattox, pulling up the planks of the bridge as they went.

Leaving Mary Bolling to her fate.

Von Steuben’s plan worked admirably, holding up the British for several hours, enough time, as it turned out, to allow troops led by the Marquis de Lafayette to arrive at Richmond, thus keeping the Virginia capital out of British hands.

Today, the battle is reenacted annually on the grounds of Battersea Plantation, a Palladian/Georgian home built in 1768 on the banks of the Appomattox. Reenactors from the 7^th Virginia Regiment of the Continental follow the Patriot battle plan with two lines of militia. 

“We do it in stages,” said Mike Cecere, regiment commander. “The British attack and we move back. It’s a fighting withdrawal.”

Although Battersea didn’t figure in the Battle of Blandford, today it offers one of the few locations in Petersburg unimpeded by modern buildings and traffic. The upcoming reenactment in 2026 marks the 245^th anniversary of the battle, usually held on the third weekend in April.

“There’s an intimacy in the battle performed at Battersea,” said Cecere. “People are close.”  

British headquarters

Bollingbrook’s size and locale atop a hill made it an ideal headquarters for the victorious Phillips. He installed his staff in the west house and himself in the east house, where Bolling lived with her four daughters. The Bolling family was allowed to remain in one of the back bedrooms. Nothing remains of either house, which stood in the vicinity of today’s Petersburg YMCA.

By all indications, the British treated Bolling and her daughters kindly, despite her pro-American sympathies, the courtly Phillips apparently addressing her as Lady Bolling. Yet, she was a prisoner in her own house. Arnold reportedly told her to avoid angering Phillips. Armed sentries guarded the doors of both houses, and by virtue of serving as British army headquarters, Bollingbrook faced the threat of American artillery from the heights north of the Appomattox River. 

From Mary Bolling’s perspective, this arrangement, while not ideal, would allow her to keep an eye on her property. Her presence, though, yielded mixed results: the British confiscated her horses and burned her fencing, and most of her enslaved servants escaped to the shelter of the British army. But she was able to save her warehouses by dumping the tobacco in the streets, allowing the British to burn it there.  

Phillips didn’t stay long initially at Bollingbrook. Once Petersburg was secured, his army marched northward toward Richmond. Bolling must have been relieved to see him go.  

Arriving at Richmond on May 1, Phillips saw that Lafayette’s forces had already secured the Virginia capital. Not wanting to risk his army by attacking the enemy’s well-defended positions, and after venting his infamous rage, he ordered his troops southward down the James River, intending to return to his base at Portsmouth. At this point, he began to complain of feeling ill.  

Phillips returns to Bollingbrook

For the next several days, sailing aboard the schooner Maria on the James River, Phillips felt worse. Around May 6, he received a message from Lord Cornwallis, whose army was engaged in North Carolina, ordering Phillips to return to Petersburg and await the arrival of Cornwallis’ army. Phillips’ forces reversed course, sailing back up the James, and disembarked at Brandon Plantation on the south bank for the 30-mile overland march to Petersburg.  

Mary Bolling found herself once again housing British officers. The now comatose Phillips was placed in the west room of the east house.

Phillips never regained consciousness and died three days later on May 13, likely from typhus. He was buried in the churchyard of Blandford Church in an unmarked grave, where he remains today. In 1914, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a marker in his honor.

Mary Bolling never remarried and continued managing her estate after the Revolution.    Accounts vary whether she recaptured any of the enslaved people who had sought refuge with the British, although we know that she never freed any of the people she enslaved. She died in 1814.

For more reading:

Raymond Chester, Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue.

Suzanne Lebsock, “Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling,”  Dictionary of Virginia Biography.

Manning Voorhis ,“Bollingbrook,” The William and Mary Quarterly, v. 16., No. 4.

Charles Campbell, “Reminiscences of the British at Bollingbrook,” Southern Literary Messenger, Jan. 1840.

Capt. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal.

Robert P. Davis, Where a Man Can Go, Major General William Phillips.

John Graves Simcoe, Simcoe’s Military Journal.

The post How a Petersburg churchyard became the final resting place of a British general appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I’m writing monthly columns about the politics of the era, written the same way I’d write them today. The events described here took place in April 1776. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter here:

The people of Cumberland County have now said what many others have been thinking: That perhaps a king across the ocean should not be our king, at all.

There is a word for this: Treason.

That, of course, is only if the endeavor fails.

Otherwise, the word truly is independence. (Or, as some these days prefer, “independency.”)

For those just catching up with the news, the Cumberland County Committee for Safety has adopted a resolution directing its delegate to the Virginia Convention “positively to declare for  an independency.” With that vote, Cumberland County appears to have become the first governing body to stake its claim to a complete break with Great Britain. Charlotte County followed suit the next day.

North Carolina, as it often does, will dispute Virginia’s claim to primacy. Its Provincial Congress, meeting earlier this month, passed its “Halifax Resolves” that encouraged North Carolina’s three delegates to the Continental Congress to work with others to pursue independence.

North Carolina deserves credit for saying that much, but that resolution was still hedged. Cumberland County hedged nothing. 

Where North Carolina merely voted that its delegates should be “empowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency,” Cumberland County directed its delegate to take action. This is the difference between leadership and followership, but let’s not quibble with our neighbors. The important thing is that popular sentiment seems to be moving in the same direction — that our differences with London are now so great that they cannot be resolved, that only a total and irrevocable break is the solution. 

Not everyone has arrived at that conclusion and perhaps not all will, but more are starting to do so, as the Cumberland and Charlotte committees have just shown.

In truth, we have been moving to this point for some time now. It’s been a full year since British regulars fired on the local militia in Massachusetts, setting off a series of events that led to our own George Washington being named as commander-in-chief of the Continental forces. Over the course of the past year, royal governors — including our own in Virginia — have been forced to flee and Colonies have set about governing themselves. We have literally had independence since the day that Lord Dunmore fled Williamsburg. The question now is do we dare say so? And where would that lead?

Throughout this fight, we have considered our enemy to be the British Parliament and all we have done is to insist upon our rights as Englishmen, as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights. We have emphatically sworn allegiance to King George III and looked to him to uphold our rights, yet he has repeatedly ignored our pleas and sided with Parliament. Perhaps we are now starting to realize that the king is not going to uphold our rights, after all, that perhaps the problem is not a mere disagreement with Parliament but the entirety of our relationship with Great Britain.

Years of political disputes have brought us to this point, but what has pushed many people over the edge has not been some new tax or an act of war but simply words on a page — the 47-page pamphlet known as “Common Sense” that has become the talk of taverns throughout the Colonies.

The author, Thomas Paine, is a former English tax collector who recently arrived in Philadelphia — so sick from the voyage that he had to be carried off the ship by Benjamin Franklin’s personal physician. Paine recovered quickly, it seems, and then made a quick mark on his new country as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a publication known for its sharp political commentary. 

“Common Sense” was published separately, and anonymously, in January, but it was no secret that the publisher was Paine. The signatory, “An Englishman,” left no mystery among those who follow the written word. When Paine was formally identified as the author in March, he claimed the pamphlet sold more than 120,000 copies in its first three months. That seems implausible because there may not be that many people in North America who can read, but regardless of the precise number, the circulation is undoubtedly high — and the impact enormous.

In “Common Sense,” Paine makes the case for independence and does so in clear language that it can be easily understood even by those who cannot read: His work is often read aloud for those who do not know their letters. 

Paine argues passionately against the monarchy: “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

He calls for an elected government, with an executive chosen more or less by lottery: A drawing would be held to pick a colony and that colony would put forth an executive to govern for a time until the next lottery. At that point, the colony that supplied the president would be dropped from the colony so that, over time, each would have a turn. To protect the interests of political minorities, a three-fifths vote would be required to pass a law or elect a president.

This is truly revolutionary thinking, but it has fired imaginations from New Hampshire to Georgia. Where it has fired imaginations in Cumberland County, we cannot say, but something has. A year ago, Virginia had a royal governor in residence. Today, we don’t, and all hint of royal authority has evaporated like a morning mist. Are we already independent?

The post Dispatch from 1776: Are we already independent? Some counties want Virginia to formally declare a split. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I’m writing monthly columns about the politics of the era, written the same way I’d write them today. The events described here took place in April 1776. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter here:

The people of Cumberland County have now said what many others have been thinking: That perhaps a king across the ocean should not be our king, at all.

There is a word for this: Treason.

That, of course, is only if the endeavor fails.

Otherwise, the word truly is independence. (Or, as some these days prefer, “independency.”)

For those just catching up with the news, the Cumberland County Committee for Safety has adopted a resolution directing its delegate to the Virginia Convention “positively to declare for  an independency.” With that vote, Cumberland County appears to have become the first governing body to stake its claim to a complete break with Great Britain. Charlotte County followed suit the next day.

North Carolina, as it often does, will dispute Virginia’s claim to primacy. Its Provincial Congress, meeting earlier this month, passed its “Halifax Resolves” that encouraged North Carolina’s three delegates to the Continental Congress to work with others to pursue independence.

North Carolina deserves credit for saying that much, but that resolution was still hedged. Cumberland County hedged nothing. 

Where North Carolina merely voted that its delegates should be “empowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency,” Cumberland County directed its delegate to take action. This is the difference between leadership and followership, but let’s not quibble with our neighbors. The important thing is that popular sentiment seems to be moving in the same direction — that our differences with London are now so great that they cannot be resolved, that only a total and irrevocable break is the solution. 

Not everyone has arrived at that conclusion and perhaps not all will, but more are starting to do so, as the Cumberland and Charlotte committees have just shown.

In truth, we have been moving to this point for some time now. It’s been a full year since British regulars fired on the local militia in Massachusetts, setting off a series of events that led to our own George Washington being named as commander-in-chief of the Continental forces. Over the course of the past year, royal governors — including our own in Virginia — have been forced to flee and Colonies have set about governing themselves. We have literally had independence since the day that Lord Dunmore fled Williamsburg. The question now is do we dare say so? And where would that lead?

Throughout this fight, we have considered our enemy to be the British Parliament and all we have done is to insist upon our rights as Englishmen, as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights. We have emphatically sworn allegiance to King George III and looked to him to uphold our rights, yet he has repeatedly ignored our pleas and sided with Parliament. Perhaps we are now starting to realize that the king is not going to uphold our rights, after all, that perhaps the problem is not a mere disagreement with Parliament but the entirety of our relationship with Great Britain.

Years of political disputes have brought us to this point, but what has pushed many people over the edge has not been some new tax or an act of war but simply words on a page — the 47-page pamphlet known as “Common Sense” that has become the talk of taverns throughout the Colonies.

The author, Thomas Paine, is a former English tax collector who recently arrived in Philadelphia — so sick from the voyage that he had to be carried off the ship by Benjamin Franklin’s personal physician. Paine recovered quickly, it seems, and then made a quick mark on his new country as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a publication known for its sharp political commentary. 

“Common Sense” was published separately, and anonymously, in January, but it was no secret that the publisher was Paine. The signatory, “An Englishman,” left no mystery among those who follow the written word. When Paine was formally identified as the author in March, he claimed the pamphlet sold more than 120,000 copies in its first three months. That seems implausible because there may not be that many people in North America who can read, but regardless of the precise number, the circulation is undoubtedly high — and the impact enormous.

In “Common Sense,” Paine makes the case for independence and does so in clear language that it can be easily understood even by those who cannot read: His work is often read aloud for those who do not know their letters. 

Paine argues passionately against the monarchy: “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

He calls for an elected government, with an executive chosen more or less by lottery: A drawing would be held to pick a colony and that colony would put forth an executive to govern for a time until the next lottery. At that point, the colony that supplied the president would be dropped from the colony so that, over time, each would have a turn. To protect the interests of political minorities, a three-fifths vote would be required to pass a law or elect a president.

This is truly revolutionary thinking, but it has fired imaginations from New Hampshire to Georgia. Where it has fired imaginations in Cumberland County, we cannot say, but something has. A year ago, Virginia had a royal governor in residence. Today, we don’t, and all hint of royal authority has evaporated like a morning mist. Are we already independent?

The post Dispatch from 1776: Are we already independent? Some counties want Virginia to formally declare a split. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I’m writing monthly columns about the politics of the era, written the same way I’d write them today. The events described here took place in April 1776. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter here:

The people of Cumberland County have now said what many others have been thinking: That perhaps a king across the ocean should not be our king, at all.

There is a word for this: Treason.

That, of course, is only if the endeavor fails.

Otherwise, the word truly is independence. (Or, as some these days prefer, “independency.”)

For those just catching up with the news, the Cumberland County Committee for Safety has adopted a resolution directing its delegate to the Virginia Convention “positively to declare for  an independency.” With that vote, Cumberland County appears to have become the first governing body to stake its claim to a complete break with Great Britain. Charlotte County followed suit the next day.

North Carolina, as it often does, will dispute Virginia’s claim to primacy. Its Provincial Congress, meeting earlier this month, passed its “Halifax Resolves” that encouraged North Carolina’s three delegates to the Continental Congress to work with others to pursue independence.

North Carolina deserves credit for saying that much, but that resolution was still hedged. Cumberland County hedged nothing. 

Where North Carolina merely voted that its delegates should be “empowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency,” Cumberland County directed its delegate to take action. This is the difference between leadership and followership, but let’s not quibble with our neighbors. The important thing is that popular sentiment seems to be moving in the same direction — that our differences with London are now so great that they cannot be resolved, that only a total and irrevocable break is the solution. 

Not everyone has arrived at that conclusion and perhaps not all will, but more are starting to do so, as the Cumberland and Charlotte committees have just shown.

In truth, we have been moving to this point for some time now. It’s been a full year since British regulars fired on the local militia in Massachusetts, setting off a series of events that led to our own George Washington being named as commander-in-chief of the Continental forces. Over the course of the past year, royal governors — including our own in Virginia — have been forced to flee and Colonies have set about governing themselves. We have literally had independence since the day that Lord Dunmore fled Williamsburg. The question now is do we dare say so? And where would that lead?

Throughout this fight, we have considered our enemy to be the British Parliament and all we have done is to insist upon our rights as Englishmen, as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights. We have emphatically sworn allegiance to King George III and looked to him to uphold our rights, yet he has repeatedly ignored our pleas and sided with Parliament. Perhaps we are now starting to realize that the king is not going to uphold our rights, after all, that perhaps the problem is not a mere disagreement with Parliament but the entirety of our relationship with Great Britain.

Years of political disputes have brought us to this point, but what has pushed many people over the edge has not been some new tax or an act of war but simply words on a page — the 47-page pamphlet known as “Common Sense” that has become the talk of taverns throughout the Colonies.

The author, Thomas Paine, is a former English tax collector who recently arrived in Philadelphia — so sick from the voyage that he had to be carried off the ship by Benjamin Franklin’s personal physician. Paine recovered quickly, it seems, and then made a quick mark on his new country as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a publication known for its sharp political commentary. 

“Common Sense” was published separately, and anonymously, in January, but it was no secret that the publisher was Paine. The signatory, “An Englishman,” left no mystery among those who follow the written word. When Paine was formally identified as the author in March, he claimed the pamphlet sold more than 120,000 copies in its first three months. That seems implausible because there may not be that many people in North America who can read, but regardless of the precise number, the circulation is undoubtedly high — and the impact enormous.

In “Common Sense,” Paine makes the case for independence and does so in clear language that it can be easily understood even by those who cannot read: His work is often read aloud for those who do not know their letters. 

Paine argues passionately against the monarchy: “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

He calls for an elected government, with an executive chosen more or less by lottery: A drawing would be held to pick a colony and that colony would put forth an executive to govern for a time until the next lottery. At that point, the colony that supplied the president would be dropped from the colony so that, over time, each would have a turn. To protect the interests of political minorities, a three-fifths vote would be required to pass a law or elect a president.

This is truly revolutionary thinking, but it has fired imaginations from New Hampshire to Georgia. Where it has fired imaginations in Cumberland County, we cannot say, but something has. A year ago, Virginia had a royal governor in residence. Today, we don’t, and all hint of royal authority has evaporated like a morning mist. Are we already independent?

The post Dispatch from 1776: Are we already independent? Some counties want Virginia to formally declare a split. appeared first on Cardinal News.

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I’m writing monthly columns about the politics of the era, written the same way I’d write them today. The events described here took place in April 1776. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter here:

The people of Cumberland County have now said what many others have been thinking: That perhaps a king across the ocean should not be our king, at all.

There is a word for this: Treason.

That, of course, is only if the endeavor fails.

Otherwise, the word truly is independence. (Or, as some these days prefer, “independency.”)

For those just catching up with the news, the Cumberland County Committee for Safety has adopted a resolution directing its delegate to the Virginia Convention “positively to declare for  an independency.” With that vote, Cumberland County appears to have become the first governing body to stake its claim to a complete break with Great Britain. Charlotte County followed suit the next day.

North Carolina, as it often does, will dispute Virginia’s claim to primacy. Its Provincial Congress, meeting earlier this month, passed its “Halifax Resolves” that encouraged North Carolina’s three delegates to the Continental Congress to work with others to pursue independence.

North Carolina deserves credit for saying that much, but that resolution was still hedged. Cumberland County hedged nothing. 

Where North Carolina merely voted that its delegates should be “empowered to concur with the other delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency,” Cumberland County directed its delegate to take action. This is the difference between leadership and followership, but let’s not quibble with our neighbors. The important thing is that popular sentiment seems to be moving in the same direction — that our differences with London are now so great that they cannot be resolved, that only a total and irrevocable break is the solution. 

Not everyone has arrived at that conclusion and perhaps not all will, but more are starting to do so, as the Cumberland and Charlotte committees have just shown.

In truth, we have been moving to this point for some time now. It’s been a full year since British regulars fired on the local militia in Massachusetts, setting off a series of events that led to our own George Washington being named as commander-in-chief of the Continental forces. Over the course of the past year, royal governors — including our own in Virginia — have been forced to flee and Colonies have set about governing themselves. We have literally had independence since the day that Lord Dunmore fled Williamsburg. The question now is do we dare say so? And where would that lead?

Throughout this fight, we have considered our enemy to be the British Parliament and all we have done is to insist upon our rights as Englishmen, as guaranteed in the English Bill of Rights. We have emphatically sworn allegiance to King George III and looked to him to uphold our rights, yet he has repeatedly ignored our pleas and sided with Parliament. Perhaps we are now starting to realize that the king is not going to uphold our rights, after all, that perhaps the problem is not a mere disagreement with Parliament but the entirety of our relationship with Great Britain.

Years of political disputes have brought us to this point, but what has pushed many people over the edge has not been some new tax or an act of war but simply words on a page — the 47-page pamphlet known as “Common Sense” that has become the talk of taverns throughout the Colonies.

The author, Thomas Paine, is a former English tax collector who recently arrived in Philadelphia — so sick from the voyage that he had to be carried off the ship by Benjamin Franklin’s personal physician. Paine recovered quickly, it seems, and then made a quick mark on his new country as editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a publication known for its sharp political commentary. 

“Common Sense” was published separately, and anonymously, in January, but it was no secret that the publisher was Paine. The signatory, “An Englishman,” left no mystery among those who follow the written word. When Paine was formally identified as the author in March, he claimed the pamphlet sold more than 120,000 copies in its first three months. That seems implausible because there may not be that many people in North America who can read, but regardless of the precise number, the circulation is undoubtedly high — and the impact enormous.

In “Common Sense,” Paine makes the case for independence and does so in clear language that it can be easily understood even by those who cannot read: His work is often read aloud for those who do not know their letters. 

Paine argues passionately against the monarchy: “In England a king hath little more to do than to make war and give away places; which in plain terms, is to impoverish the nation and set it together by the ears. A pretty business indeed for a man to be allowed eight hundred thousand sterling a year for, and worshipped into the bargain! Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”

He calls for an elected government, with an executive chosen more or less by lottery: A drawing would be held to pick a colony and that colony would put forth an executive to govern for a time until the next lottery. At that point, the colony that supplied the president would be dropped from the colony so that, over time, each would have a turn. To protect the interests of political minorities, a three-fifths vote would be required to pass a law or elect a president.

This is truly revolutionary thinking, but it has fired imaginations from New Hampshire to Georgia. Where it has fired imaginations in Cumberland County, we cannot say, but something has. A year ago, Virginia had a royal governor in residence. Today, we don’t, and all hint of royal authority has evaporated like a morning mist. Are we already independent?

The post Dispatch from 1776: Are we already independent? Some counties want Virginia to formally declare a split. appeared first on Cardinal News.

Montgomery County is turning 250, and its story stretches far beyond today’s borders. In this episode of the Cardinal News 250 Podcast, host Dutchie Jessee sits down with Montgomery Museum Executive Director Sherry Wyatt to explore how a vast frontier county formed in 1776 became the New River Valley community we know today.

From early settlers traveling the Great Wagon Road to Christiansburg’s role in westward expansion, they trace the people, industries and turning points that shaped the region. They also discuss how the Montgomery Museum of Art and History is bringing that history to life through exhibits, events and new investments in accessibility.

Or here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G05nUmJenNg

Find all the Cardinal podcasts here.

The post Podcast: 250 years of Montgomery County appeared first on Cardinal News.

This year marks the 250th anniversary of American independence. For the past few years, we’ve been telling little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the nation’s independence through our Cardinal 250 series. Now we’re about to expand that project. Before I tell you how, let’s play a little game.

Our new project is:

a) a series of Cardinal 250 trivia nights at breweries around Southwest and Southside
b) turning some of our stories into a graphic novel aimed at Virginia’s fourth graders
c) all of the above.

If you guess “c,” you’re right. Of course, you might have had an inkling since all that was in the headline.

You may have already seen some of the promotions for our upcoming 250 trivia nights, which kick off April 27 at 2 Witches Brewery in Danville and wrap up May 20 at 7 Dogs Brewpub in Wytheville. (Full schedule in the box). The winners from each event will then advance to a regional tournament May 30 at Buffalo Mountain Brewery in Floyd. Participation is free. Limit five people per team. The grand prize is a $550 gift certificate to Mountain Lake Lodge.

The questions will be drawn from the stories we’ve already published as part of our Cardinal 250 series, so now’s a good time to start brushing up. 

Meanwhile, we’ve received a grant from Acton Family Giving and the Hearthland Foundation to turn some of our stories into a graphic novel. We’re aiming at Virginia fourth graders because that’s when students first get introduced to Virginia history. We are working with educators from the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission to ensure this book aligns with Virginia’s Standards of Learning.

For now, we envision a digital product that would be available free for download; although, with additional grant support, this could turn into a printed book. 

We’re looking for graphic artists to take part. Our formal proposal is in the PDF below, but the short version is that we envision working with multiple artists, each one doing one or more chapters. If you know someone who is a graphic novelist, please let them know about this project. If you are a graphic novelist, we’d love to see your resume and portfolio at jobs@cardinalnews.org. Questions? You can ask me at dwayne@cardinalnews.org. Deadline for applications: May 15.

If you’re a fourth-grade teacher, we’d also love to hear from you. Later this summer, we plan to pull together a focus group of teachers and a focus group of fourth graders.

Our aim is to select artists by May 31, with final artwork due Aug. 15. (The PDF below gets into other deadlines and details.)

In the meantime, we still have more 250 stories to tell, because independence was not the end of the American Revolution. We’ll have lots of 250th anniversaries coming up in the years ahead, all the way to the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown in 2031.

You can find all our stories on our Cardinal 250 page, and if you haven’t already, sign up for our monthly Cardinal 250 newsletter here:

The post Cardinal is launching 250-themed trivia nights, searching for graphic novelists appeared first on Cardinal News.

Tens of millions of dollars have flowed into Virginia’s pro- and anti-redistricting campaigns from organizations across the country in short order ahead of the April 21 referendum. 

Most of that money on either side has come from 501(c)(4) organizations — tax-exempt nonprofits that are not required by the IRS to report their donors, named for the code section that governs their tax status. That legal loophole has allowed the organizations to effectively shield the origin of the money that passes through them to a campaign’s coffers. Organizations with a 501(c)(4) designation are known as primary vehicles for “dark money” in political campaigns.

Campaigns on both sides of the redistricting referendum have taken tens of millions of dollars in untraceable contributions from dark-money organizations. The “yes” side received $53 million and counting including from multiple 501(c)(4) organizations to the Virginians for Fair Elections referendum committee between February and April. The “no” side received $22 million to its Virginians for Fair Maps referendum committee and $7 million to Justice for Democracy PAC, an anti-redistricting group, including from 501(c)(4) organizations, according to campaign finance reports collected by the State Board of Elections. 

“Both campaigns are funding their referendum committees the exact same way,” said Mike Young, president of Virginians for Fair Maps, in a statement through the group’s spokesperson. “The Orwellian named Virginians for Fair Elections has taken millions more in dark money (to include from Hakeem Jeffries and George Soros). Virginians for Fair Maps has taken hundreds of contributions directly from Virginians who are sick and tired of the perverse, self-promoting political games being played in Richmond.”

Finlay Lee, spokesperson for the Fair Maps group, did not respond when asked to provide proof that the organization had received “hundreds of contributions directly from Virginians.” The bulk of the haul taken in by Fair Maps was contributed by a tax-exempt organization of the same name, effectively shielding those donors from the public. The Virginia Public Access Project released data Monday evening that showed hundreds of smaller cash contributions from individuals to the organization, but it was unclear if those donations came from Virginians.

“What the ‘No’ campaign won’t tell you is that their effort is being bankrolled by Trump billionaire Peter Thiel and MAGA allies,” said Dan Gottlieb, spokesperson for Virginians for Fair Elections. 

Tens of millions of dollars had been raised in just the past few weeks, including $7 million from Thiel’s network alone, Gottlieb said, “to fund misleading ads aimed at deceiving Virginians.”

“This is a deliberate MAGA operation built on deception, scare tactics, and distortion because they know voters will reject their agenda if they hear the truth. The pattern is clear: MAGA money and MAGA lies designed to warp a fair vote,” he added. 

The money trail

By name-checking Thiel, Gottlieb is invoking another actor in the tangled web of dark money and anonymous donors in the prelude to the midterm elections in Virginia: a new political action committee called Justice for Democracy. That PAC was at the center of controversy in March after it sent campaign mailers statewide that critics said misused imagery from the Civil Rights Movement and the Jim Crow era. Per Aspera Policy Incorporated, a 501(c)(4), contributed $7 million through three transactions to Justice for Democracy at the end of March and early April. 

Thiel used the 501(c)(4) in 2022 to contribute $200,000 to now-Vice President JD Vance’s U.S. Senate campaign, though it’s unclear whether Thiel was the source of the $7 million to Justice for Democracy. Per Aspera Policy Incorporated ended 2024 with $1.3 million in net assets, according to documents collected by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer tool. Chris Marston, the group’s paid tax preparer, declined to comment on where the $7 million contributed to Justice for Democracy between March and April came from. When asked who could comment on the money, he replied, “No one.”

Former Republican Del. A.C. Cordoza, chairman of Justice for Democracy, also declined to comment and said that the PAC’s treasurer, Christopher Woodfin, would be best suited to answer money-related questions. Woodfin did not respond to a request for comment. 

The referendum committee for the “no” campaign, Virginians for Fair Maps, received about $21.5 million in cash across six separate contributions in March and April from a 501(c)(4) with the same name. A search of the organization in the IRS tax-exempt search tool rendered no results. A representative from Election CFO LLC, which handles bookkeeping for the referendum committee, declined to comment. 

The Virginians for Fair Maps referendum committee and Virginians for Fair Maps 501(c)(4) are likely two separate legal entities with the same name, with one passing money to the other, said Brendan Glavin, director of insights with OpenSecrets, a Washington-based research group that tracks money in U.S. politics. 

“If that is the case, they probably would have formed it very recently,” Glavin said of the Virginians for Fair Maps 501(c)(4). “There can be a lot of lag on the IRS site to actually see a new filing.”

More than $53 million in cash contributions have flowed into the main referendum committee for the “yes” side of the campaign: Virginians for Fair Elections. 

Of that, $32.8 million cash was given by the House Majority Forward 501(c)(4) over six contributions between February and April. 

House Majority Forward is a Washington-based advocacy arm of the House Majority PAC, a super PAC associated with the U.S. House Democratic leadership. Super PACs are independent, expenditure-only committees that may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates, according to OpenSecrets. 

House Majority Forward is a major financial supporter of U.S. congressional Democrats, according to InfluenceWatch. InfluenceWatch is a project of the Capital Research Center that examines nonprofit organizations involved in politics and policymaking. House Majority Forward ended 2024 with $16.1 million in net assets, according to the organization’s 990 tax form. Efforts to reach representatives of House Majority Forward for this story were unsuccessful. 

Another $11 million was contributed to Virginians for Fair Elections by The Fairness Project over four contributions between February and March. The Fairness Project is a Washington-based, labor union-backed 501(c)(4) that finances and supports state ballot initiative campaigns to promote left-of-center policies, according to InfluenceWatch. The Fairness Project ended 2024 with $4.1 million in net assets, according to the organization’s 990 form. Efforts to reach The Fairness Project were also unsuccessful. 

What are ‘dark money’ groups?

“Political actors have discovered they can use this legal entity in order to get involved in politics and influence elections,” Glavin said. “Anyone can give as much as they want to one of these organizations and with essentially a guarantee that their identity won’t be disclosed.”

Those anonymous contributions are often referred to as “dark money.” Dark money groups are organizations that are active in politics but do not have to disclose their donors to any source, and 501(c)(4) organizations are the biggest example of those groups. 

Referred to as “social welfare” organizations, 501(c)(4)s are nonprofit entities that are registered with the IRS and are required to file tax form 990 annually. Other types of 501(c)(4) organizations exist that are not political in nature, such as homeowners’ associations and volunteer fire departments. Unlike 501(c)(3) nonprofits, donations to 501(c)(4) groups are not tax-deductible. 

“There is no form that they need to file that discloses their donors, so when they’re giving contributions to campaigns or ballot measure committees, there’s no way to trace that money back to the individuals that it originated with,” said Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel with the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on ethics and legality in political campaigns. 

The primary purpose of 501(c)(4) organizations is not supposed to be to influence elections. The groups are required to keep their election spending below 50% of their total spending, but the IRS does not appear to have a mechanism to enforce that regulation, Ports said. 

Contributions to ballot measure committees, such as those involved with the redistricting referendum, are not considered election-related activity. Instead, contributions to ballot measure committees are seen more as lobbying by the IRS. That means the floodgates are wide open into Virginia’s redistricting referendum committees. 

“The IRS thinks about ballot measures as akin to a legislative action — it’s like the people are acting as a legislators, so you’re trying to convince the people to take a certain position on legislation, aka the ballot question in front of them, then money put to that purpose is lobbying, not election influencing,” Ports said. “These groups can spend a lot of money on ballot measures.”

Virginia does not have campaign contribution limits, Glavin said, which makes it easy for big-money interests to drop large sums into an election or referendum in short order through a 501(c)(4) or super PAC, to buy TV or digital ads for an instantaneous effect. 

The redistricting referendum is taking place on a truncated election cycle, with just months for campaigns to drum up support for or opposition to the measure before April 21. That short time frame created the ideal environment for the infusion of dark money into the campaigns on both sides of the issue, to pay for advertising and events aimed at getting out the vote. And the issue at the heart of the referendum has drawn national attention. 

“The issue presented with this ballot measure in Virginia is a bit unique because of its national implications,” Ports said. “It will have, people think, an impact on the control of Congress following the 2026 midterms so I think there is a much broader donor base than there often is for ballot measure issues because people who care about federal politics from all across the country are paying attention to this.”

How to shine a light on ‘dark money’

“Campaign finance laws exist to curb corruption and provide transparency,” Ports said. “When there’s dark money pouring into elections, voters don’t know who’s behind it and therefore they don’t have the transparency that the law is promising them.”

Glavin echoed Ports. 

“Dark money influencing these votes is problematic,” he said. “It’s hard for people to make good decisions about how they want to vote when they don’t know who is trying to influence them and what their motivations are.”

Bills have repeatedly been introduced and failed each time in Congress to tackle dark money. 

The federal Disclose Act would create a requirement to trace back the source of dark money contributions to the original donor and disclose that publicly. That bill has been introduced every congressional session going back many years without success, Ports said. It was reintroduced in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in early March. 

Some states have introduced or passed similar measures, including Arizona, where a ballot measure was passed with 70% of voter support to require dark money groups to disclose their donors. 

“We see those across the country,” Ports said. “It’s a great tool to get transparency where there currently is none and this would do a lot of work to solve the dark money problem if there was a bill like that in Virginia.”

The post ‘Dark money’ is fueling both sides of Virginia’s redistricting campaign appeared first on Cardinal News.

By the time you read this, the “yes” side will have likely raised more than $50 million to persuade Virginians to vote in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment to allow a rare mid-decade redrawing of congressional lines.

The “no” side lags far behind, at about half that. We’ll know more once a new round of campaign finance reports become available today.

To put this in context, that $50 million or so is more than all but one of the statewide candidates spent in last fall’s election; only Abigail Spanberger raised more (just a little north of $70 million). It’s more than three times as much as Jay Jones raised in his successful campaign for attorney general and 5.5 times more than what Ghazala Hashmi raised in her successful campaign for lieutenant governor.

Another difference is that we know exactly where all that campaign money last fall came from. Much of these funds come in the form of “dark money,” where it’s hard to trace the source to know who’s digging into their pockets to influence our votes. For more on that, see today’s story by Cardinal’s Richmond-based reporter, Elizabeth Beyer. 

Instead, I’ll tackle a different angle: What if, instead of trying to change Virginia’s congressional map, the “yes” side simply spent its money on campaigns in the existing districts? This skips over a lot of technicalities involving federal campaign finance laws, so it’s mostly a thought experiment. However, here’s one likely answer: New polling suggests that Democrats could win three seats and possibly four without having to resort to redistricting. This is significant because the proposed map is intended to knock out four of the state’s five Republican House members. These latest figures suggest Democrats might be able to achieve the same result the old-fashioned way: by winning elections in the current districts.

This math comes from G. Elliot Morris, one of the nation’s premier crunchers of political numbers. He’s the author of “Strength in Numbers” and now runs the Strength in Numbers newsletter, which is fascinating. If you really want to know how he arrived at these figures, you can see the full explanation on his site, but be warned, here’s a taste: “We use Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification (MRP) to estimate Trump’s approval rating for small geographic areas and demographic subgroups. MRP is a statistical technique that combines survey responses with Census data to produce reliable estimates even for small populations. The model is a Bayesian multilevel logistic regression programmed in Stan, where approval is coded as 1 (approve) or 0 (disapprove). ‘Don’t Know’ respondents are excluded from the analysis.” 

For those of us who still count using our fingers (and sometimes toes), here’s what to know: Morris used this math to estimate President Donald Trump’s approval rating in every congressional district in the country. The keyword there is “estimate.” He started with a national poll, and then sorted the numbers based on the demographics of each district, on the theory that if people of a certain demographic profile nationally feel a certain way, they probably feel the same way at the congressional district level, too. Example: If older rural white voters like Trump, then he probably has high approval ratings in Virginia’s 9th District, which has a lot of older rural white voters. Indeed, this math projects that in the 9th District in Southwest Virginia (now represented by Republican Morgan Griffith), Trump’s approval rating is about 54.0%.

Polling nationally shows that Trump’s approval ratings are down, and 54% approval in the 9th seems soft for Trump (or any Republican president), but it’s still on the plus side of the equation. 

Where things get more interesting is with the other four congressional districts now represented by Republicans. Morris’ math shows that Trump is under 50% in 134 Republican-held House seats across the country. This includes all four districts in Virginia where Democrats are trying to squeeze out the Republican incumbents through redistricting. Moreover, in all four, Trump’s disapproval rate is higher than his approval rate. That’s a warning sign for Republican incumbents because if voters in a Republican-voting district are unhappy with Trump, they may transfer that unhappiness to the nearest Republican on the ballot this fall. You can bet that all the Democratic candidates will spend a lot of time running against Trump, while the Republican incumbents will be focusing on something else, anything else. 

If voters approve redistricting on April 21, none of this really matters since the purpose of the new map is to produce a 10-1 Democratic outcome rather than the current 6-5 Democratic majority. However, for our calculations today, let’s assume the “no” side prevails, and we stick with the current congressional lines. If that happens, what’s the political lay of the land?

Morris’ math shows Trump in bad shape in all six Democratic districts (no surprise there). In the 8th District, represented by Don Beyer of Alexandria, Trump’s approval rating is projected at just 20.8%, which means his disapproval rate is 79.1%. (Morris’ math doesn’t allow for undecideds; it’s an either/or proposition). There are very few districts nationally where Trump fares worse, although Trump scoring poorly in Northern Virginia shouldn’t surprise anyone. The most competitive district in Virginia now held by a Democrat is the 7th District, represented by Eugene Vindman of Prince William County. This math shows Trump’s approval rating there at 36.2%.

Now let’s look at the Republican districts. We’ve already seen that Trump is likely doing well in Southwest Virginia. In the other districts, not so much:

The 2nd District on the south side of Hampton Roads has long been a swing district. Republican incumbent Jen Kiggans faces a tough reelection battle no matter who the Democratic nominee is, although it’s likely to be former Rep. Elaine Luria. Here’s the figure that should worry Kiggans: Trump’s approval rating in the 2nd is projected at 37.3%. To win, she’ll have to separate herself from Trump to make the case that she’s done a good job, even if voters think Trump hasn’t. The Democratic nominee will no doubt tie Kiggans to Trump at every opportunity. That’s how politics works.

The 1st District in eastern Virginia is now held by Republican Rob Wittman, but Democrats have officially targeted it as potentially winnable, likely with Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor. Here’s why: Trump’s approval rating in the 1st is 39.5%, according to Morris’ math.

The 5th District in Southside Virginia (along with Charlottesville and Albemarle) is a tougher district for Democrats. I’ve gone through the math in the past that makes it hard for me to believe a Democrat could dislodge Republican incumbent John McGuire. However, Morris’ math shows that Trump’s approval rating in the 5th is just 41.8%, with a disapproval rate at 58.2%, which certainly creates an opening for a strong Democratic candidate — potentially former U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, who has experience in running and winning (and also losing) in rural parts of Southside. Even before Morris’ numbers, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had listed the 5th as a target district; this math suggests they’re on target. 

Then there’s the 6th District. As currently constructed, it’s the second-most Republican district in the state (behind only the 9th) and is represented by Ben Cline. Morris’ math shows Trump at 48.3% approval, 51.7% disapproval. That’s close enough to fall within the margin of error, and also close enough that even if the numbers are accurate, they could easily change, and also close enough that a popular incumbent could overcome a president being “under water,” as the polls say. Still, this raises the prospect of whether Democrats could pull an upset in the 6th if they nominated a strong and well-funded candidate — of which they have one in the form of Roanoke author Beth Macy. The difficulty for Macy is that if redistricting passes, she’d be paired in a district with Perriello. It would be a district more favorable to Democrats, but the only public polling so far shows Perriello with a commanding lead, which makes sense given his name ID. The irony is that if Roanoke Democrats vote “yes” on redistricting, they’re essentially voting to doom their hometown candidate to an early exit. If they vote “no,” she’d almost certainly win the nomination in a district that would be a long shot but which this data shows might be within reach in the event of a blue wave of historic proportions.

A case can be made — using these numbers — that Democrats don’t need redistricting because they might be able to win four seats anyway. Or, at worst, they could win three, which means redistricting isn’t about picking up four seats, it’s really just about picking up one. Of course, from a Democratic point of view, there are still reasons to back redistricting: It would send a signal nationally and make Democratic wins more certain, and more permanent. These numbers, even if solid now, might not be so solid come November, and voters’ moods may swing back to a more favorable Republican view in the years ahead. In other words, Democrats may not really win all these seats, and some they do might flip back Republican in 2028. That’s why a “yes” vote gives Democrats more certainty that they can lock out Republicans until the 2032 elections, when we’d get a new map after the next census.

Let’s go back to the original question: What if Democrats took the $50 million they’re spending on redistricting and used it for these congressional races? Let’s skip the 9th District — Democrats statewide concede that one, even if the local Democratic candidates don’t. That means for our figuring purposes, we could divide $50 million four ways — that’s $12.5 million for each candidate. 

Two years ago, the Virginia House candidate with the most money was Vindman, who spent $17.9 million to win the 7th District. He was by far the outlier; the second most-funded candidate was Kiggans, with $6.4 million. Most candidates, though, were in the $2 million-or-less range.

In the 1st District, Wittman spent just over $2 million while his Democratic opponent came in at $722,445.

In the 5th, McGuire spent $1.8 million while his Democratic opponent had $353,529.

In the 6th, Cline spent less than $1 million — $969,485 — while his Democratic opponent spent $188,758.

We’ll get updated campaign finance numbers later this week, but Macy has already said she’s raised $1.1 million, which would be more than Cline spent in his whole campaign two years ago. Perriello is at $1.4 million, which is almost at McGuire’s campaign-long total last time. 

Give each of these candidates $12.5 million, and it would dwarf what any of their predecessors had to spend. Money doesn’t always produce desired election outcomes, but it sure helps. Democrats could have funded these candidates in eye-popping ways. Instead, they’re choosing to spend that money on redrawing the maps. The Morris math raises the question of whether they’re spending all that money unnecessarily when they might be able to win these seats anyway. 

Want more politics and analysis?

I talk about redistricting in our latest Cardinal News podcast; find it here or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’ll give a final update on the early voting trends (and whatever other political news happens) in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up here:

• The Daily All of our latest stories, plus public notices, obituaries and opinion pieces. Sent every morning at 5 a.m.
• The Roundup A roundup of our most popular stories each week, plus word puzzles and obituaries. Sent Saturdays at 7 a.m.
• Cardinal Weather In-depth weather forecasts and updates, plus analysis on our region by Kevin Myatt. Sent Wednesdays.
• West of the Capital A weekly round-up of politics, with a focus on our region. Sent Fridays.
• Your Weekend Plan your weekend ahead of time with our go-to guide for celebrations, festivities and other events happening in our region, sent every Thursday at noon.
• Cardinal 250 Dive into history with exclusive stories uncovering Virginia’s role in America’s path to independence. Sent monthly.
• Cardinal News NRV A weekly roundup of all the latest news stories from the New River Valley. Delivered Mondays at noon.

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The post New poll data suggests Democrats might be able to win four Republican-held congressional seats in Virginia without redistricting appeared first on Cardinal News.

The former owner of the online news organization The Roanoke Rambler said Monday that he feels “shocked, betrayed, angry and deeply saddened” by the termination of the Rambler’s three-person news staff less than two weeks after the publication was sold.

Henri Gendreau, a former reporter for The Roanoke Times who founded the Rambler in 2021, said in a statement that he sold the Rambler to entrepreneur Ollie Howie on March 30. Gendreau moved to New York earlier this year.

The Rambler’s journalists — managing editor Todd Jackson and reporters Jeff Sturgeon and Sinclair Holian — said in a joint statement Monday that after the sale, they were offered new contracts “which cut base pay and proposed other changes.”

The three chose not to sign the contracts, and on April 10, they “were informed their employment with The Rambler was terminated,” according to the statement.

“The former staff is deeply saddened to be unable to continue the mission of bringing high-quality investigative journalism to the community. Thank you readers, donors and advertisers for your support over the years,” the three said in the statement, which was provided by Sturgeon.

Gendreau said that last fall, he began working with a Roanoke-based broker from Transworld Business Advisors to find a buyer for the Rambler who would carry on its journalistic mission. 

Gendreau said that before the sale closed, he felt assured that the staff would be retained at the same compensation and that the Rambler’s mission of providing local investigative journalism would continue.

“I shed blood, sweat and tears to try to leave The Roanoke Rambler in good hands; this is not at all what I anticipated,” he said in his statement.

Howie could not be reached for comment on Monday.

In an April 6 announcement about the sale, Howie said the acquisition was about “preserving a trusted community voice, strengthening local journalism, and ensuring residents stay informed and engaged.”

The sale price was not disclosed.

“I have always admired The Roanoke Rambler and the work they do to uncover stories for the Roanoke Valley. We hope this mission continues,” Howie said in the announcement.

Since the April 6 announcement, it appears the Rambler has not posted any new content except for an April 8 listing of local events.

The news talk radio station WFIR reported Monday that Howie remains scheduled to go on the air Wednesday morning to discuss his plans for the Rambler.

Howie, 30, is a graduate of William Fleming High School and earned a bachelor’s in economics from Harvard University, according to the announcement.

He is the founder and managing partner of Mount Auburn Venture Partners, which invests in startups and established companies, according to the firm’s website.

Howie serves on Roanoke’s economic development authority and was reappointed to a four-year term in October.

Gendreau, Jackson and Sturgeon previously worked as reporters for The Roanoke Times. Sturgeon joined the Rambler as an ad sales manager and reporter in 2024, while Jackson came on board as editor in 2025.

Holian joined the staff last year as part of Report for America, a national program that helps place journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues; her focus was on the impacts of segregation in Roanoke.

Kim Kleman, executive director of Report for America, said in a statement that the organization “continues to champion local news in Roanoke” and is “making every effort to support our corps members in the area.”

The publication, which is free to read, has more than 11,000 subscribers, according to its website. It has regularly featured work from freelance journalists in addition to its regular staff.

Through its website, weekly email newsletter and social media channels, the Rambler has provided poetry and fiction alongside its local news reporting. The publication’s tagline is: “Local. Investigative. Literary.”

Its recent news coverage includes stories on the Roanoke City Council races, staff turnover at City Hall and the potential water usage of a data center proposed for Botetourt County. The data center story led to Gendreau suing the Western Virginia Water Authority after it refused to provide certain records.

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The coming Microporous facility at the Berry Hill megasite in Pittsylvania County will now invest more money into the project and pay workers a higher salary, but the minimum number of jobs will be fewer than initially promised. 

At its Monday meeting, the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facilities Authority unanimously approved a change in the performance metrics for the Microporous development. 

In 2024, Microporous announced that it would become the first tenant at the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, which is the largest industrial park in the state at 3,528 acres.

The company, a Tennessee-based lithium-ion battery separator manufacturer, initially promised $1.3 billion in investment and a minimum of 2,015 new jobs with a yearly average wage in the mid-$50,000 range.

Instead, Microporous will now invest $1.6 billion and create a minimum of about 1,700 jobs. These jobs will have a higher wage than initially expected, at about $61,000 yearly. 

“Their goal is still that 2,015 [jobs] that was announced, but their minimum commitment that they’re looking at is 1,732,” Matt Rowe, economic development director for Pittsylvania County, said at the RIFA meeting. 

The employment figure decreased because Microporous is now planning to use more automated equipment, Rowe said.

“The equipment is actually being able to run faster, which means more output, and that’s what has caused the increase in investment because they are utilizing newer, more advanced equipment,” Rowe said. “That decreases man-hours, but it also results in a pretty substantial wage increase.”

The newly approved performance metrics will be the new benchmarks that Microporous needs to meet to receive incentives, Rowe said in an interview. And because the investment, jobs and wages figures have changed, so will the incentive amounts. 

Microporous will still receive $1,000 for every job created, but with minimum employment lowered, that amount will be about $238,000 less. 

“Because there’s less job creation, the jobs creation grant will decrease,” Rowe said. “And then on the flipside, we were giving them a 12-year 70% tax rebate. By them investing more, the amount that they’ll receive will increase, and the amount that we receive will also increase.”

Michael Guanzon, the attorney for the RIFA board, said he received a request from Microporous to modify the performance agreement about a week ago and has been “working frantically” since. 

The RIFA meeting agenda was updated “sometime after midnight,” said the board’s chairman, Vic Ingram, at the meeting. 

Microporous plans to close on financing by the end of this week. Through that process, “they told us that they had a better handle” on what their performance metrics would be, Guanzon said. 

Rowe said that local economic development staff believes that the increase in investment and pay offsets the decrease in employment. The new metrics are “honestly, probably a better deal,” for Danville and Pittsylvania County, he said. 

“You’re looking at an increase of almost $300 million and a decrease of less than 300 jobs,” he said.

Local officials have said they expect the plant to open in early 2028.

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