This year’s Virginia General Assembly session showed that lawmakers are still interested in doing business with the data center industry, McGuireWoods partner Greg Riegle told Law360 in a Feb. 28, 2025, story.
Law360 reported that state lawmakers proposed many bills to increase regulations on the data center industry, but only a fraction of them passed during the 2025 General Assembly session. Most of the bills that survived were watered down before passage, the story noted.
Riegle, an adviser to data center companies, told Law360 that industry players see the outcome of the legislative session as “constructive, or even positive, in relative terms.” Some localities already have regulations that let them consider data center applicants case-by-case, and some of the requirements in the new legislation are ones many localities already ask of the industry, he said.
“I think we got a certain affirmation that the Commonwealth continues to want to do business with the industry,” Riegle said. “I think it goes to the fact that the industry got an effective and accurate message out in terms of what they contribute to the economies and to the prosperity of the Commonwealth as a whole and its individual localities.”