The Prince William Board of County Supervisors rejected a proposal to delay zoning approvals for development projects in the “lame duck” period between Election Day and the end of the year. The resolution, brought by Supervisor Jeanine Lawson (R-Brentsville), failed on a party-line vote, with all five Democrats on the board voting against it and their three Republican colleagues in support.

Lawson argued that a moratorium would respect the will of Prince William voters. She noted that the county and neighboring ones — including Fairfax — have routinely paused development project approvals during the period after Election Day.

“It’s simply a record of what I believe is good governance for the Board of County Supervisors,” she said, enumerating previous instances in 2015 and 2019 when she’d proposed similar measures.

The vote was the latest battle over the Prince William Digital Gateway, a controversial project that could put as much as 27.6 million square feet of data center space on 2,100 acres of rural land near Manassas National Battlefield Park. Community members on both sides of the issue packed the board meeting room and offered hours of public comment.

Opponents of the Digital Gateway and a number of other proposed data center projects had supported the resolution, in hopes that a pause in approvals would punt those decisions to a potentially more skeptical board in 2024.

Critics of the measure said they were concerned the moratorium would slow down other development projects. Supervisor Andrea Bailey (D-Potomac) offered a list of mostly retail and housing proposals in her district that could be affected.

“It’s very important that the projects that are ensued already keep going,” she said.

None of the other supervisors who came down against the resolution commented further on their votes at the meeting, but in a statement to the Prince William Times earlier in the week, Chair Ann Wheeler said a pause was out of step with the precedent established by the previous two transition periods between boards, and called out Lawson’s proposal as being driven by “political expediency.”

It certainly had a political context. Lawson proposed the resolution in the immediate wake of the county’s June primary election results, which included an unexpected defeat for Wheeler, a strong proponent of data centers. Wheeler, who led the push for the Prince William Digital Gateway rezoning, lost the Democratic nomination to Deshundra Jefferson, a political strategist who advocated for a more measured approach to data center projects and a supporter of higher taxes on the industry. Lawson won the Republican nomination for the chair position.

Regardless of the outcome in the general election in November, the leadership of the next board is expected to be less friendly to data center interests. Both Lawson and Jefferson have said they oppose the current Digital Gateway plan.

Jefferson herself was one of the nearly 100 county residents who spoke during the public comment period on Tuesday afternoon. She advocated for the board to abstain only from decisions related to the location of data centers near homes, schools, and parkland.

“This is a narrower request than what many of you feel is covered by the moratorium,” she said. “It’s also one that will allow for a new board to chart a different direction.”

Supervisor Bob Weir (R-Gainesville), who won a February special election on a platform of keeping data centers out of the county’s rural areas, was in the minority that supported the measure. He pushed back on the suggestion that a development moratorium in November and December would even affect the Digital Gateway project, which he said he believed would not be ready for final decisions from the planning commission and the supervisors for months.

“Here’s the problem: it ain’t ready,” he said, noting the required days to advertise before public hearings and extended deadlines for stakeholders, including Manassas Battlefield National Park, to provide input. “This thing isn’t coming before the Planning Commission and the board until well into next year.”

Weir said several of the other controversial data center projects, including one that would be built adjacent to Prince William Forest Park, could come before the board this year.

Given the heightened public awareness of the issue in the county now, Weir believes the supervisors’ decision to reject the lame-duck moratorium could have political consequences.

“I would suggest that several of the board members are probably skating on thin ice and probably need to be a little more attentive to the concerns of their constituents,” he said in an interview prior to the vote. “And if, say, they vote against the moratorium, that could potentially be the last straw.”

That was the theme of comments from a significant number of people who spoke during the public comment period Tuesday, many of them activists who’ve been mobilizing against the Digital Gateway project.

“The results of the June primary election spoke volumes of the dissatisfaction of voters,” said Maureen Storey, representing the Heritage Hunt Homeowners Association, a neighborhood close to the Digital Gateway site. “Voters will be vigilant in watching your votes leading up to the November election.”

Several residents suggested that the Board’s Democratic majority — which flipped control of the previously Republican-led body in 2019 — could be endangered by their broad support for data centers.

“Democrat equals data center,” said Gainesville resident Rachel Ellis. “Are you going to continue to ignore the will of the people you were elected to represent?”

One speaker argued that disagreements on the Democratic platform between Jefferson and other supervisors could only serve to weaken the party, particularly since Republican candidates under Lawson are unified in their stance on data centers.

Two of the Republicans challenging incumbent Democrats on the board spoke at the meeting in favor of Lawson’s resolution. Verndell Robinson, a real estate agent, is running against Supervisor Andrea Bailey (D-Potomac), and Jeannie LaCroix, another real estate agent, is running against Supervisor Margaret Franklin (D-Woodbridge).

Several speakers, including Gainesville resident Elena Schlossberg, called attention to the noise and electrical infrastructure of already-existing data centers. Schlossberg brought a video shot from near several data centers in the county, highlighting the sprawl of the complexes and the noise near them.

“Don’t become dead to this, don’t become immune to this impact,” Schlossberg said in the video. “That is the vision that citizens are rejecting for this county.”

Schlossberg is the founder of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, a citizens group that has been opposing rapid data center development, particularly in the rural western areas of the county, for nearly a decade. Schlossberg and other Coalition members helped get out the vote for the Jefferson campaign during the primary.

Critics of the Digital Gateway and other data center projects express a wide variety of concerns over the impact data centers could have on drinking water in the Occoquan watershed, nearby residents’ quality of life, county infrastructure capacity, and the electrical grid. (Data centers require ten to fifty times the amount of energy of a typical office building, and often require new electrical infrastructure.)

But supporters say data centers bring in much-needed commercial revenue to the county. Data center proponents point to the boost data centers can give to local and state coffers, and the host of construction and other specialty businesses that spring up to build and service them. Amazon alone says it’s invested $52 billion in data centers in Virginia, with $35 billion more on the way — investments that the company calculates led to it paying about $334 million in taxes to Virginia jurisdictions in 2022. In Prince William County, data centers are expected to produce more than $100 million in revenue this year. (Data center critics note that revenue and job creation estimates for the massive complexes can vary widely depending on the project, and have urged further study.)

Several of the public commenters who spoke in opposition to Lawson’s resolution praised the Digital Gateway project for “finding a way to further diversify Prince William County’s tax base,” as Scott Deibler, a Gainesville resident put it.

“Approve the Prince William Digital Gateway, not a moratorium on doing your job,” he said, noting he would not personally benefit from having his property purchased by data center companies. “All land-use cases need a vote, up or down, in a timely manner.”

Many who spoke in opposition to the pause were homeowners who’ve signed on to agreements to sell their homes to data center companies planning to develop the Digital Gateway — and whose future in their homes has been in limbo as the approval of the project drags on.

Lelia Bartruff, a homeowner on Pageland Lane, where the Digital Gateway project could go, said her family has been living in uncertainty.

“Every time something breaks or needs to be replaced [in our house], we’re stuck trying to figure out if we should do a temporary fix or if we need to do the right but expensive fix,” she said. “We’ve put a lot of our dreams and hopes and our family goals on hold, waiting for a decision on this project.”

“Either way, yes or no, we just need an answer so that we can move forward with our lives,” Bartruff said.

Several opponents of the pause pushed back on the idea that data centers were as potent a political force in the primary election as some argued.

“I think most people who are elected officials understand that people vote for a great many reasons,” said resident Thomas Persing.

Others used their time to note that Lawson had previously taken land-use votes during lame-duck sessions, and supported previous data center projects (Lawson pointed out that she has supported similar resolutions in the past, but when they failed she still participated in land-use votes).

“She only wants this now because it suits her political ambitions,” said resident Ali Imam.

If anything, the uproar over the resolution is an indicator that the turmoil over data centers in Prince William County will continue to be a force in county politics, with both sides highly energized to use the November elections to press their advantage.