Tommy N. Turner
Independent researcher and writer. Institutional governance, public policy.
Research on how local governments, utilities and universities make decisions, mostly in Virginia, built from public records: budgets, permits, minutes, filings and the forms agencies use. Most of it concerns the data center boom and the power, water and money behind it. Every report below is deposited on Zenodo with a permanent DOI.
New here? Start with What Virginia Is Spending, What Virginia Is Getting, the statewide reference, or the Data Centers page, which groups that work by topic. Op-eds and essays follow the reports.
Virginia data center series — statewide and analytical volumes
- What Virginia Is Spending, What Virginia Is Getting: The Commonwealth Data Center Reference
What Virginia Is Spending, What Virginia Is Getting (v5.2) is the comprehensive statewide reference on data center development in Virginia and the anchor volume for a series of county case studies.
The anchor reference for the county case-study series. - Governing the Demand Shock: Local Institutional Variation in Virginia's Data Center Boom (Report)
Virginia hosts the largest concentration of data centers in the world, and between roughly 2018 and 2026 the industry moved out of its Northern Virginia core into more than two dozen counties and independent cities.
The compact report. The book edition carries the full narrative. - Governing the Demand Shock: Data Centers, Local Power, and the Distribution of Cost in Virginia
On a Tuesday night in late May 2026, the Hanover County board voted four to three to turn away a 900-megawatt data center, walking away from the largest taxable investment ever offered it, and on water.
Book edition of the report, written for a general reader. - Who Showed Up: A Census of the Organizations Around Data Center Siting in Virginia, 2014 to 2026
Of 49 refusals, withdrawals, pauses and tightened rules tested, the census can place a named organisation, dated, before the decision in 14; in 27 it can place no one. Of 129 entries on the opposition, reform and litigation side, 30 state a founding date, so the record supports no growth curve. Thirteen of 58 localities market themselves to data centers on their own economic development pages, and nine of those are places whose boards refused, paused or tightened.
A census of every organised body found engaging data center siting in Virginia, on every side, December 2014 to 26 September 2026. Records presence and dates and does not assert cause. Register deposited separately (22998217); saved source pages held in a restricted record (22996886), released on request. Any organisation named may report an error in its row. - Below the Curve: What Virginia Counties Chose Not to Measure
Of the 75 adopted local noise instruments in this volume's census, 67 carry no tonal provision and 65 no low-frequency provision, so most cannot register the low, steady hum people living beside data centers describe. The volume follows the choices about the measuring instrument that produced that gap, made in public, at stated prices, for stated reasons, in Loudoun, Prince William and Chesapeake.
Supplement to the Commonwealth Data Center Reference (20679292). The county noise ordinance census workbook and a source companion are deposited in the same record. References the Loudoun (22374193), Prince William (20673498) and Pittsylvania (22968398) case studies and Governing the Demand Shock (20692386). - Thirteen Cooperatives: Virginia's Distribution Cooperatives and the Arrival of Load Larger Than the System
Thirteen electric distribution cooperatives serve Virginia — the figure most often cited is eleven. Data-center load is arriving on several of them. This reference walks identity and jurisdiction, wholesale supply (nine of thirteen through Old Dominion Electric Cooperative), the seven-case affiliate sequence in which one cooperative was twice refused authority to serve hyperscale load through an unregulated affiliate, and the four large-load rate schedule cases side by side against the investor-owned regime that preceded them.
Reference companion to the Commonwealth Data Center Reference (20679292). Also addresses Va. Code § 56-234 D (2025 Acts of Assembly, chapters 499 and 598), which reframes the affiliate question. References the Mecklenburg (20673484), Botetourt (20673512), Culpeper (20673529), Google–CFS (20679935), and Governing the Demand Shock (20692386) volumes. - Built for Someone Else: Generation, Load, and the Exception in Virginia
Virginia's generation-siting statute reaches two of the four routes now serving data centers, applies its full test to one, and does not reach the other two at all. Built on 108 primary documents, each hashed. Evidence snapshot 24 August 2026.
Companion volume to the Commonwealth Data Center Reference (concept 20679292). Source manifest deposited separately as concept 22099427. - Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Burden: Who Carries Virginia's Data Center Transmission, and What the Cost-Allocation Record Does Not Trace
Virginia's data centers consume roughly a quarter of the Commonwealth's electricity, and PJM attributes a ten-gigawatt increase in forecast Dominion-zone load by 2029 primarily to them.
Volume I in the Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Burden series — Virginia transmission cost allocation. Companion Zenodo dataset: 21959988 (utilities transmission-siting geographic data). - What the Record Does Not Say: Interstate gas supply for Virginia generation, and a question no forum wrote down
FERC certificates interstate gas capacity on a precedent agreement, declines to weigh what the gas is for, and treats a shipper's decision to subscribe as beyond the scope of its review — a matter for state regulators. Virginia's SCC approved a 944-megawatt gas plant without writing down what the fuel costs or what capacity factor was assumed. The question no forum wrote down.
Working paper. Companion to Built for Someone Else (22096613); supporting eleven-docket dataset deposited as 22757119. - When the Operator Builds the Plant: The Google–CFS Power Purchase Agreement and What It Means for Virginia's Energy Market
Documents the June 30, 2025 Google–CFS power purchase agreement and Eni's September 22, 2025 offtake for the 400-megawatt ARC fusion plant in Chesterfield County — the Fall Line Fusion Power Station. Not a technology profile; examines the commercial instruments themselves and the equity stakes both buyers hold in the developer.
- No Field to Land In: How Three States' Water Withdrawal Forms Make Utility-Supplied Data Centers Illegible
A data center that buys treated water from a public utility is, in Virginia and Tennessee by express clause and in Georgia by definition, not a person who withdraws water. Reads the reporting forms each state prescribes, field by field, and asks where on them a delivery to such a facility would be recorded. There is no field built to take it.
Cross-state water-reporting analysis (VA, TN, GA). Documents the record void created by the utility-supplied-exemption plus form-field absence combination. Companion to the Virginia and Georgia water volumes. - A Line Drawn on a Highway: Virginia's Groundwater Boundary, the Rivers Beyond It, and the Data Center Load the Regime Does Not Reach
Virginia regulates groundwater by asking three categorical questions and never asking how much. Data centers answer all three in the way that exempts them. 89.9% of Virginia's 286 inventoried data-center facilities sit outside every declared groundwater management area, and the boundary is Interstate 95.
Companion volume to the Commonwealth Data Center Reference (concept 20679292); extends the coastal-aquifer thread from Two Systems (21816008) to the full groundwater and surface-water regime. - Where the Instrument Stops: Virginia's Groundwater Ceiling, Its Grandfathered Rivers, and the Load Outside Both
DEQ said it in the SJ 25 study: the strip of Coastal Plain sediment west of Interstate 95 "is disregarded, and I-95 is treated as the approximate western edge of the VCP aquifer system." Virginia drew its regulatory boundary at the same road and regulates as though it were real.
Executive brief synthesizing three deposited water volumes (21556435, 21816008, 22105181). Carries four findings that none of the three volumes makes alone. - Two Systems, One Drought: Virginia's Groundwater Ceiling, Its Rivers, and the Water the Energy Buildout Actually Uses
Virginia's coastal aquifer is capacity-bound; its river system is drought-stressed. The Commonwealth is solving a problem in one by adding to the other, and the data-center buildout is arriving before that trade has been priced.
- The Aquifer Says No: DEQ's SJ 25 Groundwater Study and the Data Center Question East of I-95
In July 2026 the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality published its study of the groundwater supply east of Interstate 95, ordered by the 2024 General Assembly under Senate Joint Resolution No.
- Membership grew faster than employment: A sixteen-year panel of inside electrical construction in hyperscale data center metros, 2010 to 2025
Rebuilds and extends the eight-year panel of Where the Electricians Went into a sixteen-year panel opening in 2010. Inside-electrical-construction union membership in hyperscale data center metros grew faster than employment across the same period. Reports the widened window and the effect on the central estimate's significance.
Research note, version 1.0. Own concept DOI; supersedes findings of 22310705's earlier v1.0 (which remains citable). Companion measurement paper is 22861996; shared replication dataset is 22862472. - Counting a trade in one metropolitan area: union membership for inside electrical construction from federal filings, 2010 to 2025
Union density is published for metropolitan areas and, within them, for private construction. It is not published annually for a single trade inside a metropolitan area, and the surveys that would support that measurement do not carry the resolution. This paper builds the missing series from federal LM-2, LM-3 and LM-4 filings for a single trade — inside electrical construction — 2010 to 2025.
Measurement paper. Companion research note is 22866646; shared replication dataset is 22862472. - Where the electricians went: Hyperscale data center construction and building trades membership in federal union filings, 2018 to 2025
Published employment figures for data-center construction come from the industry or from unions testifying on projects. This paper builds an independent series from federal LM-2 filings and IBEW jurisdiction maps: an eight-year panel of inside electrical construction membership for 89 metropolitan locals. Median treated local grew 33.7 percent between 2018 and 2025 against 13.2 percent elsewhere — a 25.8-percentage-point regression difference, randomization p below 0.001.
Working paper v0.1 with complete replication package. Uses federal union filings as an independent labor-measurement source. Effect concentrated in metros with hyperscale campuses; removing top-five-fastest-growing locals leaves 9.0 points and no significance. - Counting Data Centers: The OpenStreetMap Inventory Behind a National County-Level Comparison
A September 2026 trade association report sorts more than 3,200 U.S. counties into four groups by how many data centers each contains, and runs its comparisons of housing, employment and electricity outcomes across those groups. The counts reproduce exactly from the cited source in four checks; the arithmetic is correct. The findings here are narrower and prior — what a county-level count built from the IM3 Open-Source Data Center Atlas can actually support.
Working paper. Methodological note on the OpenStreetMap-derived facility file (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) that underlies a widely-cited national inventory. - Data Center Maps: A Register of What Exists, What Works, and Where It Fails
146 resources that map, track or inventory data centers, nationally and in depth for Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee, each graded from recommended to avoid for research. No resource is a census: trackers that publish state counts disagree by wide margins, change between editions without notes, and mix buildings, campuses, projects and permits as their unit of record. The gap no map fills statewide is the local zoning decision, ordinance or moratorium behind each site.
Register v0.1, resources checked 28 September 2026. The full report and register (PDF) is mirrored here; the two-page briefing and the filterable workbook, with a sheet for each state, are on the Zenodo record. Prince William County's Build-Out Analysis map is named as the closest existing template for a better map. - Transmission Siting Disclosure Capture: TVA, Oncor/LCRA and Dominion Energy Virginia, August 2026
A point-in-time capture of publicly published transmission line siting geographic data, retrieved 15 August 2026 by anonymous query against public ArcGIS REST endpoints.
Point-in-time dataset capturing which utilities publish vs. withhold transmission-siting geographic data (TVA, Oncor/LCRA, Dominion Energy Virginia).
Virginia data center series — county case studies
Thirteen Virginia localities, each read from its own packets, minutes, ordinances and agreements.
- Case Study: Henrico County — How Two Neighborhoods Forced Virginia's Second-Largest Data Center Jurisdiction to Change Course
Henrico County, Virginia spent two decades recruiting the data center industry and eighteen months learning to govern it.
The first case study in the county series. - Case Study: Hanover County — Mountain Road, Tract, and the Search for Leverage
On the night of May 27, 2026, the Hanover County Board of Supervisors refused Tract's Mountain Road Technology Park: 427 acres, 900 megawatts, and the most contested land-use decision the county had…
- Case Study: Chesterfield County — The $0.24 Rate, the Thirty-Year Lock, and the Two-Corridor County
Chesterfield built its data-center strategy on a single number: the equipment tax rate set at $0.24/$100 in April 2019 — a deliberate undercut of Henrico's $0.40 and the lowest in Virginia. Google assembled roughly 1,640 acres, Chirisa committed $2 billion, and Commonwealth Fusion Systems selected Battery Brooke for the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion plant. The rate is locked for thirty years.
- Case Study: Mecklenburg County — Boydton, South Hill, and What Fifteen Years of Data Centers Actually Bought
Every other report in this series documents a Virginia county deciding on promises.
- Case Study: The Fredericksburg Ring — Five Jurisdictions, One Corridor, and the I-95 Path South
Since 2022, the five jurisdictions surrounding the Rappahannock River fall line (Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline, and King George counties, and the independent City of Fredericksburg) have approved…
- Case Study: Orange County and the Town of Orange — Convergence at Two Scales: One Industry, Two Governments, and the Entitlement Neither Can Reach
In the spring of 2026, two governments whose chambers sit blocks apart in the same small town regulated the same industry in the same season, with different instruments, on different timelines, and…
- Case Study: Louisa County — The First Overlay, the Amazon Retreat, and the $17 Billion Bet
Louisa County, Virginia invented the instrument that the rest of central Virginia is now copying, and then walked away from its central feature before the first imitator finished drafting.
- Case Study: Goochland County — The Overlay, the Lawsuit, and the Template
Every county documented in this series so far decided data centers project by project.
- Case Study: Botetourt County — Project Raspberry, the Water Authority, and the Wave That Crossed the Blue Ridge
On June 24, 2025, Botetourt County announced that Google had bought 312.55 acres of the county's flagship business park at Greenfield for $14,055,406.37, plus $4 million for county initiatives.
- Case Study: Culpeper County — The Quiet Successor
Culpeper County holds one of the largest accumulations of data center entitlements in Virginia's diffusion ring: roughly 12 to 13 million square feet built or approved across eight campuses, and…
- Case Study: Prince William County — Governance Capture, the Revolving Door, and the Democratic Correction
The largest data-center proposal in American history was filed at the Supreme Court of Virginia three hours before deadline, then withdrawn on July 2, 2026. No court ever reached its merits. Documents how the county got there: the sitting supervisor who signed a contract to sell his own land to one of the developers ten days before joining the application, the board chair with a disclosed six-figure position in the parent company of the other developer, and the primary that reset the board.
- Case Study: Loudoun County, Virginia — The Endgame Case: What It Costs to Change the Rules After the Industry Is Load-Bearing
On March 18, 2025, the Loudoun Board of Supervisors voted 7–2 to require a special exception before a data center could be built in the districts where the use had been permitted by right. The reform never reached the Route 28 corridor, where commercial and industrial zoning is frozen by state statute until 2037. A point-geometry join puts 51 percent of Loudoun's built data-center square footage inside that district — a constraint the county publishes on its own website and that went unmentioned across fourteen months of rewriting the ordinance.
The Endgame Case. Loudoun as the diagnostic county — what it costs to change the rules after the industry is load-bearing. isSupplementTo the Commonwealth Reference (20679292); references every other county case in the series. - Case Study: Pittsylvania County — The County Turned Down One Data Center Plan, Then Rezoned for a Bigger One
In April 2025 Pittsylvania County refused to rezone 763 acres for a private gas plant and data centers. Nine months later the same board made data centers by right on 3,500 acres at the Berry Hill megasite, in a district whose text says the county's own data-center standard does not apply there. Within eight weeks the regional industrial authority had approved a sale contract defining the buyer's project as no less than 3,300 megawatts with onsite gas generation. Noise: 52 dBA offered by the refused applicant, 77 dBA adopted, and that only beside residential zoning.
Refusal, then entitlement by ordinance on the county's own motion. Traces the Berry Hill loop and substation built by Appalachian Power under the business-park pilot statute. isPartOf the Commonwealth Reference (20679292). Evidence snapshot 25 September 2026.
Georgia and Tennessee
Statewide reports and the federal record for the two companion states.
- What Georgia Is Spending, What Georgia Is Getting: A Statewide Data Center Report
Georgia built the second-largest data center market in the United States without ever deciding to.
- What Tennessee Is Building, and What It Is Not Regulating: A Statewide Data Center Report
Tennessee entered the data center era without deciding to, and built one of the densest hyperscale concentrations in the South with the thinnest governing apparatus this series has documented.
- Declared, Not Measured: Volumetric Permit Triggers and Sub-Threshold Industrial Water Demand in Georgia
Georgia's 100,000-gallon-per-day groundwater permit trigger runs per person and turns on a quantity that, before a permit issues, exists only as the withdrawer's declaration. A measurement-coincident threshold — the regime regulates what it can already see. Sixteen data-center Development of Regional Impact filings were made between January 6 and July 22, 2026.
Extends the Virginia water thread (references 21816008 and 22105181) into Georgia. Data centers are the occasion; the design property is stated independently as a limiting case of Bennear (2008). - What the Certificate Points At: Fuel disclosure, sealed cost, and one Georgia certification of 9,885 megawatts
On the same day in July 2025, Georgia Power filed two applications with the Georgia Public Service Commission seeking certification of capacity summing to 9,885 megawatts — 7,999 from the 2029–2031 All-Source RFP and 1,886 from a supplemental portfolio. Both were granted in full. The certified cost is sealed for both classes; every cost cell in the two tables is redacted. What differs between the two classes is the fuel.
Working paper, Georgia companion to What the Record Does Not Say (22754150). Shares the eleven-docket register 22757119 as supplement; part of the Built for Someone Else (22096613) source apparatus. - Sufficiently Analogous: Federal need review for a gas shipper with no state regulator, in two Tennessee certificates
Asked who reviews the Tennessee Valley Authority's decision to contract for firm interstate gas capacity for two new power plants, FERC answered in two orders and one sentence: state commission oversight is not a prerequisite for section 7 approval, and "Congress has oversight power over federal agencies, including TVA, and we find this sufficiently analogous to state commission oversight." The certificates covered the same 400-mile route inside sixty days.
Working paper. Extends What the Record Does Not Say (22754150) and What the Certificate Points At (22754180) into Tennessee. Shares the eleven-docket register 22757119 as supplement. - The Whole Record: What the Tennessee Valley Authority Publishes When Nothing Requires It
TVA builds transmission lines across seven states and files no siting case for any of them. The GAO reported this to Congress in 1982 and proposed statutory fixes; none were enacted. What TVA chooses to publish is the public record — this volume measures it.
Volume II in the Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Burden series (Vol I = concept 21895588). 264 pages across fifteen chapters. Codes eighteen TVA project pages and reconstructs the categorical-exclusion record from 11,899 determinations. - Getting the Record: A Guide to Requesting TVA Transmission and Siting Documents
Companion to The Whole Record: What the Tennessee Valley Authority Publishes When Nothing Requires It — concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21996375, version 1.0 published 26 August 2026 at 10.5281/zenodo.21996376.
Practitioner guide companion to The Whole Record (21996375). Walks how to request TVA transmission and siting documents where no state PUC docket exists, given TVA's disclosure practice and NEPA categorical-exclusion pattern.
Radford and municipal fiscal
- Fiscal Crossroads: An Options Analysis of the City of Radford, Virginia
The City of Radford, Virginia is in formal fiscal distress, designated by the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts in November 2025 and recommended for state assistance in March 2026, and is in active…
- The Quiet Option: How Radford Drifted Into Fiscal Distress
Radford did not decide to become a fiscally distressed city.
Companion to Fiscal Crossroads. - Two Cities, One Machine: Radford and Martinsville
Two small Virginia cities ninety miles apart run the same unusual business at almost the same size under the same market pressure.
- What the Foundry Took
What the Foundry Took is a narrative account, drawn entirely from the public record, of how the City of Radford, Virginia reached its 2026 state fiscal-distress designation.
Published as Cardinal News diptych, June 10–11, 2026. - Virginia College-City Fiscal Comparison: Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Williamsburg, Radford
This report presents a fiscal peer analysis comparing the City of Radford, Virginia against a defined cohort of three other Virginia independent cities, each anchored by a public four-year…
- Choice Under Constraint: Enterprise-Fund Transfers and Divergent Fiscal Trajectories Among Virginia's Independent Cities
Among structurally similar Virginia independent cities, the evidence is consistent with the proposition that a sustained discretionary interfund transfer, alongside shared structural pressure,…
- The Handle: How American Cities Tax the Universities They Can't Tax
American cities generally cannot tax the property of colleges and universities their states have exempted.
AI governance in higher education
- Governance Without Readiness: How 53 American Universities Responded to Generative AI
Abstract American universities responded to generative AI primarily by governing it.
- Virginia Tech: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
A public-source inventory of artificial intelligence governance, teaching, research, and operations at Virginia Tech.
- Lehigh University: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
A 188-page public-source inventory of artificial intelligence governance, teaching, research, and operations at Lehigh University.
- University of Virginia: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
A 362-page public-source inventory of artificial intelligence governance, teaching, research, and operations at the University of Virginia.
- Marymount University: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
Abstract This document inventories what Marymount University has said and done publicly about artificial intelligence as of April 6, 2026.
- William & Mary: Comprehensive AI Governance & Activity Inventory
William & Mary has built much of a formal AI governance apparatus in under three years: a provost-authorized policy initiative, a published set of GenAI guidelines, enterprise tool deployments, a new…
- AI Governance Peer Institutional Benchmark: William and Mary's 23 BOV-Adopted National Peer Institutions
A 121-page public-source benchmark of generative AI governance and teaching posture across the 23 institutions adopted by William & Mary's Board of Visitors as its national peer group.
- AI in Virginia Higher Education: Public-Source Reference Guide for 30 Four-Year Institutions
A 311-page public-source reference guide compiling publicly available information on how Virginia's four-year colleges and universities are addressing generative artificial intelligence in…
James City County governance
- The Working Majority Public Dissent and Decision-Making on the James City County Board of Supervisors, 2010–2026
Abstract This paper documents how a working majority on the James City County Board of Supervisors has handled organized public opposition across a sixteen-year period.
- Two Changes on the James City County Board of Supervisors: A Longitudinal Cohort Analysis, 2010–2026
The James City County Board of Supervisors changed how it makes decisions twice between 2010 and 2026, on different timelines that require separate explanations.
- Representative Judgment After Public Opposition
This teaching case examines representative judgment, institutional continuity, changing positions in elected office, and procedural legitimacy during the James City County, Virginia Government Center…
- Public Participation and Representative Judgment in James City County
This teaching case examines representative judgment, public participation, financing structures, and procedural legitimacy during the James City County, Virginia Government Center controversy between 2023 and 2025.
- Mounts Bay: A James City County Story, 2012–2026
Mounts Bay is a book-length narrative of the James City County Board of Supervisors, told through the chamber on Mounts Bay Road, October 2012 through 2026.
Book-length narrative, v3 rev 4. isPartOf the Regional Government Records Corpus (22045517/20088873). - Three Rooms: Williamsburg and James City County and the Joint School System, 1955–2026
Three Rooms is a seventy-year institutional history of the joint school system serving Williamsburg and James City County, 1955 to 2026.
Book-length institutional history, v3 rev 6. isPartOf the Regional Government Records Corpus (22045517/20088873).
Generative AI and knowledge systems
Scholarly thread on human-machine coupled knowledge systems. Companion pieces run on LinkedIn Pulse under Essays.
- Who Is Training Whom: Human Cognitive Drift and Machine Degradation in Coupled AI Knowledge Systems
AI literacy is usually taught as a transaction: write a prompt, check the answer, protect sensitive information, recognize a hallucination. Those skills describe one encounter at a time. Generative AI operates in a longer loop, in which a user's assumptions shape the prompt, the answer reshapes the next question, AI-assisted work enters the public record, and later systems retrieve that material and may learn from it. Treats the person and the model as components of one coupled knowledge system.
Working paper, scholarly companion to The Mountains That Were Not There (LinkedIn Pulse, 18 September 2026). Supplement dataset is the Source Diversity Audit (22741216). - Where the Number Came From: How Generative Search Loses the Record, and What an Operator Can Do About It
On 11 September 2026 the same question, the share of Loudoun County's local tax revenue that comes from data centers, went to four generative search products. Back came six true fractions over different bases and years, and one product in four named its base. The brief follows two of those figures to the county's adopted budget, sets out the three moves and the stopping rule of a trace, and ends with rules an operator can staff: base and year in the same sentence as every fraction, one citation per decision memo followed to the record, and agreement among tools counted for nothing until one chain has reached a document.
Explanatory brief for people who run organizations; one worked case, no rate claim. Supplemented by the Source Diversity Audit dataset (22839545); the corpus-scale argument is in Who Is Training Whom (22839553).
Across the corpus
One essay drawing the research threads together, page-referenced to the deposited works.
- Who Was Assigned to Ask How Much: Institutions, Their Records, and the Fact Nobody Had a Field For
Institutions govern through what they write down, and across water and gas regulation, county zoning, municipal finance, and the citations generative search displays, the decisive fact is reliably the one nobody had a field for. Three kinds of failure, one question asked of each: who was assigned to ask how much.
Working paper, version 1.2. Cites twenty-two works in this corpus; the related-works list below is the essay's bibliography.
Datasets and reference materials
Companion datasets, corpora, and reference documents. Cite the parent report where applicable.
- Fiscal Crossroads Workbook: City of Radford Audited Fiscal Data and Reconciliations, FY2011-FY2024
The reproducibility workbook behind the Radford fiscal-distress research.
Replication workbook for Fiscal Crossroads - Governance without readiness: coding dataset of 53 US universities' generative-AI governance and readiness
Institution-level coding of 53 US universities on four governance indicators and five readiness indicators, plus a descriptive AI-detection posture and a five-category whole-profile classification.
Coding dataset for Governance Without Readiness - Virginia Data Center Research & Industry Directory
Version 3.0 incorporates three months of portfolio work since v2.1 (March 22, 2026) and a full June 2026 re-verification of every entry.
Contact directory across Virginia data-center research - Regional Government Records Corpus: A Longitudinal Public-Meeting Archive for Local Governance Research in Virginia
The Regional Government Records Corpus is an independently assembled longitudinal archive of local-government public meeting materials spanning eleven Virginia jurisdictions across the Hampton Roads,…
Statewide public-meeting archive — approximately 87,800 files across eleven Virginia localities (five at research depth, two comparison cases, four capability probes). Proof of concept for a statewide Virginia local-government records archive. - Regional Government Records Corpus: Institutional Documentation Package (Volumes I-III)
A three-volume institutional documentation package for the Regional Government Records Corpus, an independently assembled longitudinal archive of Virginia local-government public meeting records…
Three-volume institutional documentation package for the Regional Government Records Corpus (Overview, Methodology, Partnership Pitch). PDF mirror links to Volume I (Overview); Volumes II-III are Zenodo-only. - Source manifest and datasets for 'Built for Someone Else: Generation, Load, and the Exception in Virginia'
The data apparatus for Built for Someone Else: Generation, Load, and the Exception in Virginia (Virginia Data Center Series — Analytical Volumes, Version 1.0), concept DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22096613.
Source manifest for Built for Someone Else (concept 22096613) — 125 files including 108 primary source documents, each SHA256-hashed with URL of origin. - Interstate Gas Supply Register: Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, v1.4
Tennessee, carried as a declared gap in every deposited version until now, is closed.
Interstate Gas Supply Register v1.0 — eleven FERC certificate dockets for interstate natural gas capacity serving Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, compiled 11–13 September 2026. The unit is the docket, not the state. Companion dataset to What the Record Does Not Say (22754150). - Source Diversity Audit: what the citations displayed by four generative search products reach, traced on six Virginia data-center policy questions (September 2026)
Capture, tracing and coding data for an audit of what the citations displayed by four generative search products actually reach.
Source Diversity Audit — capture, tracing and coding data for an audit of what the citations displayed by four generative search products (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok) actually reach, on six Virginia data-center policy questions, September 12–13, 2026. - Replication materials: by-right zoning, early vesting and the reach of local reform in Henrico County, Virginia, 2009 to 2026
Version 1.1, September 26, 2026.
Replication materials (v1.1) for a single-case documentary study of Henrico County's June 10, 2025 ordinance ending by-right approval of data centers — what the reform reached and who got a hearing. Supplement, tables, figure data and working notes. Cited from the study's data-availability statement; parent manuscript under journal review. References the Henrico case study (20671031). - Who Showed Up: Register of the Organizations Around Data Center Siting in Virginia, 2014 to 2026
The register behind Who Showed Up: A Census of the Organizations Around Data Center Siting in Virginia, 2014 to 2026 .
Register behind Who Showed Up (22996870): 223 rows (221 live), 23 columns, every value with the page it was read from and the date; codebook, counts-and-gaps file, conflict log, browser-pass record and a manifest of the 611 saved source pages. v1.3, evidence snapshot 26 September 2026. - IBEW local union membership panel, 2010-2025: replication dataset for two studies of inside electrical construction
Version 1.0, 20 September 2026.
IBEW Local Union Membership Panel, 2010–2025 (v1.0). Annual reported membership for IBEW local unions built from Form LM-2, LM-3 and LM-4 filings. Data + scripts + classification inputs + retrieval logs. Shared replication dataset for Where the Electricians Went (22310705), the measurement paper 22861996 and the sixteen-year research note 22866646.
Essays
- The Flinch That Never Came
Some institutional damage does not look like panic. It looks like composure.
- 98 Percent Built AI Committees. 5.7 Percent Included Career Services
What 53 American universities built in response to generative AI.
- The Quiet Disappearance of a Shared Baseline
A shared baseline is infrastructure, not content.
- Promoted Past Learning: What AI Is Quietly Doing to the People Who Use It
Reviewing a document at work. Increasingly, the process behind the output is harder to see.
- Synthetic Participation Is Breaking Professional Trust
When engagement scales faster than accountability, trust becomes expensive.
- Law Over Ego: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the test we keep failing
Every generation inherits the same choice.
- If AI Is Everywhere, Why Isn't Productivity?
AI now dominates earnings calls, capital spending plans, and boardroom strategy. And yet the surge isn't there. Not yet.
- AI Didn't Fire Anyone. Leadership Did.
AI is being cited far more often than it is actually responsible.
Op-eds and guest columns
- Researcher: The data center jobs are real. So is everything else on the ledger.
A reply to Dwayne Yancey's Sept. 29 column on data center jobs. The 50-jobs figure is the number Virginia's tax exemption requires, union membership in data center metros grew faster than employment, and the rest of the ledger, from Botetourt's Google agreement to transmission, water and the exemption's unmeasured effect, has never been added up.
Cardinal News ·
2 pagesOpinion. Links the IBEW membership papers (22861996, 22866646), Botetourt (20673512), Concentrated Benefit (21895588), The Aquifer Says No (21556435) and What Virginia Is Spending (20679292); bio links /data-centers. - FERC Leaves Fuel Question to States; Virginia's Order Doesn't Answer it
The SCC certificated a 944 MW DOM Zone peaker on PJM's capacity shortfall without stating its capacity factor or what it costs to get gas to it. FERC leaves that question to state regulators; three weeks after Virginia's hearing closed, Dominion's fuel subsidiary signed for 20 years of Mountain Valley capacity, and neither record mentions the other.
RTO Insider ·
1 pageStakeholder Forum commentary. Deck as published: SCC OK's Peaker on PJM Capacity Shortfall Without Stating Capacity Factor or Gas Costs. Draws on the PUR-2025-00037 and Va. Code § 56-249.6 record in Zenodo 22754150 (What the Record Does Not Say). Link is subscriber-only. - Trump White House denied CNN, Politico and MS NOW press access despite federal judge's order
Sequel to the April Pentagon column. The White House's delay in restoring press access after a federal judge's order exposes a deeper threat to due process, press freedom and the rule of law.
Richmond Times-Dispatch ·
1 pageOnline kicker: Press Freedom. Print: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026, page A6, as 'Trump's ban of reporters tests rule of law' (kicker: White House Access). - The thousand-dollar line
Loudoun priced the fix at $1,000 in 2016 and passed on it, citing competitive disadvantage. A decade later, Prince William raised its residents' 18 recommended sound values by 6 decibels each — and that weakened standard is now the strictest thing Virginia has.
Virginia Mercury ·
1 pageDeck: What I found reading every noise rule in Virginia that could reach a data center. 73 rules across 43 jurisdictions. - Researcher: Buckingham will host more of this power line than any county in Virginia, and it has the least say about it
Buckingham hosts more of the Valley Link line than any other Virginia county — more than Louisa, Orange, or Culpeper, all of which have data centers. Tested against 2,000 random corridors, the route runs through data-center counties more often than chance would allow. Nobody aimed it there, and nobody in Virginia can undo it.
Cardinal News ·
1 pageCompanion to the PJM Schedule 12 piece (RTO Insider, Aug 12) and Zenodo 21895588 (Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Burden). - Local governments cut out the public
Botetourt, Wythe, and Pulaski each disclosed on schedule. The problem is the schedule — information arrives after a project has accumulated enough commitments to make reversal expensive.
The Roanoke Times ·
2 pagesPrint, Sunday A15, August 23, 2026. Web headline: "Commentary: The public interest shouldn't be an afterthought." - Half of a 765-kV Line in PJM is a Postage Stamp; the Other Half Stops at the Zone Line
PJM's Schedule 12 allocates half the cost of a data-center-driven transmission line by geography and half by ignoring it — nothing in the tariff conditions on where the burden actually falls.
RTO Insider ·
1 pageStakeholder Forum. Companion to Zenodo 10.5281/zenodo.21895588 (Concentrated Benefit, Dispersed Burden). Link is subscriber-only. - Column: Virginia undecided on who gets water from refilled aquifer
If the Potomac aquifer is refilled through SWIFT injections, Virginia has not decided who gets the water first. That policy vacuum is the piece.
The Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press ·
2 pagesPrint: shared editorial page, Wednesday August 12, 2026. Also at pilotonline.com under the same headline. - Column: Virginia groundwater limits put growth in question
DEQ's SJ 25 study finds Virginia's Coastal Plain aquifer capacity is the ceiling; existing pumping and JCSA's permit renewal now sit under it.
Richmond Times-Dispatch ·
1 page - Williamsburg Watch column on JCSA permit renewal implications
What the DEQ technical evaluation implies for the JCSA groundwater permit renewal — and for James City County's growth assumptions underneath it.
Links to Williamsburg Watch opinion index; individual permalink pending - Williamsburg Watch column on Virginia SJ 25 DEQ groundwater study
Introducing the DEQ SJ 25 groundwater study, released six months past its statutory deadline: the Coastal Plain aquifer system has limited capacity for new withdrawals east of I-95.
Links to Williamsburg Watch opinion index; individual permalink pending - Trump's Hormuz toll reversed, but the damage remainsRichmond Times-Dispatch ·
1 page - Radford named its distress. It hasn't named the cure.
- Researcher: The bill came dueRadford diptych, part 2 of 2
- Researcher: What the foundry took from RadfordRadford diptych, part 1 of 2 — also deposited as Zenodo 20612127
- When commemoration becomes political powerRichmond Times-Dispatch ·
1 pagePrint, Sunday D4 — kicker: The Founders' Warning. URL pending. - The anniversary America's founders wouldn't believeRichmond Times-Dispatch ·
7 pages - Early warning signs of Radford's fiscal distress
- The case against Secretary Hegseth asking for $1.5 trillionThe Virginian-Pilot ·
2 pages - China talks cannot replace a congressional vote on warRichmond Times-Dispatch ·
4 pages - As James City County budget adoption looms, disconnect between supervisors and residents is glaringly apparent
- Column: Who is counting taxes in James City County
- Researcher: Spanberger visited Southwest Virginia. The way she visited tells the region what she thinks of it.
- Spanberger's data center position is the test of her affordability message
- More thoughts about budgeting, taxes — a letter to the James City supervisors
- Letter to JCC Supervisors
- Commentary: Taxing past the breaking point
James City County residents count taxes cumulatively; the board counts them categorically. That mismatch is the piece.
The Virginia Gazette ·
1 page - Pentagon press crackdown ruled unconstitutional — twice
- Spanberger's first 100 days are flashing a warning Virginia Democrats should not ignoreVirginia Mercury ·
3 pages - Why Virginia's data center deal no longer adds up
The Senate's move to end the $1.6 billion sales-tax exemption is overdue honesty, not anti-growth policy. Virginia is subsidizing a dominant industry to stay somewhere it was going anyway.
Richmond Times-Dispatch / Daily Progress ·
2 pagesAlso ran in The Daily Progress under the headline "The data center numbers don't add up" (March 24, 2026). - A quiet digital fence around the Historic TriangleThe Virginia Gazette / Daily Press ·
2 pages - Column: Finding patterns in the shift away from democracyThe Virginian-Pilot / Daily Press ·
1 page - Virginia should stop subsidizing data centersThe Roanoke Times ·
1 page - What Customs taught America about power
Essays
- The Empty Screen
On Monday evening the White House switched on a 24-hour channel called Trump TV: The Essentials Station. Four days earlier it had banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico for, in the president's words, no reason. The four days are the visible end of a nineteen-month sequence: take the selection mechanism, exclude by name, substitute. The sequence is the story.
- What the Hallway Used to Know. Are We Talking Less?
A Pfeifer/Mehl post hoc analysis of 2,197 people across 22 studies estimates 338 fewer spoken words per participant per day for each one-year increase in a study's start year — with a 25-to-652 credible interval, and not the same people over time. The essay carries the caveats and asks what disappeared alongside the small reasons to speak that self-checkout, mobile banking, GPS and asynchronous messaging removed, and what happens now as AI absorbs the questions once brought to a colleague. The hallway conversation as unrecorded organizational infrastructure.
- The Mountains That Were Not There: Why a Nineteenth-Century Mapping Error Still Matters in the Age of AI
Between 1798 and the 1890s, ninety of ninety-nine European maps of West Africa showed a mountain range that did not exist. The accumulation looked like corroboration. Much of it was repetition. The Kong Mountains illustrate a form of AI-era error that hallucination alone does not describe: an unsupported claim reproduced accurately, assembled into a persuasive answer, with several citations that all lead back to the same uncertain source. Introduces a working taxonomy of paired human-and-machine failures.
- The Acronym Lost. The Risks Didn't: What Actually Happened to ESG
Investors put $3 billion into U.S. sustainable funds in Q2 2026, the first positive quarter since 2022, while managers closed twenty-two products and kept closing them. Disaggregates ESG into four separate objects — investment label, disclosure rule, industry coalition, corporate behavior — and uses the Virginia DEQ SJ 25 groundwater study to show why calling water an environmental issue does not finish the analysis.
Longform
- If the Regime Fits
A one-page waiver signed on May 19 bars the IRS from ever pursuing claims related to the president, his family, or his businesses on returns filed before that date. It was added quietly, behind a hyperlink in a press release, the day after the lawsuit it resolved was dismissed.
Parent essay to the June 5 RTD column
Cited in
- The Hidden Net Cost of Data Center Construction and Operation for Household Service Pricing
Peer-reviewed research article by Shafaghat, Klimenko, Hu, Keyvanfar and colleagues on data-center cost allocation to household service pricing. Cites the Commonwealth Data Center Reference in the operational cost category alongside 11 other sources.
- New Virginia transmission line could clear 763 acres in county left with the burden, not the power
Third-party reporting on the Valley Link / Buckingham analysis: cites the 2,000-random-corridor test by name, plus the 31.4-mile Buckingham finding and the no-substation leverage argument.