And thanks to all of you for joining us today. Its good to be with you again. We plan on this being a short briefing today. I want to touch on our health metrics, number one, reopening education, andr our revenue numbers for the month of may and what they mean for our Financial Planning as we move into the latter part of this year. First, i want to speak briefly to the ongoing protests and the confederate monuments. I have said that i believe the confederate monuments are divisive and glorify a racist and painful time in our history. Thats why we are working to monumente lee enrichment, which our state owns. The Richmond City council has also agreed that it will remove the other confederate monuments that are on monument avenue. We all came together to create a process to do that safely. ,e need to let that happen because these statues are very large and they are very heavy. A demonstrator was seriously injured by a that was being pulled down. I know these statues are causing a lot of pain, but pulling them down is not worth risking someones life. To let the local government take responsibility for taking these statues down safely, lets do this the right way and keep all virginians safe. The statues are, of course, far from the only racist and divisive relics of our past. So now, lets turn to our ongoing work of reform. As you know, i created a commission to examine racial inequity in virginia law last year. Racism andt discrimination were written into our laws particularly during the jim crow era with the intent of forcing subjugation of black and brown virginians. While many of those old laws have been overturned, in some cases, the language remains in the acts of assembly. In just a partial review of those acts, the Commission Found nearly 100 instances of discriminatory language. We proposed legislation to remove those ugly words from our law books and it passed just this past year unanimously. Today i am announcing that im extending the work of the commission and broadening its scope. The commission will now look at current state laws and regulations that create or perpetuate inequities with a focus on public safety, criminal justice, health, housing, and voting. It will propose changes to increase protections for minority and marginalized unions and provide policy recommendations for state agencies and institutions. Im very proud of the work the commission has already done, and look forward to seeing the proposals. We expect a report with recommendations by november 15. Now id like to turn to our covid19 data. Weve all seen reports of the past couple of days about increasing coronavirus cases in several states. ,m glad to say that so far virginia is not seeing a spike in our cases. In fact, our metrics are continuing to trend downward. I specifically want to show you a couple of those measures. This first slide, you see the total cases by date reported. The yellow line is the seven day moving average. Our total cases have been trending downward since the end of may. Us howxt chart shows many people in virginia have unfortunately died from this virus. I dont often show this chart are what the scientists call a lagging indicator. They dont tell us about the current spread of the disease. That said, i want to note that, as you can see from the yellow line, the number of covid19 debts being reported to our Virginia Department of health has been decreasing in the past couple of weeks and i find that a very hopeful sign. In this next slide, you will see the number of people tested, the number of positive tests, and the percent of tests that are positive. As you can see from the yellow trendline, our percent of positive tests has been trending downward for some time, and was 8. 9 at the beginning of this week. Past, itison, in the was well over 20 . So we have made a lot of progress. About how these trends are going. That said, i cannot emphasize strongly enough that this virus is still with us, and Everyone Needs to continue to behave cautiously. Two,e one week into phase and Northern Virginia and richmond will go into phase two tomorrow. This means there are more places that you can go, and we all need to be very vigilant about protecting ourselves and each other when we go out. Cover your face, wash your hands, and please continue to stay six feet away from other people, if at all possible. In addition, we have thousands of people out at protests, where they are close to other people. I understand that people feel this is a critical time of change, and they want to make their voices heard. I strongly encourage protesters to wear face coverings and social distance as much as possible. I would urge protesters to get tested. I, myself, got tested last week. And while it was uncomfortable for a very brief period of time, it wasnt too bad. Im also glad to report that my test was negative. Now i would like to turn to Higher Education, and the guidance we are giving our colleges and universities about how to slowly return to in person classes. You recall that we announced similar items for our prek12 schools earlier this week. The guidance for institutions of Higher Education is similar. To open their campuses and offer in Person Instruction, but they must follow all relevant guidance in the phases outlined in our forward virginia plan and in Public Health guidelines. The institutions must meet certain Public Health conditions in order to reopen the campus, to ensure there are positive trends in Public Health data and that their community has adequate surge health care capacity. Institutions must also submit comprehensive reopening plans to the state council of Higher Education for virginia, which will review their plans for compliance to relevant canelines before they proceed with reopening their campuses. We have one of the best and most diverse systems of Higher Education in our nation. Our institutions range from large to small, heavily residential to commuter, from urban to rural, and beyond. That is why each institution to take on this challenge in a way that meets their unique mission and circumstance. But at all times, their plans must be based on the best available Public Health data, including the virginia higherent of health and education, testing and guidance. Peter blake is with us today to discuss this guidance in greater detail. Peter, welcome. Thank you. Peter good afternoon, peter blake, its my pleasure to be here. Weve been shaken by the events of the last several weeks. The conversations taking place in richmond, my hometown for nearly 60 years, have been especially meaningful. What has happened recently is a manifestation of injustice and racism that has existed for too long. Its time to confront these inequities where we work and live. Higher education, as good as we are, with instruction, research, service, we still face many challenges around racial equity. Black and brown students attend and graduate at lower rates than other students. Our faculty members are not as diverse as our students. Why we finance our Higher Education system is imperfectly aligned with what we say we want from our colleges and universities. Improve, thereo is no other option. Because of the leadership of luminar northam, foundation, one of the most significant nonprofit organizations for hyper Higher Education. The purpose of the grant is to close achievement gaps in Higher Education. As virginia moves forward, there is much work to do. The covid19 pandemic threatens the gains we have made enclosing learning gaps, as we heard earlier this week. The Digital Divide is real and contributes to these learning gaps. Access is nation critical, especially now. The reopening guidance a governor and belted a place of Public Health at the forefront. The governor also challenges our educators to ensure that high quality teaching and learning is preserved and enhanced. The plans institutions develop will protect our students, faculty, and staff and forge a path of opportunity and equity in the years to come. On marchhis very 30, the governor ordered all of virginias public and private colleges and universities to cease in Person Instruction and limit access to campuses to essential personnel only. As we move from phase one to , and as we anticipate base three, institutions across the state are beginning to put plans in place to safely reopen their campuses. The guidance a governor announced today, one of the first of its kind in the nation, covers all public and private degree granting institutions. It was developed in close consultation with the Virginia Department of health, the office of the secretary of education and i want to express my othersde to many including the president at George Mason University for their contributions to these plans. With his guidance, virginias public and private colleges and mercies can begin the hard work necessary to reopen their campuses. They must do so while following all relevant guidance outlined in the forward virginia blueprint and other relevant Public Health guidelines. Institutions must meet certain conditions, as the governor said, as they reopen campuses, to ensure that their communities have Adequate Health care, surge to sound and adherence Public Health principles. Institutions also must follow guidance from the cdc, the Virginia Department of health in the phases outlined in the forward virginia blueprint, including enhanced social and physical distancing, health and hygiene procedures, cleaning and disinfecting measures and other mitigation strategies. Institutional plans will address not only the safety of the students but also the health of the faculty and staff, many of whom are from vulnerable populations and have become frontline workers during the pandemic. The plans will also consider the needs of communities and homes to our institutions. The plans will be reviewed for compliance and guidance. Diverse set of institutions, large, small, public, private, commuter, rural, urban. While the plans will be unique to an institution, at a minimum, the plans must address the following considerations. Repopulation the campus, monitoring Health Conditions to detect infection, containment to prevent spread of the disease when detected, and shut down considerations if necessitated publicre conditions for health guidance. Institutions may need to update their plans as further information emerges, especially in the area of testing, contact tracing, simple tracking. Andtand ready to assist will continue to work closely with colleges and universities as they have done all along. As we look to phases two and three and beyond, and as institutions begin to shift to in Person Instruction in campus activities, expect a new normal. Smaller,ill be schedules will be staggered, food service will be offered in nontraditional ways, and largescale event such as performing arts and athletics will be a new experience. Institutions have an out some of the strategies. Change,llege life is the energy, creativity, and commitment shown by colleges and University Faculty and staff will ensure that the learning experience will not be sacrificed. All virginians appreciate your tremendous work. There will be further instructions tomorrow morning regarding reopening plans and the admissions process. Thank you for the hundreds and thousands hundreds of thousands of students and staff, thank you for your leadership in providing support and guidance to these institutions in the commonwealth. And q. Peter, thank you so much thank you. Please pass on to the other members how much we appreciate their efforts. As you all can tell by listening to this, a lot of work has been put into this. We want our students to be back on our campuses this fall and we want to do it safely and responsibly. I just thank them for all of their efforts. I also want to recognize that president and holton is with us today. Judge, a former first lady, former secretary of education and interim president of George Mason University. Ann, its a pleasure to have you here, and just thank you and your husband for all your Wonderful Service to our commonwealth. Jobhas done a tremendous leading one of virginias flagship universities, and im grateful for her service. On july 1, gregory washington will become George Mason Universitys eighth president , and i look forward to working with him. Finally, i would like to turn to our may revenue numbers. As we all know, restrictions on businesses and Public Events during this pandemic have resulted in losses of jobs and of income. And our state revenues absolutely reflect that. For may, our revenues are about 20 below where they were in may of 2019. However, this is slightly better than we anticipated, and i would like to ask our secretary of finance, arbery lane, to come forward and put these figures in context. Thank you. Thank you, governor. It was about 90 days ago when the state first started beginning to feel the impacts of the covid19, not only are businesses, but also on our state revenues. As you recall, the governor said from the very beginning this Public Health crisis was going to result in an economic crisis. It was a time of a lot of uncertainty, not only that led into the health crisis, but some of the actions that we took, like delaying income tax payments that would normally come in may 1 and june 1. It only complicated how we would look at the revenues for the final thats the following quarter of the year, which ins june 30. At that time, based on the data we had, we estimated we would be down about a Million Dollars for this fourthquarter in the fiscal year 2020. If you go back and look, in april of this year, our revenues were down 26 . The governor Just Announced as of may, revenues were down another 20 . This represents about 800 million below what our projected revenues were going to be for the quarter, and for year to date in our plan. As i said, we projected that to be a billion dollars. So this is better than where we thought we were going to be, because remember, in june, all those tax payments that would have come in in may or april in the Previous Year are now going to come in in the month of june. So almost all of the loss we have incurred so far is in the payment of payroll taxes from the Previous Year and some estimates for the current year. While we have about 19 days left in our fiscal year, it looks like we are going to be significantly better than what we project. This is for a couple of reasons. One, the underlying resiliency of the virginia economy. The governor has mentioned several times that we were very strong in economics before we went into this. That has helped us through this time. If you look at payroll withholding, the largest portion of our revenues across all businesses for the months of april and may, we were down about 4. 5 . The headlines have been a lot more than that, some businesses have closed and they are obviously very significantly impacted. Many have been able to remain open because of teleworking, and our reliance on defense spending and the federal government. Some of our large employers have seen hardly any decline in their payroll that they have paid the state over this period of time. It also has to do with the actions taken, whether through Monetary Policy of making sure our Financial Markets work well and giving businesses confidence, but also the payroll protection plan, where the federal government gave money to businesses so they could retain their employees. By doing that, they were able to pay us. So this is not by any means that everything is great and its an all clear. Still a very. Just governor mentioned a little while ago about how the virus seems to be abating in the commonwealth. While that is happening, Business Activity is picking up. You saw the jobs report last back 2. 5 called million workers in the nation. The same will hold through in virginia. It appears we are much closer to a bottom then we were a few months ago. That doesnt mean it will turn around quickly, by any stretch. But this does means is that we will have good data points as we forecast our revenues for the new biannual budget. That will happen sometime in the month of july and he will call a special section special session at his pleasure sometime in august and we will discuss all this. I just wanted to point out that with all the calls of uncertainty, it looks as if virginia, at least to this fiscal year, is going to be within what we thought was going to happen, the actions we took, the governor took by suspending discretionary spending, by suspending capital payments, and also help to build our cash reserves, so it appears that as we go into the end of this fiscal year and go into our next biannual budget, we will be starting from a place where we can get a forecast that will be meaningful and not just based on political rhetoric for some headline that doesnt represent what underlying economics are in the commonwealth. With that, governor, thank you very much. In closing, i want to reiterate how important it is that everyone continue taking this pandemic very seriously. While we are all adjusting to how to live in what we call the new normal, its not smart to act like the virus has been eradicated, because it has not. It is still here, it is still dangerous, and we must continue to be cautious. Now i would like to ask our Virginia Health commissioner to give us a health update, then we will be glad to take your quest