[ cheers and applause ] [ cheers and applause ] [ applause ] all right thank you. [ cheers and applause ] [ cheers and applause ] as speaker of the house delegates and president of the joint assembly, its my pleasure to present to you his excellency, the governor of the commonwealth, the honorable terrence r. Mcauliffe. [ cheers and applause ] thank you. Thank you. [ cheers and applause ] thank you. Speaker, leader norman, ladies and gentlemen of the virginia General Assembly, thank you for invoiting me to speak with you this evening. And to the people of virginia, who are with us tonight or who are watching from home, thank you for the honor of serving as this commonwealths 72nd governor. [ cheers and applause ] we are joined here this evening by our great lieutenant governor, ralph northam. [ applause ] [ cheers and applause ] and our great attorney general, mark herring. [ cheers and applause ] these two virginia leaders have been great partners as we work to build a stronger, more open and more prosperous virginia. I thank them. And of course, our first lady is with us here this evening, dorothy mcauliffe. [ cheers and applause ] dorothy, your work expanding access to healthy nutrition, promoting national service, and making our commonwealth more welcoming to military families has made our state a better place to live. Thank you for your leadership. And thank you for our partnership for 28 years. [ cheers and applause ] that alone is worth a great round of applause. We are free here to meet tonight because of the brave men and women at the federal, state and local levels who risk their lives to keep us safe each and every day. [ applause ] we thank all of our men and women in military uniform, and we are joined this evening by one family that embodies the service and commitment that our men and women in uniform and their loved ones make to protect our great country and our commonwealth. Sean talmadge is a key member of our commonwealths Emergency Management and Disaster Response team. He is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Virginia National guard. While we were celebrating the holidays with our families this past year, sean was separated from his on a deployment to kuwait with the 29th infantry division. Seans wife, milana, is here with us tonight with her two children. I hope you will join me and thank her and her family and every single virginian who sacrifices to keep us safe. [ cheers and applause ] [ applause ] before we begin, let us pause for a moment of silence in memory of our great friend and colleague, chuck holmby. He was the longest serving member of the Virginia State senate. He will be dearly missed. On this day three years ago we met on the steps of this historic building, and i was honored to take the oath to serve the people of virginia as their governor. That was a day of celebration. But we all knew at that time that a significant amount of work lay ahead. Virginians hired each one of us to work for them here in richmond to solve problems and to make their lives better. In a state as large and diverse as ours, that can be a daunting task at any time. But we began our partnership in a unique moment in our commonwealths history. For years, virginias economy had floated above a massive wave of federal spending, that had created millions of jobs and brought billions in Economic Activity to northern virginia. That relationship created Economic Opportunity. But it also made us overly reliant on federal spending. We all know what happened next. As other states began to climb out of the great recession, congressional dysfunction in defense cuts as well as sequestration severely hampered virginias ability to retain its footing. Sequestration cost virginia 9. 8 billion and 154,000 jobs between 2011 and 2013 alone. Unless Congress Takes action, another more severe round of sequestration will hit our economy this october. And so as we begin our work as we did three years ago, we had a choice. We could sit back and watch external forces limit our growth, or open up a new chapter here in virginia. We needed to build a new virginia economy that would create opportunity no matter what happened in washington, beijing or anywhere else in the world. We needed to focus on Economic Development and make virginia more attractive to job creators, bioscience, and advanced manufacturing. We needed to align every public system from transportation to Public Education to Work Force Development with the needs of a 21st century economy. We needed to build a more open and welcoming climate to attract families and job creators from every single walk of life. And so we got to work. Recognizing that 95 of the worlds customers live outside the United States of america, we took the virginia story to 19 countries in every corner of the globe. We took every meeting we could get and convinced job creators to bring new operations to our commonwealth or to buy our worldclass goods, agriculture products or services that our businesses are offering. And those efforts have paid off. As of tonight, we have helped close 853 Economic Development deals worth 14. 23 billion in new capital investment. That is nearly 5 billion more than any administration in the history of the commonwealth of virginia. [ applause ] [ cheers and applause ] and so let us start out the new year with a bang. Tonight i am proud to announce that Navy Federal Credit yup has agreed to locate 1400 new jobs and invest 102 million in frederick county, virginia. [ cheers and applause ] i hope that you will join me in welcoming navy federal ceo dawson and the board of supervisors jean fisher who are here with us tonight to celebrate that major victory for the commonwealth. [ cheers and applause ] and as you can imagine, i am very pleased that we beat out the state of florida for this important project. [ laughter ] sharks in their water and everything down there. Forget it. Bringing new products like this one to virginia is critically important. In fact, i just took the red eye back after two days of Business Outreach in california. And we are closing in on bringing thousands of new jobs and billions of new investment to virginia which we will begin to announce in the next month. But we also need to build a lasting infrastructure that will generate even more jobs and Economic Activity for generations to come. And working together, we are doing just that. Last year, with epassed a budget that invested more than 1 billion in Public Education. The highest level in virginia history. [ applause ] we are transforming our k12 system to prepare students for the jobs of the 21st century, with a particular emphasis on modernizing the sols in how we deliver high school education. I want to recognize delegate tag reeson and the late senator john miller for their partnership in transforming our commonwealths Education System. [ applause ] thank you, guys, for clapping for tag. Thanks to the leadership of our first lady. We are connecting more students with the nutrition that they need to thrive in the classroom and to grow Healthy Minds and bodies. Virginia students are hungry to learn, but they cannot learn if theyre just plain hungry. That is why im so proud that last year alone, virginia schools served 5 million more School Breakfasts than the last year before. And you thank you for your effort. [ applause ] that success would not be possible without leaders who recognize a strong accessible nutrition programs nutrition programs are essential to a quality education. Dr. Scott braybrand is one of those leaders. As superintendent of the lynchburg city schools he helped oversee a 20 increase in School Breakfast participation just one year adding 550 students to the program. Hes also thrown his support behind after school and summer meal programs to help ensure that more than 6,000 students who rely on school meals do not go hungry when classes end. Let us welcome scott here this evening and thank him for his leadership on behalf of his students. Over several sessions we have reformed virginias Workforce Development system and incentivized institutions and students to complete degrees and credentials in highdemand industries. And this work comes at a very critical time. Virginia is very unique. Our problem is not that we dont have highpaying jobs available. Its that we dont have the trade workers to fill those jobs. Last year, virginia saw 149,000 jobs open in the technology sector, alone, and today we have 36,000 cyber jobs open. Parents who were watching tonight, listen to me, the average starting pay for these jobs is 88,000. Our mission, all of us in this chamber, is to prepare students with the skill sets they need to fill these jobs so they can lead our economy into the future. We have helped veterans get into the private workforce faster by offering workforce credit for military training. We expanded the virginia values program to help more than 20,000 veterans find work. We funded the opening of two new veteran care centers so that virginia men and women who have served in uniform no longer have to wait for the federal government to get its act together to get the health care that they need. If they wont do it, we will do it for our virginia veterans. We launched healthy virginia to extend services to 10,000 virginians with serious Mental Illness and helped 378,000 virginians Access Health insurance through the Affordable Care act. We took Great Strides forward on transportation. Undertaking significant projects in high traffic corridors across virginia like i95, i6 and i66. We passed the smart skill prioritization process so the decisions are now based on data about the benefits our taxpayers will receive on the economy, not on backroom dealmaking. After several disastrous Public Private partnership deals that cost virginians hundreds of millions of dollars, we have transformed the process and brought a taxpayerfirst approach to these negotiating these important deals. The results of our efforts are clear. If we had followed the old process, the i66 outside the beltway project i Just Announced would have cost taxpayers 1 billion. However, by reforming our system and strengthening how we negotiate, the final deal will not require virginians to invest one single dollar. And the winning consortium, think about this, theyve agreed to include an additional 800 million in transit improvements, 350 million in corridor improvements and theyre going to write the commonwealth a check for 500 million. Our reforms and leadership resulted in a 2. 5 being turnaround on this project, alone. We won a 165 million federal grant for the 1. 4 billion atlantic gateway project which will unlock travel and commerce on road and rail all across the commonwealth. We returned the port of virginia to financial solvency and made record investments to position our commonwealth as a leader in global trade for generations to come. As a result, the port, which had suffered seven straight years of operating losses and was once unwisely put up for sale is now profitable and leading the nation in import volume growth. Thanks. We ensured a Bright Future for private space flight in virginia by strengthening the mars spaceport. Thank you, lynnwood. We led from the back of the pack on Cyber Security, science, Autonomous Vehicles and Renewable Energy to now becoming a National Leader in these cuttingedge industries. Im particularly proud of the work that we have all done together working on Cyber Security. This is a critical issue for the commonwealth. Last year in virginia, we experienced 70 million cyber attacks, that is one every four seconds. We have a responsibility to protect our data from cyber criminals and to realize the Economic Opportunity that this industry presents. As chairman of the National Governors association, i have made Cyber Security the centerpiece of my agenda. And i am now proud to say that virginia is leading the way in america. We made virginia safer by reforming our juvenile Justice System and posting the lowest adult recidivism rate in america. We took action to protect virginia from the threat of Climate Change and Sea Level Rise by winning a 120 million federal resiliency grant for norfolk own other communities in hampton roads. Im proud to say this is the largest grant given to any state in the United States of america. We have made Great Strides protecting virginias historic and natural assets as well. After 30 years attorney general herring and our team finally reached an agreement with dupont on the largest Natural Resource settlement in the history of virginia bringing 50 million back to virginia to improve our environment in wanesboro and the surrounding areas. We undertook an initiative to preserve 1,000 virginia historic and National Treasures for the enjoyment of generations to come. We accomplished it one full year ahead of schedule and tonight im proud to announce after three years of negotiations with the United States army, we are now finally having an agreement to expand virginias historic ft. Monroe and take possession so for generations to come, ft. Monroe will be for our virginia citizens. These three years have been defined by significant, substantive accomplishments on one key policy initiative after another. Those achievements are not victories for one party or another. They are victories for virginia. We achieve them by working together and doing what it takes to build a new virginia economy from the bottom up. And if you look at the numbers, its clear we are making substantial progress. When i took office, virginias Unemployment Rate was 5. 4 . Over the course of this administration, it fell to as low as 3. 7 which represented the steepest decline in any governors term in 32 years. Today as more and more virgin n virginians respond to our strengthening economy by returning to the labor force our 4. 2 rate is 1. 2 lower than we began our Work Together and now the Second Lowest rate of any major state in america. In total, virginia has created 167,100 new jobs in the last 3 years. These are important indicators that our efforts are working and that our trajectory is indisputably upward but we should also remember that these numbers actually represent real people with real stories. I would like to take a moment to tell you about a few people who have benefited from actions that we have taken working together. One of my proudest moments of my life came on april 22nd of last year when i stood on the steps of the capitol and brought virginia into line with 40 other states that restore the civil rights of people who made mistakes and who have served their time. Now as you know, that action was greeted by cheers from some corners of this room and lawsuits from others. But folks, the principles of redemption and Second Chances are essential to a healthy society, and i was very proud to fight for them. Since that day, my team has worked hard to restore the rights of individuals who have served their time and reentered society to build productive lives. And tonight, i am proud to announce that thanks to those efforts, we have given more than 127,000 virginians a Second Chance at citizenship since i took office. I would like you to meet one of them tonight. Terry garrett was born in 1968, grew up in northern virginia. After two decades of Substance Abuse and frequent incarcerat n incarcerations, she found sobriety and she turned her life around. Today in addition to her role as a loving mother and grandmother, terry is terri is a Community Leader and sponsors offenders. Terri made mistakes. She served her time. She became a productive member of our community. But our policy of disenfranchisement made her a secondclass citizen. Until last year. After terris rights were restored in august, she walked into a voting booth for the first time in her life this past november, regaining her place in our society, and showing all of us how powerful a Second Chance can be. Terri is here with us tonight on behalf of so many virginians who are proud to have a voice in their commonwealths future once again. I hope you will join me in welcoming terri to our capitol. When men and Women Volunteer to fight for our country in the armed forces, we have a responsibility to support them when they return to civilian life. Unfortunately, too many end their military service and face enormous challenges with too few resources or opportunities for success. Many find themselves without a place to call home. Shortly after my administration began, First Lady Michelle Obama sent a challenge to all the mayors in america to end veteran homelessness in their cities. I can still remember the look on secretary john harveys face whe