Speaks in richmond. Then Maryland Governor larry hogan talks to legislators in annapolis. Later Connecticut Governor dan malloy speaks in hartford. Next, Virginia GovernorTerry Mcauliffe delivers the annual state of the commonwealth address. He outlines his legislative priorities and speaks on increased investments in the state. From the State Capitol in richmond, this is about hour. [ applause ] all right. Thank you. As speaker of the how was delegates and president of the joint assembly, its my pleasure to present to you his excellency the govern of the commonwealth, the honorable terrence r. Mcauliffe. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you. Thank you. Speak ter howell, leader norman, ladies and gentlemen of the virginia General Assembly, thank you for inviting me to speak with you this evening. And to the people of virginia who are with us tonight who are are watching from home, thank you for the honor of serving as this commonwealths 72nd governor. We are joined here this evening by our great Lieutenant Governor ralph northham. [ applause ] and our great attorney general, mark herring. [ applause ] these twos 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, dorotor mcauliffe. [ 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. 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 rick their lives to keep cuss safe each and every day. 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 malana is with us here tonight with her two children. I hope you will join me in thanking her and fair famiand e single virginian who serves and sacrifices in uniform to keep us safe. [ applause ] before we begin, let us pause for a moment of silence in memory of our great friend and colleague chuck colvin. Senator kohlman was the longest serving member of the Virginia State senate and a true example of a virginia gentleman. 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 as diversity as ours, that can be a down thing tack at any time. But we began 0 our partnership in a unique moment in our history. For years, virginias economy had floated above a massive wave of federal spending that had creates millions of jobs and brought billions in Economic Activity to Northern Virginia and hampton roads. That relationship created Economic Opportunity. But it also made tus overly reliant on federal spending. We all nope what happened next as other states began to climb out of the great recession, congressional dysfunction and defense cuts as well as sequestration severely hampered virginias ability to regain its footing. Sequestration cost virginia 9. 8 billion and 154 thousand jobs between 2011 and 2013 alone. And unless Congress Takes action, another more severe round of sequestration will hit our economy this october. And so as we gee gin our work as we did three years ago, we had a choice. We could sit back and watch external forces limit our growth or we could Work Together to open up a new chapter of opportunity here in virginia. We needed to build a nud virginia economy, one that would grow and create opportunity no matter what happens in washington, beijing, or anywhere else in the world. We needed to redouble our focus on Economic Development and make virginia more attractive to job creators in sectors like cybersecurity, bioscience, Data Analytics and advanced manufacturing. We needed to align every public system from transportationing to Public Education to Workforce Development with the needs of aid 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 and every corner of the globe. We took every meet wiig could get and convinced job carats to bring new operations to our commonwealth or to buy our world class goods, agriculture products or services that our businesses were offering. And those efforts have paid off. As of tonight, we have helped close 853 Economic Development deals worth 14. 2, 3 billion in new capital investment. I am proud to say that is nearly 5 billion more than any administration in the history of the commonwealth of virginia. [ applause ] and so let us start out the new year with a bang. Tonight, i am proud to announce that Navy Federal Credit union has agreed to locate 1400 new jobs and invest 102 million in Frederick County, virginia. [ applause ] i hope i hope that you will join me in welcoming Navy Federals ceo, Cutler Dawson and the vice chair of the Frederick County board of supervisors gene fisher who are here with us tonight to celebrate that major victory for the commonwealth. [ applause ] and as you can imagine, i am very pleased that we beat out the state of florida for this important project. Got 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, we passed 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 and how we deliver high school education. I want to recognize delegate tag agreeson and the late senator jon 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 i thank you, dorothy, for your effort. [ applause ] that success would not be possible without leaders who recognize in strong accessible nutrition programs are essential to a quality education. Dr. Scott bray brand is one those leaders. As superintendent of the lynchburg city schools, dr. Bray brand helped oversee a 20 increases in School Breakfast participation in just one year adding 550 students to the program. He has also thrown his support behind after school and summer meal programs to help insure that more than 6,000 students who 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. [ applause ] over several sessions we have reformed virginias Workforce Development system and insenty advised institutions and students to complete degrees and credentials in high demand industries, and this work comes at a very critical time. Virginia is very unique. Our problem is not that we dont have the high paying jobs available. Its that we dont have the trained 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 are 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 he 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. This they wont do it, we do it for our virginia veterans. [ applause ] 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. [ applause ] we took Great Strides forward on transportation. Undertaking significant projects in high traffic corridors across virginia, like. 95. 64, and i66. We passed the smart scale priorization process so the decisions are now based on data about the benefits that our taxpayers will receive for the economy, not on back room deal making. After several disastrous public similarity private partnership deals that cost virginians hundreds of millions of dollars we have transformed the process and brought a Taxpayer First approach to negotiating these important deals. The results of our efforts are clear. If we had followed the old process, the. 66 outside the belt way 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 winning consortium, think about this theyve agreed to include an additional 800 million in transit improvements, 350 million in corridor improvements and when we go to financial close, they are going to write the commonwealth a check for 500 million. Our reforms and leadership resulted in a 2. 5 billion turn around on this project alone. We won 1765 million federal grant for the 1. 4 billion at lant at that time 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. [ applause ] we ensured a Bright Future for private space flight notice virginia by strengthening the mars space port. Thank you, lynwood. We let from the back of the pack on Cyber Security signs, Autonomous Vehicles and Renewable Energy to now becoming a National Leader in these cutting edge 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. [ applause ] 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 and other communities in hampton roads. Im proud to say, this is the largest grant given to any state in the United States of america. [ applause ] we have made Great Strides protecting virginias hick and natural assets, as well. After 30 years, attorney general herring and our team finally reached an agreement with du pont on the largest Natural Resource settlement in the history of virginia bringing 50 million back to virginia to improve our environment in waynesboro and the surrounding areas. [ applause ][ applause ] we undertook an initiative to preserve 1,000 virginia natural historic treasures for the enjoyment of generations to come. We accomplished it one full year ahead of schedule, and tonight, i am proud to announce that after three years of negotiations with the United States army, we are now finally having an agreement to expand virginias historic fort monroe and take possession so that for generations to come, fort monroe will be for our virginia citizens. [ applause ] 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 an cleebd them by working together and doing what 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. Claps today as more and more vanyians responds to our strengthening economy by returning to the workforce is higher and now the Second Lowest rate of any major state in america. In total, virginia has created 167,100 new jobs in the last three years. These are important indicators that our efforts are working and that our trajectory is indisp e 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 benefitted 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 the line with 40 other states that restored the civil rights of people who made mistakes and hop have served their time. [ applause ] 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. [ applause ] i would like to you meet one of them tonight. Terry garrett was born in 1968 and grew up in Northern Virginia. After two decades of Substance Abuse and frequent incarcerations, she found so bright and she turned her life around. Today, in addition to her role as a loving mother and grandmother, terry is a respected Community Leader a