It was just over a month ago, 400 years ago, that a band of a little over 100 Englishmen landed in a new land that had been named in honor of their queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Their coming here was an economic venture; they hoped to pick up some of the gold that had been advertised as being strewn about, and they hoped to find a shorter route to India where they knew there were many treasures.

Their report back to the Mother Country could be called the first Commonwealth Report except that the term Commonwealth was not yet applied to this new world. By whatever title, those first reports would have contained very mixed messages.

The land they found was rich in natural beauty. As Captain John Smith, the braggart leader of these new Virginians proclaimed in writings, “Never a fairer land that God had made.” And the land was inhabited by a civilization more than 15,000 years old. These Indians as they called them were understandably reluctant to give up their lands, particularly to a people for whom they had so little respect.

These newcomers were overdressed, didn’t bathe, and did not have the good sense to plant crops for their future needs.

There was no gold to be simply picked up as the promotional materials that had encouraged them to come had suggested. In fact, the economic sustainability of the colony was in question until John Rolfe developed a new strain of tobacco that would make money for the venture, especially after Africans were brought to the colony against their will to do the work to raise the crops. And the Africans were kept in bondage as the economic sustainability of the colony and the new state of Virginia were dependent upon slave labor.

Here we are 400 years later. While much has changed, some of the issues that would have been contained in those early reports are in my report today.

Tobacco has 400 years later been replaced as Virginia’s leading cash export. The new leader – microchips!

The remnants of Virginia’s remaining eight Indian tribes that were all but squeezed out of existence may be getting their long overdue federal recognition. As part of the deal, the Indians had to agree to no gambling that would compete with Virginia’s state-run lottery.

The Chesapeake Bay through which the colonists sailed to get to Jamestown is no longer teeming with fish or with oyster shells as big as a man’s boot track. In fact, it now regularly has dead zones that will not support life of any kind.

The Africans who helped to build this great state are free from enslavement, not because of the great words about natural rights of man written by Virginia leaders George Mason and Thomas Jefferson but because of a great Civil War or as some hardcore Virginians still call it – the War of Northern Aggression.

As a member of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Board, I encourage your visit to Jamestown in the near future to understand the clash of cultures represented in the establishment of the first permanent English colony in America.

As a member of Virginia’s General Assembly that traces its beginnings to a meeting of representatives of the plantations at the Church in Jamestown in 1619 – making it the oldest continuous legislative body in this hemisphere – I am pleased to be able to give you this report on the State of the Commonwealth 2007. When appropriate I will give a tip of my hat or a wag of my finger.

Like most Virginians I start most of my talks with a historic perspective. But sometimes Virginians are so caught up with the past that they are not able to move forward.

The National Park Service ranked Virginia second among the 50 states for a second consecutive year for its rehabilitation of historic buildings. Lynchburg, Virginia, received the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s highest award last year for its revitalization efforts. A Radford University professor, Dr. Donna Boyd, was named U.S. Professor of the Year for master’s level colleges and universities by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching. Her field: anthropology.

A challenge in being tied to the past is deciding when it is time to cut free and move on.

Yes, George III was a scoundrel who may have wanted to tax the colonies too heavily and who stepped on their rights as Englishmen. And yes, out of our concern for a strong executive we did limit the terms of the first governors of Virginia to a maximum of three consecutive one-year terms.

But in the modern day, staying with a one term Governor does not make sense and is not in the best interest of the Commonwealth.

Governor Timothy Kaine is presently at work putting together a budget for the next biennium. It is the only budget that he will both propose and implement. For the first two years of his term he has worked under a budget proposed by Governor Warner and adopted by the General Assembly. The next budget Governor Kaine proposes will be implemented by his successor.

Virginia needs to change its constitution to permit two consecutive terms for a governor. The people would retain the right to limit an ineffective governor to one term by not re-electing him or her.

There is no better example of historic preservation than the restoration of the state capitol over the last two years. Thomas Jefferson designed the center core of the capitol that was completed in 1789 and served the three branches of government until 1904 when two wings were added for the two houses of the General Assembly.

The restoration preserved the work of Mr. Jefferson that is the best example of classical architecture in the country. Modern mechanical systems along with the latest telecommunication systems were installed. An expansion that included additional meeting space was tucked under Capitol Hill and hidden from view.

Inside the parliamentary procedures will continue to follow Jefferson’s Manual as do most legislative bodies.

But a set of rules adopted for the House of Delegates two years ago by the majority Republican Party is in desperate need of revision. Under the rules, standing committee chairs are given unlimited authority to assign bills to subcommittee for consideration. Subcommittees can be as few as five members with a quorum of three. As few as two members of the 100-member House can kill a bill with no recorded vote.

Over 40 percent of legislation introduced in the House last year was killed in subcommittees with minimal consideration and no recorded vote. I will be proposing an amendment to the rules to restore transparency to the process.

I believe that there is no better way to understand the workings of the current General Assembly than to consider the recently released report card of the Virginia Family Foundation. Each year the Family Foundation scores members of the House and Senate based on the members’ votes on selected bills that “relate to the principles of life, marriage, parental authority, constitutional government, or religious liberty.”

The Family Foundation was the driving force behind the so-called marriage amendment. It supported all the anti-abortion bills including one that would have imposed “health and safety” standards so high on clinics in which abortions are performed that all the clinics would have had to close. They supported a bill that would have required a woman seeking an abortion to be offered the opportunity to view an ultrasound of the fetus, and they supported a bill that would have required anesthesia be offered for an unborn child prior to an abortion.

The Family Foundation favored a sunset date on all taxes, stronger protections against eminent domain, and tax credits for private schools. They opposed stem cell research and opposed the Senate plan for increased taxes and fees to support transportation improvements.

In other words, the Family Foundation scorecard represents the most conservative of political agendas.

In the House, 34 Republicans and one Democrat scored a perfect 100. None of the 60 Republican scored below 85. Only one Democrat scored above 75, and 25 Democrats scored 25 or less. The House passed all the bills I just described.

In contrast, only two Republican senators scored 100. The Senate killed most of the bills I listed. Of the 40 members of the Senate, 13 members, all Democrats, scored less than 25.

Incidentally, my score on the Family Foundation scorecard was 5!

The sharp ideological contrast between the House and the Senate that has existed in recent years explains in part the reasons for the difficulties in getting legislation passed. At the same time, thank God for the Senate, for it has kept Virginia free from the long arm of state government reaching into our homes and our bedrooms based on someone else’s moral standards and religious beliefs.

In addition to the ideological split that exists in the Commonwealth’s legislature, there are sharp contrasts across the regions of the state.

There are really two Virginias: Northern Virginia and the rest of the state. Certainly there is significant economic activity in Richmond and Hampton Roads, but both pale in comparison with the economic engine that is Northern Virginia.

Virginia is the 12th most populous of the 50 states and is the 8th wealthiest. If you took away Northern Virginia, the remainder of Virginia would drop to being in the lowest quarter of the states in wealth.

The Commonwealth has a population of just over 7.5 million. Over one million of that population lives in Fairfax County alone. The next largest jurisdiction, Virginia Beach, has just over 400,000 residents. Of the 134 counties and cities in Virginia, 119 have populations under 100,000. Fifty-seven have populations of 20,000 or fewer. Nineteen have populations of less than 10,000.

In 2005 Virginia ranked seventh among the states in per capita personal income at $38,390, higher than the national per capita income of $34,586, but lower than Maryland at $41,760. Within the state the contrasts are again quite sharp. Northern Virginia had the highest per capita income at nearly $49,000 ($48,888). Central Virginia’s per capita income was about two-thirds of Northern Virginia at $34,729, about the national average. Southwest and Southside regions were less than half of Northern Virginia’s at $21,000. That number is lower than any of the 50 states; Louisiana is lowest at $24,582.

The contrasts across the regions of the state can also be seen in educational attainment of adults. Virginia ranks third in the nation for the most master’s degrees (9.5 percent) and doctorates (1.4 percent) and fifth for the most professional degrees (2.5 percent) as a percent of the population age 25 and over. At the same time, Virginia has the 21st highest percentage of adults, 18.5 percent, without high school diplomas among the 50 states. The percentage of adults without a high school diploma is above 30 percent in the Southside and Southwest regions and above 20 percent in the eastern, Valley, and west central regions.

According to an analysis by Education Week, Virginia’s children are more likely to experience success throughout life than the average child born in the United States. The index included 13 indicators. These indicators included family income, parent education, parental employment, high school graduation rates, postsecondary education participation, adult educational attainment, and total income. Once again it is clear when the data supporting these measures are disaggregated by region, Northern Virginia numbers are so high that they pull the rest of the state up into national prominence but overshadow the real needs in so much of the Commonwealth.

An important component of raising educational attainment in all regions of the state is the availability of quality preschool programs. Only about 40 percent of Virginia’s four-year-olds are enrolled in programs. I serve on the Governor’s Start Strong Council and will be working with the Governor to expand that number. But we need to be looking ahead to quality programming for three-year-olds in areas of greatest need because that is the age that the greatest opportunity for early learning exists. I applaud Fairfax County’s move to full-day kindergarten and will work to achieve full state funding of the Standards of Quality to make this improvement and others possible.

Thirteen Virginia public school districts were among the most outstanding school districts in the United States, according to Expansion Management’s 16th annual Education Quotient, a nationwide comparison of public schools. Six school districts were in the upper 17 percent and received gold medals: Albemarle, Fairfax, Loudoun, Roanoke, York, and Harrisonburg. Seven districts were in the upper one-third and received silver medals: Arlington, Hanover, Chesapeake, Chesterfield, Culpeper, Prince William, and Henrico. Details are in the Nov/Dec. 2006 issue of Expansion Management.

Eleven of Virginia’s high schools ranked in the top 100 schools across the nation, according to Newsweek magazine’s ranking based on rates of participation in college-level tests like Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. Only one of the eleven schools was south of the Rappahannock. Five of the schools were in Fairfax County (Woodson, Langley, McLean, Lake Braddock, and Oakton) and three were in Arlington County (Woodlawn, Washington & Lee, and Yorktown).

How could an issue like transportation that so desperately needed addressing take years for a legislative response? And when there is a response in 2007, why is the response so limited in its scope?

I was a member of the House of Delegates in the mid-1980’s when Governor Gerald Baliles put together a Commission to quantify transportation needs of the Commonwealth and recommended a method for funding those needs. The ten billion dollar, ten-year program the Commission recommended passed the General Assembly by one vote in the House of Delegates. At the end of the decade there was no follow-on program to meet the increased needs and costs of transportation. Instead, Governor George Allen went to work on a one and a half billion dollar tax cut plan that he could not get passed in the legislature. Governor Jim Gilmore followed him with his famous car tax cut that would have cost the state a billion and a half dollars each year if the General Assembly had not capped it at $950 million. Governor Mark Warner tried to get referenda passed in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads regions but was thwarted in his attempt by the public’s anti-tax and anti-growth mood.

Between the transportation funding program of 1986 and today, the vehicle miles traveled in the state have gone up by 79 percent, registered vehicles up 53 percent, population up 20 percent, licensed drivers up 34 percent. At the same time the buying power of transportation dollars declined by 40 percent.

Enter Governor Timothy Kaine who with his magnificent negotiation skills fashioned a modest transportation package that was enacted this year. Tax-averse legislators who had pledged not to raise taxes themselves did agree that Transportation Authorities that are not elected could raise various fees and taxes in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads to pay for regional projects. One of the masterminds of the Hampton Roads project was defeated in a Republican Primary last week as was another senator who supported the bill. Two other Republican senators were able to stave off primary challenges based on their votes on the transportation bills.

Bask in the glory that we made a modest advance in transportation funding, but be ready for a return to the issue in a couple of years when there is a realization of how little we have done.

The most important transportation project for this part of the region, rail in the Dulles Corridor, continues to make progress. Expect construction to begin early next year. It continues to be critically important that we not make missteps that would cause delay in the project and that could jeopardize the $900 million federal monies expected for it. As Chairman of the Board of the Dulles Corridor Rail Association (DCRA) I continue to give it more time than any other single initiative with which I am involved.

Virginia was ranked #1 as “Best State for Business” by Forbes.com. Virginia was designated “America’s Top Pro-Business State” by Pollina Corporate Real Estate, a top U.S. corporate site relocation expert. The Pollina Corporate study examines 28 factors relative to states’ efforts to be pro-business. See summary at www.pollina.com.

According to the American Electronics Association, Virginia has the highest percentage of its private-sector workforce employed in software, hardware, engineering and communication services in the technology sector of any state in the nation at 8.9 percent.

These accolades came to the Commonwealth in part because of its favorable tax structure. In spite of all the anti-tax political rhetoric that you continue to hear, the numbers from several independent sources show Virginia to be a very low tax state. State and local revenue as a percent of personal income in Virginia is 47th lowest among the fifty states. State and local taxes as a percent of personal income in Virginia are 45th lowest among the states.

Low taxes are wonderful and should always be an objective of government. But low taxes have a consequence as well. Virginia state spending for public education, K-12, is 42nd lowest among the states. We keep our excellent public schools because local taxpayers are willing to pick up the difference through their property taxes. Our average annual in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions is 18th highest among the states. Although Medicaid has been one of the most rapidly expanding areas of the state budget, per capita total Medicaid expenditure in Virginia is 48th lowest among the states.

The stinginess of the state in being unwilling to fund necessary programs has forced local governments to make up the difference in program costs. The result is the Virginia per capita local taxes is 17th highest among the states.

One of the areas of gross under-funding by the state is mental health. The tragic events at Virginia Tech have pulled back the curtain on the tremendous need that exists for mental health programs and the dire consequences that can come from not meeting the need. We need to shape up our processes, no question about it, but we need also to have programs in place that can provide treatment for the seriously mentally ill who are threats to themselves and others. The National Alliance on Mental Illness gave Virginia a grade of D in its 2006 Grading the States: A Report on America’s Health Care System for Serious Mental Illness. That grade was arrived at by averaging Virginia’s score on Infrastructure, D; Services, D+; Recovery Supports, D+; and Information Access, F. Governor Mark R. Warner provided major funding increases for mental health services, but we need to build on his leadership.

My Report would not be complete if I did not mention my continuing concern – now shared by many others – about our environment. No question that we can do better with our legal and regulatory framework to protect our environment. At the same time we must take individual action to improve the environment. A student in my legislative district, Kristen Skowronski, recently brought to my attention the adverse effects on the Chesapeake Bay of using dishwashing detergent containing phosphates. We are on a campaign to get persons to voluntarily choose phosphate-free detergent for their dishwashers while looking ahead to legislation such as that passed in Maryland.

As you may know, I am running unopposed for reelection to the House of Delegates this year. Upon reelection I will be the fourth most senior member of the House of Delegates. I look forward to the day when my party or when moderates take over the House of Delegates. One of the measures I will continue to propose as I have since 1978 is for an independent reapportionment process that should result in more competitive races and better government.

A Commonwealth with a rich history, with diverse regions each contributing their own strengths and needs and with the potential for a very rich and bright future: that is the state of the Commonwealth as I see it today. Be assured of my continued efforts to make our state an even better place in which to raise a family, live, work, and play.