(The Center Square) — Kicking off the first day of Virginia’s 2024 legislative session, Gov. Glenn Youngkin gave the annual State of the Commonwealth address.
The governor touched on themes of bipartisanship, economic and educational growth, and improvements he sees vital to stemming the tide of Virginians leaving for other states.
After a disappointing general election for Republicans in which Democrats won control of the House and maintained control of the Senate, the governor strongly emphasized bipartisanship throughout this speech — starting with the first line.
“Today, we gather in our commonwealth’s Capitol, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Virginians,” Youngkin said after greeting key state officials present for the address.
The governor otherwise made a point to acknowledge other unique features of the 2024 session, including the unusually high number of new delegates and senators and the state’s first Black Speaker of the House, Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth. The Assembly welcomed 54 new members, mainly due to the once-a-decade redistricting that happened before the latest election and caused a wave of retirements.
Early on, he highlighted job growth since taking office, citing the 233,000 more Virginians working today than two years ago.
“Virginia has risen from bottom third in job growth to number three in the nation during the past 24 months. More Virginians are working today than ever before,” Youngkin said.
Education has been a focus for the Youngkin administration; he underscored not only the record amounts Virginia has invested in education in recent years but also the initiatives he has championed and the success some have yielded.
“We re-established expectations of excellence with intensive tutoring, adopting the science of reading … launching lab schools and renewing the focus on career and technical education,” he said.
Since his first day in office, when he issued three executive orders regarding K-12 education — and even before then, in his gubernatorial campaign — Youngkin has maintained a strong focus on education.
Virginia had taken steps toward establishing lab schools — schools that take a more specialized approach to education and maintain an ongoing collaborative partnership with a local college or university — before Youngkin took office, but he pushed to institute a program during his first legislative session.
Tutoring was part of his ALL IN VA Plan that began this fall to recover Virginia students’ academic achievement that has suffered since the pandemic. The governor gave an example of how intensive tutoring had helped one student, a girl from Gloucester, go from the second percentile to the 80th percentile in four months.
As for the remainder of his term, Youngkin expressed concern for the number of people leaving Virginia for other states. He sees tax reforms as a critical solution in reversing the ten-year trend.
“In the second half, we need to structurally reform our tax code. We can do this by cutting taxes across the board 12% and paying for almost 80% of this by modernizing our tax code, which includes closing the tech tax loophole and increasing the sales and use tax by 0.9%,” Youngkin said.
“To be clear, this is a package deal, and I’m only interested in a plan that reduces taxes for Virginians.”
In the final parts of his speech, Youngkin gave a glimpse into legislation that will likely be debated this session, making several appeals to the Assembly regarding what he’d like to see — and what he wouldn’t.
He requested they send him bills “prohibit[ing] tech companies from selling the data of children under the age of 18,” “say[ing] the commonwealth of Virginia won’t do business with companies that boycott Israel,” and “rais[ing] the penalty to felony homicide when the manufacturer or distributor of illicit drugs or fentanyl causes a death.”
He warned that he would veto legislation threatening Virginians’ “right to work.”
He also petitioned the Assembly for legislation repealing the Clean Cars law that ties Virginia’s vehicle emissions standards to California’s.