(The Center Square) — Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin delivered the final State of the Commonwealth address of his term Monday after a delayed start to the 2025 General Assembly session, urging the state legislature to “keep Virginia winning” with bills it passes this year.
The governor began his speech by recounting how his administration and the General Assembly have delivered on priorities and policies that have made Virginia stronger.
“In our three years together, we have built strong pillars that support a winning Virginia,” Youngkin said, listing record funding in education and learning loss recovery efforts, $5 billion in tax relief, streamlining “50,000 regulations” as some of their chief accomplishments.
Youngkin has historically compared Virginia to its Southern neighbors, pointing to their notable population growth and saying people are attracted to those states because of a better cost of living or more conservative tax policies. For the first time in a decade, Virginia joined some of its neighbors in having greater in-migration than out-migration in 2024 – but positive trends like that wouldn’t continue if the commonwealth didn’t continue to build the “strong pillars that support a winning Virginia,” according to the governor.
“Certain states consistently attract people and jobs, and other states consistently lose people and lose jobs. The reality is that Virginia must compete harder than ever,” or else risk falling behind again, Youngkin said.
The governor highlighted several tax, public safety, disaster relief and other policies he sees as critical to the state’s success. Still, he focused most on education, energy, and maternal and infant health care bills.
Education spending has been a sticking point for Republicans and Democrats throughout the governor’s administration. Though the governor has signed budget bills containing record education funding, the parties typically differ on where the money should be spent on education.
While Youngkin encouraged continued support for some of his education initiatives – like more investment in lab school and scholarships to private schools for some low-income students and the new School Performance and Support framework – he also touched on an issue that should find bipartisan support: redesigning Virginia’s K-12 funding formula. However, it may not happen during this legislative session.
“I urge us to not piecemeal this effort during this session, but rather finalize the foundational and comprehensive re-design of our funding formula, and start drafting legislation later this year,” Youngkin said.
The governor also addressed the state’s potential energy crisis and directly opposed his predecessor’s energy plan, saying the previous administration had not accounted for the state’s growth in recent years.
“The Virginia Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020, simply is not working,” Youngkin said. “We need to nearly double our power generation in the next 10 years and wind and solar aren’t going to get it done.”
Youngkin has always supported a transition to greener energy sources for the state, but he has often criticized former Gov. Ralph Northam’s plan as too aggressive and said other forms of energy generation needed to be incorporated into an “All-of-the-Above” energy plan. But Monday, he plainly called for an end to stamping out the commonwealth’s older energy sources and for much more natural gas.
“We must stop decommissioning our baseload generation, build more natural gas generation, lots of it, build small modular reactors,” as well as “finish[ing] the projects that are currently underway,” Youngkin said.
Though Virginia’s data center industry is one of the defining challenges of the state’s energy landscape, Youngkin still supported bringing more to the commonwealth.
“We should continue to be the data center capital of the world,” Youngkin said.
Finally, the governor spoke on efforts to support maternal and infant health and more child care.
“With… budget and legislative actions I am proposing, we can embrace interventions to ensure healthy babies, healthy mothers, and healthy communities.”
This article was originally published at www.thecentersquare.com
