Rick Morris, left, Riley Ingram, center, and Manoli Loupassi chat as lawmakers return to Richmond to kick off the 2015 General Assembly on Wednesday in Richmond. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
RICHMOND — Familiar political priorities commingled with fresh attempts at compromise in Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s first State of the Commonwealth address to the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.
The governor called again for the expansion of Medicaid, passage of the Dream Act, restoring a one-per-month limit on handgun purchases and eliminating a ban on same-sex marriage from the state code.
The bulk of the lengthy speech Wednesday fell into the territory where the entrepreneur-turned-politician appears most comfortable: economic development.
“We must grow, strengthen, and diversify,” he told lawmakers, who had gathered for the opening day of the 2015 General Assembly session at Richmond’s ice-crusted Capitol.
McAuliffe urged investments in workforce training, public education, transportation and green technology. He made a business-oriented case for his legislative package, which is far more robust than the one bill and one doomed budget plan he submitted last year, his first as governor.
His remarks capped a tumultuous first day in the General Assembly dominated by the return of Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, the Democrat-turned-independent who won a Tuesday special election for his own seat while serving in jail on a misdemeanor conviction. Discussions over whether to attempt to expel the incarcerated lawmaker are ongoing.
There was no mention of Morrissey in the governor’s remarks. He did touch on ethics reform, reiterating his support for a $100 cap on all gifts to public officials. Many lawmakers resistant to that hard limit last year have come around in the wake of former governor Robert F. McDonnell’s sentencing to two years in prison on federal corruption charges.
In response to McAuliffe’s speech, House and Senate Republicans criticized the governor, accusing him of raising “divisive issues . . . that led to last year’s impasse.” They pledged to work together on a balanced budget, ethics reform, campus safety and education.
“We have deliberately crafted our agenda to promote issues on which we believe there will be broad agreement,” Del. Margaret B. Ransone (R-Westmoreland) said in a statement.
Yet Republicans did join several standing ovations during the speech, celebrating economic development deals, veteran hiring programs and protection for school funding. And the Syracuse-born governor got a big laugh from both sides of the aisle when he declared that “we simply cannot allow those New Yorkers to come down here to Virginia” and win an ion collider project.
“Full disclosure: I came up with that one myself,” he added.
Despite his political setbacks, McAuliffe struck a cheerful note in his address. He touted the work he has been able to accomplish without legislative agreement, in particular the many business investments he has brought to the state with his extensive political and international contacts.
Newly elected delegates Joe Preston, left, and Kathleen Murphy take a picture together as lawmakers return to Richmond to kick off the 2015 General Assembly on Wednesday in Richmond. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post) “As you know, I love my job,” the perpetually enthusiastic governor said, drawing laughs when he joked about chewing on “fried cicadas and chicken paws” in pursuit of bringing more companies to the state.
Yet he faces opposition from Republicans in this arena as well; they say he has been too quick to tap into his economic development fund and are resisting his plan to double its size. In his speech, McAuliffe said he would offer legislation creating a new fund solely for the energy industry.
He also trumpeted executive actions legalizing gay marriage and undoing restrictive rules for abortion clinics, reiterating his campaign promise to be a “brick wall” against efforts to limit abortion rights. He highlighted his work to increase health-care access — without Medicaid expansion — through the federal marketplace and a new plan for Virginians with severe mental illnesses.
McAuliffe made a passionate appeal for new gun laws, an issue likely to get little traction in the Republican-controlled legislature. In his remarks, the governor recognized a survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting in the gallery, who “still has three bullets in his body.”
On campus sexual assaults, the governor charted a cautious course. He said he would delegate the creation of a uniform sexual misconduct policy to the State Council of Higher Education while proposing that a dismissal from a public university for violating sexual misconduct policy be recorded on a student’s academic transcript. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has gone much further, proposing that local and university police report campus sexual assaults to local prosecutors within 48 hours.
McAuliffe has announced his own bipartisan initiative, a transportation bill with powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman S. Chris Jones (R-Suffolk) that would reform the process by which the state builds roads under public-private partnerships.
“We wasted $300 million in taxpayer dollars and counting,” he said, before even breaking ground on a highway in southeastern Virginia. McAuliffe pulled the plug on that project early in his administration.
During a special session in September, McAuliffe came to an agreement with lawmakers on how to close most of a $2.4 billion shortfall. To cover the rest, McAuliffe is pushing to close some tax preferences, including those intended to promote coal-industry employment, and to increase restaurant inspection fees.
He pushed for higher penalties for companies that fail to pay women and men equally. Acknowledging that his proposed 2 percent pay raise for state employees was eliminated from last year’s budget, he said he would like to compromise with lawmakers on some pay increase.
At a prayer breakfast Wednesday morning, he implored an audience that included many Republican lawmakers to “build bridges.” Only minutes earlier, he shared a warm moment with McDonnell (R), exclaiming over a photograph of his predecessor’s newborn grandchild. McDonnell, who reports to prison Feb. 9, was greeted by a large crowd of well-wishers.
The session kicks off an election year in which all 140 seats in the General Assembly will be on the ballot. Ordinary election-year tensions will be heightened this year by a federal court order to redraw a congressional map deemed unconstitutional and by the looming battle for control of the state Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority.
Among the hundreds of bills already submitted are some long shots more likely to land in campaign brochures than on the statute books in Virginia.
Several Democrats have bills intended to eliminate the requirement that women seeking an abortion first undergo an abdominal ultrasound.
From the Republican side come bills that would require people to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote and force the attorney general to defend state laws or the constitution when they are challenged. The latter, brought by Del. Brenda L. Pogge (R-James City County), is in response to a decision last year by Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) not to defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Gay marriage later became legal in Virginia when the U.S. Supreme Court in October let stand lower court rulings that found it unconstitutional.
