When I ran for governor in 2009, I promised the people of Virginia that if they trusted me with this office, I would focus like a laser on putting in place policies that would allow the private sector in Virginia to create more jobs. Our message was simple: “Bob’s for Jobs.” And we meant it. We entered office in the height of the recession, with the worst unemployment rate Virginia had faced in decades, and $6 billion in budget shortfalls left by my predecessor, who had shuttered Virginia rest stops and called for a $2.2 billion tax hike. That first year, we didn’t make excuses, and we set priorities, made tough choices and reduced spending to 2006 levels without raising taxes on our citizens. That first year, Virginia went from 35th in the nation to third highest in net new job growth.

In the ensuing years, we have invested in core functions of government, reformed Virginia’s broken pension system and made state government do more with less. We gave state employees incentives for saving taxpayer money, saving tens of millions of dollars in the budget. We used public-private partnerships to defray the cost of maintaining Virginia’s highway rest areas. We streamlined regulations and got rid of onerous accounting gimmicks put in place by previous administrations that forced some businesses to prepay taxes. Using new technology, we reduced the average wait time for a notary public to receive a commission from the Secretary of the Commonwealth from 30 to seven days. That’s the kind of cost savings and increased efficiency that the people of Virginia expect and deserve from their elected leaders.