The Governor announced today that Virginia retained its highest possible ranking as a Tier 1 state in the 2007 Moody’s U.S. States Credit Scorecard. The report also noted that Virginia retained its Triple-A bond rating. Likewise, Standard & Poor’s, another leading rating agency, also affirmed Virginia ’s Triple-A status in its June U.S. Public Finance Report Card. Fitch, the third bond rating agency, reaffirmed Virginia ’s Triple-A bond rating on June 1.
Virginia has held a Triple-A bond rating since 1938, when Moody’s first began to rate state and municipal governments. The “Tier One” ranking by Moody’s places the Commonwealth in the top ten of all states.
Virginia is one of nine states to be Triple-A rated by Moody’s for 2007, and one of nine states to retain its ranking in the first tier of the scorecard.
The Commonwealth received top tier ranking in three of Moody’s four categories of analysis. Moody’s describes its rating as an “assessment of the expected willingness of state leadership to preserve a strong financial profile in the future, recognizing that all states face inevitable cyclical downturns as well as persistent constituent demands in excess of available fiscal resources.”