This is the only modern comprehensive constitutional history of any state, and as a history of Virgina, it is one of the oldest and most complex. Virginia's state legislature is the Virginia General Assembly, which was established in July 1619, making it the oldest current lawmaking body in North America. Brent Tarter's Constitutional History of Virginia covers over three hundred years of Virginia's legislative policy, from colony to statehood, revealing its political and legal backstory. From the very beginning in 1606, when James I chartered the Virginia Company to establish a commercial outpost on the Atlantic coast of North America, through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the fundamental constitutions of the colony and state of Virginia have evolved and changed as the demographic, economic, political, and cultural characteristics of Virginia changed. Elements of the colonial constitution influenced the character of the state's first constitution in 1776, and changing relationships between the people and their government, as well as relationships between the state and federal governments, have influenced how the state's constitution has evolved. Tarter explores that evolution and taps into its relevance to the people who have lived and still live in Virginia.

Considers. S. 60, to amend the Budget and Accounting Act to require Bureau of Budget to publish a Federal domestic aid programs catalogue and to transfer from OEO to the Bureau of Budget responsibility for the Federal information exchange system (including its Federal domestic aid programs catalogue). S. 2479, to amend the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1968 to permit consolidation of Federal aid programs, facilitate management of joint Federal-state and Federal-local projects, and give Congress oversight authority. S. 2035, to permit consolidation of Federal aid programs.