Virginians are Virginia’s harshest critics. We have little good to say about our government or the people who run it. But all things are relative. When outsiders rate the states, as the Pew Center on the States has done, Virginia comes out on top, sharing the highest grade, A-, with Utah and Washington state. To mangle a Winston Churchill quote, Virginia has the worst government — except all the others.

The Pew project, Grading the States 2008, rates the states on four broad criteria: fiscal systems, human resource systems, quality of infrastructure, and information technology. Virginia performed consistently well across the board, scoring the highest grade in the country for human resource systems.

Fiscal systems: A-
Human resources: A
Infrastructure: B+
Information technology: A

See the 50-state summary here. View details on Virginia here.