RICHMOND — A Virginia commission formed to identify root causes of inequality in state law has recommended a number of policy changes aimed at addressing racial disparities in economic opportunity, rural life and environmental conservation.

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       From paid family and medical leave to tax relief, foreclosure protection and access to legal and health services, the 45 policy prescriptions are contained in a 65-page report issued Thursday by the Commission to Examine Racial and Economic Inequity in Virginia Law.

       Gov. Ralph Northam (D) created the commission last year. An earlier version of the panel had issued two reports in 2020 on racist language that persists in the state’s vast code of laws, from statutes created more than a century ago during the oppression of Jim Crow to more-recent legal language that discriminated based on race.

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       The General Assembly acted on many of the recommendations from those earlier reports and cut the offensive and archaic language out of state code.

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       Northam reconstituted the commission last year amid the coronavirus pandemic and charged it with identifying areas of economic discrimination. The 10 members — including lawyers, judges and business leaders — expanded their mission to take in issues related to rural life and environmental conservation.

       “This report, like those that preceded it, tells a sad story of the many different ways in which people of color in Virginia have disproportionately less access to economic opportunity, disproportionately worse life outcomes in rural communities and a disparate lack of conservation investment and access to outdoor space and fresh air,” said Andrew Block, the commission’s vice chair and a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

       Commission chair Cynthia Hudson, a former chief deputy state attorney general, called the work “daunting” but said she felt “extreme satisfaction” at having a chance for “policy building at the advancement of equity in our commonwealth.”

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       The commission found that Black families in Virginia have consistently earned far less income than other ethnic groups. In 2018, the median household income for Black Virginians was $61,923, the commission said — less than two-thirds that of non-Hispanic White families. The unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Virginians are nearly double that of White residents.

       But the commission went far beyond such top-line numbers to look at complex layers of what it called a “legacy of centuries of targeted and specific racial discrimination and oppression.” It found evidence of Black Virginians facing less access to capital, greater issues in recovering from debt and more difficulty in buying and keeping a home, to name just a few areas of economic disparity.

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       It found that minorities also face less access to quality education and health care in rural parts of the state and less access to green spaces.

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       The panel recommended policy prescriptions for dealing with all these issues and urged Virginians to “look beyond the labels and the finger pointing, to set politics aside, and focus instead on the history, the facts, the need, and the opportunity.”

       Northam received the report in a ceremony at the Maggie L. Walker house, a national historic site that was home to the first Black woman to charter a bank in U.S. history. Praising the commission for “a phenomenal amount of work,” Northam said the policy recommendations provide a road map for continuing to make the state more welcoming to its diverse population.

       He said he hoped his successor — Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R), who takes office on Jan. 15 — would consider the panel’s findings. “The new administration has a tremendous opportunity, and I hope they will build on the progress all of you have made,” he said.

       Members of the General Assembly, which will convene Wednesday, might also use the recommendations to propose laws. The House of Delegates will be under Republican control, while the Senate has a Democratic majority.

       A spokesman for Youngkin said he had no immediate comment on the report.