If reportRunner is in View scope or higher, the input fields should retain their value without requiring you to do anything at all. When a
JSF page is displayed, the current values of the properties will be displayed automatically. That's Request Scope doesn't work - a whole new bean would have been created with whatever values the bean had initialized to.
You seem to be overcomplicating this operation. If you want an AJAX-style auto-submit of a value on enter, you don't need valuechangelisteners, since the normal JSF lifecycle is going to set the property for you. However, I have doubts about using raw JavaScript to submit the JSF form. You're better off using an AJAX-aware tagset such as RichFaces or IceFaces or use the JSF2 AJAX features.