State of the State Address
January 31, 2007
To my wife Katie and our kids, to my mom Barbara O'Malley, and to Joe Curran, one of the great public servants in our state's history, thank you all very much for being here and thank you all for your support.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Chief Judge, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Comptroller, Madame Treasurer, my colleagues in government of the Maryland General Assembly, my colleagues in county and municipal government, my fellow citizens and friends.
Today, we assess our strengths and weaknesses and set out an agenda for making progress towards our shared goals.
Because of the values that we share as Marylanders fortunately, I think you will agree that there is a tremendous amount of consensus around the timeless goals that together we choose to pursue as a State:
- To strengthen and grow our middle class and our family owned businesses and our family farms.
- To improve public safety and public education in every part of our state.
- And, to expand the opportunities – the opportunities of learning, of earning, of enjoying the health of the people that we love, as well as enjoying the health of the land, the water, the environment that we love – to more people rather than fewer.
A Strong State
These are our goals, and fourteen days into the four years that the people of our State have given to us to make progress, I am glad to join you today and report that thanks to the hard work of our fellow citizens for decades, maybe even indeed centuries past – and despite the drift of recent years – the state of our state, today, is strong.
Today, Maryland is the 2 nd wealthiest state in the union. Today, our institutions of scientific and healing discovery – known throughout the world – are among the largest recipients of research grants in the nation. And today, we are blessed with a variety of natural beauty, of land and water, that is unrivaled in any state our size.
But, you know, in many ways, for all our achievements and for all of our blessings, we are also a state of extremes, aren't we?
- A strong state with a huge looming structural deficit.
- A strong state with a violent crime rate that is one of the highest in the nation.
- A strong state where yet the number of uninsured Marylanders has reached 800,000, as increasing numbers of small businesses find it financially impossible to cover their employees healthcare costs.
- A strong state where more and more hard-working families are finding that college education, for their children here in our State, is slipping out of reach.
Yes, we are a strong state, today. But not as strong as we should be – and certainly not as strong as our country needs for us to be.
E.B. White once wrote that we are torn by two powerful drives: The desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set it straight. And so it is with Maryland. We know that to sustain those things which we so love about our state – our Bay, our neighborhoods, our places of higher thought, our quality of life – we must set things straight or they will be irreparably harmed and perhaps in some cases, forever lost.
We have consensus around the goals we share. Now it is our job to forge consensus around the obligations that we must meet in order to sustain progress toward those goals.
Strengthen and Grow Our Middle Class
To strengthen and grow our middle class – especially as we face our budget challenges – it is time to apply our strengths to solving the problems of our day. Time to apply our strengths to addressing our weaknesses – if you will.
Time to improve public education at all levels. Time to simultaneously improve public safety and homeland security. Time to extend health care coverage to more hard-working Marylanders. Time to conserve, protect and improve the environmental health of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Time to strengthen women and minority owned businesses in our state where our diversity is our strength. Time to advance and realize a statewide vision for transportation that includes mass transit, as well as roads. Time to stand up again, when necessary, to powerful wealthy special interests whenever they try to profiteer on the backs of the working people of our State.
Making Our Government Work Again
And my friends, since all of these endeavors will require a working government, let us first resolve to make our government work again.
Facing structural deficits amounting to more than $4 billion in the years to come, I ask you to approve a rate of growth in this year's budget that is just 2.5% – now that is lower than the rate of inflation, and it is lower than last year's 12% rate of growth in government spending, and it is lower than 9 of the last 10 state budgets.
I also ask for your support in confirming the best leaders we can possibly find to run the very complex and costly departments of our government. Lieutenant Governor Brown and I are very grateful for your patience, President Miller, as we assemble a professional cabinet with the ability, the expertise, and the professionalism to work with each member of this Assembly – regardless of party.
And in order to make our government work with greater efficiency and effectiveness, we will be implementing StateStat. What is that? It is a system of open and transparent administration that actually sets goals and has guts to measure progress towards achieving those goals. All of that with relentless follow-up.
In order to make our government work more effectively, I also ask for your cooperation in creating a new sub-cabinet on Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) chaired by Lieutenant Governor Brown . You know, in trying to get our heads around the challenge of the sort of growth that is coming to us because of BRAC, imagine this: We are going to be absorbing some 25,000 households in the State of Maryland, just because of BRAC, in just a few short years. Which is about the equivalent of having to absorb the city of Bowie in a very short period of time.
But, Maryland has been called upon to play a bigger and more important role in the defense of our nation. I mean that's why we are growing because of BRAC is because our country's security needs for us to grow around these institutions. And so we have to bring a greater coordination and cooperation to this effort. And our State government must work much more effectively with our county governments – to defend our quality of life in Anne Arundel, in Frederick, in Montgomery County and Harford and all other counties affected by BRAC – while we answer America's urgent security needs.
In order to make our government work, I will also be asking for your cooperation in elevating the importance of information technology in the management of our state government. This will mean better coordinating of IT functions and creating, for the first time, a cabinet level Department of Information Technology.
And in order to make our government work, we must also restore the regulatory framework of our state government. Which means that to protect consumers and to restore stability and predictability for businesses, we now have an opportunity to put professional regulators back on the job at our Public Service Commission.
And by making our government work, my friends, we are also going to start making regular, measurable strides towards increasing the participation of minority and women-owned businesses in the economy of our State. With a government that works, we are going to build around the competitive economic strengths that we have in this great State in science, and technology, and security and increasingly renewable energy and green buildings to expand earning opportunities for all our citizens.
Improving Public Education and Public Safety
But, you know, beyond the means – the means – of having a working government are the goals, right? The reasons why all of us come here. The reason why our colleagues work so hard in local government. The goals of improving public safety and public education – the very foundations of strong neighborhoods, strong counties and cities, and a stronger and growing middle class.
So to improve public education in every part of our State:
- I ask for your support for the final year of Thornton school funding – the largest single year increase in Maryland history for education, with an additional $580 million in funding for local school systems;
- I ask you to pass legislation, this year, that will codify our State's commitment to phase in funding for the Geographic Cost of Education Index, beginning next year;
- I ask that, together, we start the long process of getting our children out of the temporary learning shacks that have been popping up behind every school in our state – and please approve the record $400 million in school construction dollars proposed in this year's budget.
- On Education, I ask that you support in this year's budget, two very connected things. One is an increase in our investment in our institutions of higher learning by $192 million, including an 18% increase for Community Colleges.
And along with those investments, I ask for your support, this year, of SB 108 and HB 134 to freeze any further increase in tuition, this year, for in-state students. Now my colleagues, we all know that this is a short-term fix, but hopefully there is a longer-term fix that is coming and this will give families some relief, after all of the increases they've seen, while Lieutenant Governor Brown works with the Hogan Commission, led by Senator Hogan, on a long-term solution to keep higher education affordable for working people of our State. Working families must be able to send their children to Maryland colleges.
Let's talk a little bit about Public Safety and Homeland Security. And when it comes to improving Public Safety and Homeland Security, we most definitely have our work cut out for us.
Our Department of Corrections, Parole and Probation, and Juvenile Services – despite dedicated public employees throughout those various entities – are deeply troubled. All are in urgent need of reform and they have been for some time. It is little wonder that Maryland is the 5 th most violent state in the union.
Now, compounding that challenge is the relatively new historic fact that our nation's capital is now – and for the foreseeable future will be – a prime target in this new type of global warfare.
Among other things, I ask for your support this year for an additional $7 million dollars in this year's budget to fund 155 additional correctional officers. I also ask for your support for $2 million additional dollars to protect Maryland families from sexual predators, with advanced Global Positioning Systems that track offenders and give law enforcement, as well as families, a heads up to protect their own children.
I ask for your support also for an additional $500,000 for the Maryland State Police. This will allow them to knock out the huge backlog of violent offenders from whom a DNA “fingerprint” – if you will – has yet to be taken. And therefore, crimes are going unsolved because we have not taken advantage of the technology and the laws which you yourselves passed a few years ago that would allow local police department to solve more rapes and murders and violent crimes. It's a half million dollars and it will be well spent. And I finally ask for your support for an additional $5 million to expand drug treatment through the increased use of recently approved buprenorphine therapies that can free our neighbors of the scourge of addiction.
And let me say also that I am looking forward to working with the members of both houses, with the House and the Senate, as well as our local police departments and our local state's attorneys, many of whom are here with us today to we find new ways that we can come together to attack our common enemies of gang violence, drug addiction and violent crime.
In order to make Maryland a leader in improving Homeland Security, I would propose the following:
- We are going to constitute a new Maryland Security Council to bring all of the relevant agencies and departments into the prevention, preparedness and recovery regimen on a quarterly basis. And we are going to quickly obtain a professional and thorough assessment of Maryland's true level of homeland security and emergency preparedness, not just so we can benchmark, but more importantly, so we can start producing those security deliverables that our people's safety demands;
- We are going to pursue cooperation of our neighbors in the District of Columbia and in the State of Virginia – as well as our respective congressional delegations – to secure an expanded federal definition of the National Capital Region for homeland security planning and funding purposes.
- I have directed our Transportation Secretary to formulate a plan of action that will lead to the Port of Baltimore becoming the best inspected and most secure port in the United States of America.
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