Annapolis, MD
AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
Thank you all very much for joining us.
As you know, Maryland’s constitution asks us to come together in a special session, every ten years, to draw federal, Congressional districts, based on changing census data. Today, I will be calling a special session to address the recommendations of the bipartisan commission – led very ably by Jeanne Hitchcock.
We will use the opportunity of the Special Session to address the #1 issue that we face as a State – job creation. Since January, we’ve created nearly 15,000 net new jobs in our State. But all of us agree that in these tough economic times, we need to do more. The most important job we create is the next job.
Today, I am signing an Executive Order for a 60-day review of current State regulations, with the intent of finding regulations we can reform and/or eliminate in order to spark faster job creation. The intent here, is to bring a package of reforms to the General Assembly (the most impactful being our capital budget).
We also intend to use the session to build the consensus necessary to pass a meaningful jobs package in the 2012 session. Speaker Busch and President Miller will convene respective bodies and tomorrow, there will be hearings on our State’s infrastructure needs and the jobs impact.
Our infrastructure is one of those areas where we have the largest investment deficit in our State – and it’s something that matters both for job creation today, and for what type of State we leave to the next generation.
As an Administration, we have a number of things we intend to look at, along with our partners in the General Assembly,…things like the Sunny Day Fund, and identifying shovel ready projects to move forward, just to name a couple examples.
There is no easy button or quick fix when it comes to finding a way forward; maximizing the potential for job creation. And that’s what we intend to do over these next months.
Thank you.
Tags: annapolis, redistricting, special session
