Annapolis, MD
As Prepared for Delivery
Click here to view the slideshow presentation (pdf)
Thank you Daniel and Gabrielle – two of my very favorite Maryland entrepreneurs. Thanks for reminding us through your own can-do spirit that Maryland’s greatest asset is our people.
Thank you allfor joining us. We put together this symposium, because in challenging times, the most important job we create is the next job.
In a few moments, as Secretary Johansson mentioned, you’ll hear from three panelists: Maureen McAvey from the Urban Land Institute, Daniel White, from the Whiting Turner Company, and Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President of the UMBC. Each brings to the table an important prospective on job creation.
But we also want to hear your prospective, as we look toward job creation initiatives in the upcoming legislative session. Today there will be opportunities for you to share your thoughts, both during our session, and afterwards, through comment sheets we’ll be distributing.
In October, I signed an Executive Order for a 60-day review of current State regulations, so that we can find potential reforms that will facilitate job creation. We asked for the public’s input and the public responded with 352 suggestions that our agency staff are currently reviewing. Is there anybody with us from the GBC? Can you stand up? The GBC have truly been all-stars in spreading the word and encouraging their fellow business leaders to send in suggestions.
Today is the next step in the process of soliciting your input so that together we can create more jobs, as our economy – both nationally and here in Maryland – shows very real signs of improving.
As a nation, we have now achieved 21 straight months of consecutive private sector job creation. And for the first time since 2005-2006, job growth has risen across the board for thirteen straight months.
In Maryland, so far this year we’ve created 20,400 net new jobs, our best start to a year since 2005. We have now recovered 40% of the jobs we lost during the recession, significantly faster than the 25% pace the rest of the country is recovering at.
Our rate of unemployment, which we drove down this month, is 20% lower than the national rate. And together, we’ve driven home foreclosures down to a rate 72% lower than the national rate – following 15 consecutive months of annual decline.
But better is not good enough. We haven’t regained all that we’ve lost in the Bush recession; too many of citizens are hurting, still searching for work. There’s a lot to do.
And job creation is our most urgent and important priority. Let’s have the first slide,…
Because of the choices we’re making together, we’re moving in the right direction. But better isn’t good enough.
If you look at the trends,… declining high school completion compared to other countries, declining college completion, declining patents awarded to U.S. companies,… and then you look at the declining investments we’re making in our own research & development and infrastructure,… it’s not what other countries are doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing for ourselves.
If we don’t make the right choices to move our country forward, we risk slipping behind our global competitors,… I saw Marylander Thomas Friedman give a talk at the National Governors Association in which he said: “We need to cut, and we need to raise, and we need to reinvest, because the country we need to rediscover is our own.”
And why is that? Because, as he says, quote: “The long-term concern is that people intuitively understand that what we need most now is nation-building in America. They understand it by just looking around at our crumbling infrastructure, our sputtering job-creation engines and the latest international education test results that show our peers out-educating us, which means they will eventually out-compete us.”
To create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments. That isn’t a Democratic or Republican idea, it’s an American idea; an historic and economic truth that we have proved out time and again as a people. In Maryland, through a combination of strategic investment and smarter government, we’re creating jobs and laying the groundwork for future job creation.
To create jobs in this changing new economy, we must: Educate, Innovate, Rebuild, Reform, and Make Government Work.
Because we’ve made modern, record investments in our public schools, we’ve built, together, what Education Week magazine says for the third year in a row are America’s #1 best public schools.
Why do the investments we make in the skills and education of our people matter?
Because it’s no coincidence that the unemployment rate for college graduates is half the rate of those with only a high school diploma.
Because by 2018, 77% of job openings in Maryland will require training or education beyond high school.
To advance the skills and education of our people, we have a number of strategies underway to reinvigorate STEM education: science, technology, engineering and math. And working together, we’ve been able to increase the number of STEM graduates by 10%; increase the number of AP exams taken in the STEM disciplines by 23%, and bring the cutting edge Project Lead the Way STEM curriculum to 20 school districts. We are also working to align our K-12 educational system with four year colleges and universities, community colleges, and the workforce.
Maryland’s Economy is an Innovation Economy:
The Milken Institute ranks us in the Top 2 for science and technology;
The Kauffman Index ranks Maryland in the Top 3 best positioned to win in the new economy;
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranks Maryland in the Top 5 for growth; and
Ernst & Young ranks Maryland as having the 12th lowest tax burden on new investment.
Here are some of our initiatives for spurring job creation through innovation; innovation in the life sciences, innovation in cyber security, innovation in clean-tech and green tech, innovation in advanced manufacturing, innovation in aerospace, innovation to advance global trade.
Infrastructure investments create jobs. Tens of thousands of them. In the past 5 years, we’ve created jobs with a record investment in school construction. And to continue creating jobs and to continue creating the conditions necessary to create jobs, we are investing in our infrastructure.
In the upcoming legislative session, we have a number of tough choices to make – and if we are willing to make them, we have the ability to create thousands of jobs while modernizing our infrastructure for the next generation.
To help our businesses create jobs, as I mentioned we are undergoing a sixty day review of existing regulations.
We’ve identified a number of positive reforms that we can make together to help businesses create jobs. Here are a sneak peak of three of them:
1. Repealing or reforming regulations to allow for online filing with MDE of Notices of Intent;
2. Eliminating the requirement for local resolution on neighborhood business development programs because businesses are already required to receive approval from the local jurisdiction through the licensing and permitting process.
3. Repealing the requirement that nursing home developers obtain pre-approval by DHMH to reduce pre-construction delays.
In order to do any of these things, we can only move forward, with a government that works. And with your help, these past five years we have been making our government work better for the people we serve.
Our strategy for creating jobs and moving forward in challenging times is balanced between cuts, revenues, and investment.
With a government that works, we continue to look for opportunities to partner with those of you in the private sector, so that together we can create jobs and make progress in this changing new economy,… whether it’s by cutting bureaucratic red tape or unleashing venture capital through InvestMaryland.
Thank you.
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