State of the State Address
January 31, 2007
Expanding Opportunity
But today, my friends, we compete economically, economically, as never before on a global and faster track. In a very real way, our economic security and competitiveness as a State depends not so much on the number of surveillance cameras that we can place around the perimeter of our port as it does on our ability to expand greater opportunities to greater numbers of our citizens – that human capital. The most important asset that we have.
Having already touched on our shared agenda for greater learning and greater earning opportunities, let's turn to the agenda that we share for expanding opportunities to more citizens on healthcare and on the environment.
Health Care
In order to begin to turn around the alarming trend of rising healthcare costs and every year, rising numbers of uninsured Marylanders, I ask that you pass the Maryland Healthcare Act. Among other things the act will:
- Create a Health Insurance Exchange to help small businesses find more affordable coverage for their employees – on a pre-tax basis.
- It will require insurance companies to allow younger adults up to age 25 to be covered under their parents' policies.
- And it will also provide healthcare coverage to more children in our state.
I also ask for your support of several other initiatives in this year's proposed budget:
- A 66% increase over last year's appropriation for a total, this year, of $25 million for Stem Cell healing research.
- The restoration of Medicaid healthcare benefits to legal immigrant families, including 3,000 Maryland children, and
- Over $100 million to strengthen our provider systems by increasing reimbursement rates for doctors participating in our State's Medicaid Program.
Now, all of you know that when physicians and other providers do not receive adequate compensation for the services that they provide, it threatens the quality and the effectiveness of our entire healthcare system. Therefore, as part of our legislative agenda, I also ask for your support for the task force on Health Care Access and Physician Reimbursement.
Additionally, I ask for your support to create a Life Science Advisory Board – a potential precursor to a true Life Sciences Authority – so that we can more effectively grow an industry that currently, that already, employs 57,000 people around such places as Johns Hopkins, NIH, University of Maryland and the Food and Drug Administration, to name just a few.
And finally on healthcare, I ask for your support of a Universal Vaccine Purchasing Task Force, so that all of us can better understand how to protect Marylanders against the flu and other foreseeable diseases that can be prevented.
Now, because healthcare is a battle of a thousand partial victories, I also look forward to working with Chairman Hammen – Mr. Speaker, and Chairman Middleton – Mr. President – and others in the weeks ahead, as we roll up our sleeves to craft ways to improve healthcare coverage and our healthcare outcomes.
Our Environment
When it comes to the urgent work of protecting and improving the health of our Chesapeake Bay watershed for the benefit of generations to come, there is no time to waste. Nor is there a better time to begin looking towards the next generation of technologies that can help us in our drive to protect our environment, build our economy, to become that state, in reality as well as on seal, where the plowman and the fisherman exist together, in harmony.
Because smart sustainable growth is absolutely central to preserving our quality of life in this sensitive Bay watershed, I have directed our Secretary of Planning to reestablish the Office of Smart Growth.
As we move forward with the rapid development of BayStat, if you will, an application of performance management and performance measurement to all of our various Bay restoration efforts – please know that the following items are all contained in the budget that is before you right now:
- Every dollar of Open Space funding this year – an estimated $289 million – will be spent on open space.
- An additional $138 million, with your support, will go to improve local water and wastewater systems for the benefit of the health of the Bay.
- And with your support, Norm Conway, this budget will also provide record funding for cover crops and will triple Maryland's investment in the development of agriculture and resource-based industries through MARBIDCO.
By making sustainable farming in Maryland more profitable – by making sustainable farming in Maryland more profitable – we do in fact preserve open space and we do improve the health of the Bay.
The Speaker has been a tremendous champion of another bill that I am asking for your support on as well and that is the Oyster Restoration Act , which will , for the first time, allow the Department of Natural Resources to actually lease parcels of land on the floor of the Bay for oyster restoration projects. We need to restore this natural aquatic filter to the Chesapeake Bay if we ever hope to turn around the health of her waters.
We should also, my friends, we should also accept our responsibility in the fight against global warming by supporting stricter pollution emission standards for cars sold in Maryland by adopting the Clean Cars Act. By taking action, we are not only going to be able to help children who suffer everyday in our State from asthma, we are also going to be able to remove pollutants from the air, and also be able, to a degree, to remove those pollutants from the Bay. And we can join 11 other states in getting this done, and getting it done this year.
We are also going to be revamping, my friends, the Maryland Energy Administration to spearhead our state's efforts to advance the development of clean and renewable energy, including the next generation of biofuels – like cellulosic ethanol – which our academic institutions and private companies are already pursuing – out there in front of us. And government should lead the way by increasing the percentages of clean fuels that we purchase ourselves each year. By, investing in green building technologies, Maryland can and should lead on energy independence and the new opportunities that this new part of our economy brings to us.
Transportation
Transportation, Transportation. Because the decisions that we make about transportation determine – in a very real way – the future character of our State, this year's budget also fully protects the integrity of the Transportation Trust Fund. I ask for your support for the over $1 billion dollars in highway and roads projects across our state as well as the $300 million in mass transit projects that are part of that.
And I look forward to working with all of you in the months ahead as we bring greater balance to our efforts in transportation so that we have solutions to our transportation, traffic, congestion problems that also foster smarter and more sustainable patterns of growth for our future. But let's be very, very clear. We have to recognize that however efficiently and effectively we stretch our current level of investment in transportation solutions, we will never be able to multiply “bread and fishes” to cover the multitude of needs in our State without new dollars. It's a big, big challenge that we have for our future.
Conclusion
My friends, there are many other initiatives that will strengthen and grow our middle class – the agency fee legislation that allows state workers the right to organize and have their collective voices heard. An end to the cruel and antiquated practice of using ground rents to evict families from their homes. It's also, I know, members that we are going to be asking that we consider a living wage so the people who work hard are able to bring home a decent living for their families when they play by the rules.
These issues and many, many more to strengthen and grow our middle class, to improve public safety, public education, and to expand opportunity. In the days of this first session, I hope, my friends, that we will be able to spend the vast majority of our time solving problems and coming together around the solutions about which really there is so very, very much consensus that already exists in both chambers, even across party lines – and for which, I might add, there is a considerable amount of pent-up, public demand. The people of our State desperately want us to get things done again.
If we must have potentially polarizing debates this session – on issues like taxes, issues like the future of Maryland's 18,000 racing jobs, or issues like Maryland's ineffective death penalty law – let us do so recognizing that there are good and decent people on both sides of all of those debates.
We cannot resolve every unsettled issue in just 90 days; nor can we heal in 90 days the divisions that were four years in the making. But we must do all that we can to maximize the effectiveness of this session – and these four years – for the people of our State. For success breeds success. Mutual respect builds mutual trust. And important things done well make greater things possible.
This year, together, we are choosing to make progress - progress on the priorities of the people who we serve, the people who we listen to, and the people who elected us and pay our salaries in these temporary jobs we hold for them. Implicit, however, implicit in the choices that we make this year is the faith – the faith that we have the courage – the courage to face up to the fiscal reality before us in the course of the year ahead.
If not, we risk going back to a time that I don't think many of us were particularly proud of – making life less affordable for middle class families and senior citizens… Cutting funds to local governments… Stealing from our children's future by diverting dollars from open space, taking money that was supposed to be going to relief traffic congestion and instead using it to plug holes just for today. I don't believe that is the sort of future that we would choose.
With all humility, I promise you I will not squander the year ahead. To the contrary, I will do everything in my power to bring spending under control with professional management. I will do everything in my power to squeeze savings out of your government. I will do everything in my power to implement performance management and accountability. And I know you will do your tough jobs, as well.
You know, as we sit in this chamber, at this very hour, on the Eastern Shore in Cambridge, the children of Command Sgt. Major Roger Haller, 73 rd Marylander killed in action, are gathering to say goodbye to their father who was killed when his helicopter was shot down north of Baghdad. What that family is going through right now and in the days ahead is really, really difficult and deeply, deeply painful. By comparison, what we have to go through in the days ahead is merely a challenge and an honor.
So, let's get to work… for a better and stronger future… for the people of our One Maryland. Let's get to work.
Thank you.
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