Legislative Highlights
May 2, 2007
Governor Martin O'Malley
This is Governor Martin O’Malley. I’m proud to report that in this session, working together with the General Assembly, your State Government held the line on overall spending, while also making historic investments in public education and passing landmark environmental legislation. Legislation that reduces automobile emissions and restores the health of our Chesapeake Bay.
Working closely with the General Assembly and with members of both parties, we allocated $5.2 billion to fully fund local education under the Thornton School Plan. We also allocated $400 million for school construction, the largest single year allocation in Maryland history. We also appropriated $15 million in order to freeze in-State tuition for students at public colleges and universities.
On the environment this year we passed the Clean Cars Act to reduce auto emissions, the Oyster Restoration Act to restore this natural filter to the Bay. And we fully funded Program Open Space and provided record funding for cover crop programs, which not only help farmers but also protect the waters that flow into the Bay.
During this year's legislative session, the Maryland General Assembly and I have worked together to invest a record $400 million into school construction, to start to get our children out of the temporary learning shacks and into decent classrooms. We have frozen college tuition, so that we can provide more opportunity for Maryland's working families who deserve to be able to afford to send their kids to Maryland colleges.
We also fully funded program Open Space to get ahead of the development that's chewing up too much Maryland land. We also reduced car emissions and tackled global warming with a new Clean Cars Law. We also helped farmers protect their land by investing in cover crops and innovation of best practices. And we took affirmative steps to start to clean up the health of the Chesapeake Bay, not only by measuring performance of the various Bay programs through BayStat, but also by restoring native oysters, the natural filter to the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
