Tech Council of Maryland
Annapolis, Maryland
January 20, 2010
(As Prepared)
Thank you Robert Scheer, and thanks to Renee Winsky, Ed Rudnic, and to everyone with the Tech Council.
It’s an honor to join you here tonight. On behalf of our entire Administration, thank you for the work that you are doing to bring jobs and economic opportunity to our State, especially in these tough times, when we face this imperative of putting our country back to work, revitalizing our economy and restoring the prosperity we know is in reach for our State if we’re willing to choose in our own here and now to invest in these high tech, high-potential sectors of our economy.
Our urgent focus for this session is, and has to be, on three things: jobs, jobs, and jobs. Creating jobs, protecting jobs, and expanding opportunity. Jobs from innovation in science, security, and discovery. Jobs of noble and valuable service. Jobs that create and rebuild our vital connections of travel, trade, and business. Jobs that revitalize and restore our environment. Jobs in teaching and healing.
The benefit of the type of jobs that you create in the high-tech, high potential sectors of our economy is that they not only have the potential to help us reinvigorate our economy, but in a sense to remake our world.
In big ways and in small ways, the immensity of the problems we face with respect to job creation, climate change, poverty, terror, resource security, energy security, and health is driving the innovation in every sphere of education, research, technology and life-sciences that we count among Maryland’s greatest competitive strengths. From our colleges, universities, laboratories, and companies of Maryland spring forth the discoveries and technologies that will transform, for the better, the way we feed, fuel, and heal this world of ours.
The work you do matters, and our job in your state government is to create the conditions that will allow you to create and protect these new high-tech, high-potential jobs in our State. That’s why our mission remains the same, and it is this: to strengthen and grow the ranks of an increasingly diverse, upwardly mobile middle class – including our family owned businesses and farms; to improve public safety and public education in every part of our State; and to expand opportunity, the opportunity to learn, to earn, and to enjoy the health of the people we love and the environment we love.
Maryland’s Economy
In terms of our economy, nobody would argue that as a State, as a country, as a planet, we are out of the woods yet. Those of you in business feel it in your balance sheets, and families in every part of our State are feeling it in their own budgets. Too many of the small businesses in our State – the backbone of our economy – are shutting their doors. I talk with businesses owners every day who are struggling just to make payroll. And families struggle every day just to keep the lights on. Just to make that monthly mortgage payment or the minimum payment on their Visa card.
But this is not going to be the first recession in American history that lasts forever – things are going to get better. .
The recession isn’t going to last forever, and we here in Maryland are not only weathering it better than most of the other 50 states – we’re in position to come out stronger. Why do I say that?
Is it because unemployment in Maryland is 26% below the national average? Partially.
Is it because we’re one of only seven states which continues to defend a Triple A bond rating, certified by all three major bond rating agencies? Partially.
Is it because only two other states have held on to their jobs better than Maryland in the past year, if you look at the numbers? Another big part of it.
Is it because we’re actually growing in high tech sectors like Computer Systems Design where we had the best growth in America last year thanks to 6,000 small businesses working in this sector in our State? That’s a very big part of it.
I would argue the biggest reason that we’re in a better position than other States is because of the talents, skills, creativity, and ingenuity of our people, our greatest asset. Because we’ve chosen together to make record investments in K-12 education, we have the #1 best schools in America – and don’t just take the word of our State’s braggadocios governor – you can take the word of Education Week magazine which just ranked our schools #1 for the second year in a row.
When you have the nation’s best public schools – and when together you choose to be the only state in America to go not one, not two, not three but four years in a row with no increase in in-state tuition at our four year colleges and universities – you end up with one of America’s most highly skilled workforces.
A Fiscally Responsible Budget which Advances Innovation
Let me say a quick word about the reason that we’ve been able to make progress in things like public education and college affordability. You know in business that a company can only survive – especially in tough times – if your books are in order. Well what happens when a state government doesn’t keep it’s books in order? You end up with things like the $1.7 billion structural deficit we inherited three years ago.
As Marylanders, when faced with adversity we don’t make excuses, we make progress – and in these last three years, together we’ve been able to bring fiscal responsibility back to state government. Each year, we’ve been able to pass a budget which is not only balanced, but comes in under spending affordability guidelines. For the first time since the Great Depression general fund spending today is less than it was just three years ago. All told, together we’ve cut $4.6 billion in spending in just three years, while strategically reducing the size of our government by 3,300 positions and reforming it to make it more accountable to our shareholders: the people of Maryland.
In this year’s budget, we’re proposing to bring our total four year spending reduction to $5.6 billion. But because we’ve chosen together – as One Maryland – to restore fiscal responsibility, we continue to have the opportunity to make the sorts of investments in innovation that will create the conditions to support all of you in creating high tech, high potential jobs.
We’d likely all agree that the number one, most important ingredient in innovation is education. In this budget, we are proposing to make the single largest investment ever in our history in our public schools. With this investment, education funding in our State will have increased by $1.2 billion in four years.
For higher education, in this budget we’ve been able to hold tuition increases in our state university system to a modest 3% - after we were the only state in America to freeze it for four years, which allowed us to go from being 6th most expensive in America down to 21st where we’re projected to be in FY11.
To advance technology and innovation in our State, this year’s budget proposal includes $3.4 million for TEDCO, including a quarter million for the incubator initiative, and that’s on top of the $12.4 million investment we’re asking the General Assembly for in Stem Cell Research – building on the more than $53 million we’ve invested together these past three years.
And to further the progress we’re making in the biosciences, our budget also includes $6 million for the Biotech Tax Credit, $4 million for the Maryland Biotech Center, $16 million for the Germantown Biosciences Center, and $5 million for the East Baltimore Biotechnology Park – all part of our Bio 2020 initiative, the biggest investment any State has ever made in the life sciences.
Maryland’s Innovation Economy
When you consider our world class workforce, and you think about the federal facilities which call our state home – not to mention our small businesses, industry leading companies, universities and colleges – it’s fair to say that innovation is something we do well here in Maryland. That’s thanks to all of you.
How do we “do” innovation even better? How do we create the conditions which allow you to reignite the limitless potential of Maryland’s Innovation Economy? It’s partially about the aforementioned investments we are making – the inputs, if you will – and it’s also about making the connections which allow us to produce even stronger outputs and outcomes:
- To make the connections which advance innovation, in September, we entered a strategic alliance with the State of California to advance stem cell research – because we are stronger when we work together;
- To make the connections which advance innovation, this year we opened the Maryland Biotechnology Center in Montgomery County and in Baltimore to promote innovation and entrepreneurship – and further our efforts to bring new jobs and opportunity to Maryland;
- To make the connections which advance innovation, in March we opened the Maryland Clean Energy Center in Montgomery County to promote green innovation and entrepreneurship and bring green collar jobs to Maryland.
- To make the connections which advance innovation, we’re working together to reinvigorate Career and Technology Education and Science, Technology, Engineer, and Math education in our State, and retool our curricula with environmental and financial literacy;
- To make the connections which advance innovation, we continue to work together toward the big goal we’ve set of creating or saving 100,000 green collar jobs in our state by 2015;
- To make the connections which advance innovation, we’ve started a Facilities Task Force designed to leverage the untapped potential of the more than 50 federal agencies and facilities in our State which are actually growing and creating jobs, and have a choice in which state they spend dollars;
- And to make the connections which advance innovation, we continue to work together to support IT sector, including cyber security, We are emerging as the national epicenter for cyber security thanks to the 6,000 small businesses which work on computer systems design in Maryland, thanks to companies like Lockheed-Martin which recently opened its NexGen center in Maryland, and thanks to all the federal facilities we have in our State – like the NSA, the NIST, and, we hope, the future Joint Cyber Command.
- Those interested in reading about the Cyber Security strategy we launched last week can click on www.choosemaryland.org, DBED’s website where we’ve made it available for download.
Conclusion
We have found these past three years, that we’re at our strongest as a State when we’re willing to set aside partisanship and embrace the higher callings of partnership and citizenship. As Marylanders, we don’t make excuses in times of great adversity, we make progress – progress that comes from tough decisions. Progress that’s a result not of chance, but of choice.
I hope to have your help and support in choosing further progress this legislative session on things like a $3,000 tax credit for every unemployed Marylander hired by a Maryland business, a new small business credit recovery program, and immediate UI relief for small businesses.
As Marylanders, in times of great adversity we lead – that’s who we are and what we do, and we understand that our greatness isn’t about how many smart bombs we can drop on our enemies half a world away, it’s about the smart, compassionate, helping hands we’re able to offer to the victims of the tragedy in Haiti or our fellow human beings who are hungry or afflicted with diseases like Malaria and AIDS. It’s about the ways we’re able to proliferate what Dr. Jeffrey Sachs calls “weapons of mass salvation” and about the ways we’re working to reverse global climate change.
Thank you for everything you are doing to help move our State forward.
