Published on: Thursday, January 26, 2012

By Gov. Martin O'Malley

As our 2012 legislative session gets underway, we are more committed than ever to creating jobs, saving jobs and getting our people back to work.

We’re moving forward with a balanced approach of cuts, revenue and targeted investment. Over the past five years, together, we have now cut a record $6.8 billion in state spending. At the same time, we’ve invested in the things that help us create jobs — public education, school construction, affordable college, public safety, Chesapeake Bay restoration, and our roads, bridges and water infrastructure.

Together, we’ve made real progress. Through November of last year, we’ve created 26,700 net new Maryland jobs — that is more than twice as many new jobs as our neighbors in Virginia, and it’s our best year of new job creation since 2005. While a full 98.5 percent of Maryland’s new jobs were created in the private sector, only 30 percent of Virginia’s fewer jobs created resulted from private sector job growth.

Together, we’ve driven unemployment down to 6.9 percent, and we have now recovered nearly 43 percent of the jobs we lost during the recession, compared to 28 percent recovered by the rest of the country.

Education Week magazine recently ranked our public schools No. 1 for the fourth year in a row. Together, we’ve driven the rate of violent crime and homicide down to 30-year lows. And we are one of only nine states that continues to defend a AAA Bond rating, certified by all three agencies.

But we still have a long way to go. To create jobs, a modern economy requires modern investments. That is why this year, we’ve already announced several new job creating investments.

We asked the General Assembly to make a $373 million investment in school construction, which will allow us to replace temporary learning shacks with modern teaching and learning tools and support 11,650 jobs.

We’re proposing a $22.7 million investment in improvements to our state parks and other public lands, which will support nearly 300 jobs in our state. Our state parks are tremendous economic engines in our state. Visitors to our state parks produce a $650 million impact on our local economies annually, and their spending supports more than 10,000 full-time jobs. For every dollar our state invests in our parks, visitors spend more than $25 locally during their state park visits. 

We also proposed a $15 million investment in affordable rental housing — which will bring our investment in affordable rental housing to its highest level in 20 years. Our $15 million investment would allow us to leverage an additional $285 million in private sector funding. All told, that is a $300 million investment in new affordable rental housing, which will allow us build over 1,700 new affordable rental housing units and support nearly 1,100 jobs.

We’re looking forward to continuing to work together throughout this legislative session to build on the progress we’ve already made for jobs and opportunity.