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Hello, this Governor Martin O'Malley. Today opens the 428th legislative
session of the Maryland General Assembly and I wanted to take a moment to talk about the
opportunities as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
In this upcoming session and beyond
many of the choices that we'll make together will continue to be hard, will continue to
be difficult and tough.
In this changing new economy though where the fight for our children's future
and in this fight there will be some states the win and some states that lose. For Maryland
to win, for our children to win we have to move forward by coming together to create
and save jobs through innovation
and to protect our priorities like
public education, public safety, and our very quality of life.
In order to make this new economy ours the balanced budget that I submit to the general
assembly this year
will be painfully lean
to fill and cover a $1.3 billion gap between our revenues and anticipated
expenditures. The best we're going to be able to do for some very worthy priorities
is to defend them by level funding them.
For many other priorities the best will be able to do is lessen the painful cuts.
But here's what we will not do and that is to allow these challenges and allow
the current crisis to deter us from the urgent long-term task of creating and saving jobs
through innovation,
protecting public education, and public safety
and making college over the long term more affordable for more people
Our focus in the session
will be to continue to focus on getting our economy going.
Together
Together we'll work with members of the General Assembly
to create Invest Maryland with the goal of unleashing $100 million in venture capital
spurring the creation of thousands of jobs and generating hundreds of millions and perhaps
even billions in rippling economic activity.
Together we'll advance a cleaner renewable energy future,
and together will fight for important advances in public safety initiatives to protect Maryland's
neighborhoods and families and save lives.
We're in a strong position to come out of this recession before many other states and recover
stronger and faster than the rest of the country.
Last year we had one of the best years of net new job creation that we've had as a state
since the year 2000. We're one of only eight states that still has a Triple-A bond rating, and for
the 3rd year in a row education magazine has ranked our public schools the best in
the nation. Though there's still plenty of room for improvement.
None of us can do this alone.
We need each other
We're One Maryland,
and in our One Maryland We Move Forward togther.
Thanks very much.