A letter to you from Glendening and Towsend
Note - This letter is taken from A Report to the People of Maryland published by the Glendening/Townsend Committee. We take full responsibility for any typos.
Dear Marylander,
Four years ago, we offered the people of Maryland a written plan for our administration, A Vision For Maryland's Future. Since then, in partnership with the Legislature and involved citizens like you, we've worked hard to turn that agenda into action and those promises into progress for the people and families of Maryland.
This Report to The People of Maryland is a record of what we have accomplished together. It details the progress we have made, the promises we have kept, and documents the results of our work to improve our children's education, strengthen our economy, reduce crime and violence on our streets, and protect Maryland's environment and public health.
Improving our children's education has been our top priority. To reduce class size, we have provided funding over the past four years to build, renovate, repair and modernize 5,956 classrooms across our state. We made it possible for older schools to qualify for state funds for renovation. We increased education funding at every level and for every jurisdiction, make a historic investment in higher education, and instituted a pre-paid tuition plan to make it easier for parents to save for their children's education. We have also worked to restore safety in our schools and holp teachers to bring discipline back into the classroom. We have set high standards for student performance and introduced accountability measures to ensure our historic investment in education is generating results. And working with schools and communities, we've brought computers and the Internet to classrooms from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland.
Our economy is the strongest it has been in more than a decade. Our intensive efforts to create jobs have paid off. More than 103,000 jobs have been created since 1995. We have moved from 43rd to 26th in the nation in job creation. Employment is at an all-time high and unemployment is at a nine-year low. According to Dun and Bradstreet, Maryland is fifth in the nation in the rate of new business starts and a national leader in attracting high-tech and bio-tech jobs. Working with the Legislature, we enacted the first cut in state personal income taxes in 30 years and reduced or eliminated 15 taxes paid by businesses. And Maryland has benefited from two consecutive budget surpluses - wich have been used to fund tax cuts, public school construction, and capital improvments at our universities. We are one of the only eight states in teh nation to merit a coveted "Triple A" Bond rating - Wall Street's highest rating and a recognition of sound omoney management that has saved our state taxpayers more than 5 million dollars a year in interest costs. And we have targeted $10 million for a special Science, Engineering and Technology scholarship for Maryland students that will help Maryland businesses fill the jobs they have for skilled workers.
Crime is down and Maryland's streets are safer. Maryland's violent crime rate dropped 13 percent between 1995 and 1997. the 9 percent drop between 1996 and 1997 was almost twice the national rate. We have enacted one of the toughest anti-gun violence laws in the nation, cutting hand gun sales by 25 percent in its first full year. We deployed 225 new state troopers to help local plice fight crime. Since 1995, we have built or started desing and engineering work on more than 4,500 new prison and jail beds, made a life sentence mean a life sentence for murderers and rapists, and put teeth into the fight against juvenile crime. We created new drug testing initiative to help break the cycle of crime and addiction, and a four-fold increase in after-school programs is helping steer children away from vilence, drug use and gangs.
Public health protections have been increased. Working with the Legislature we have made real progress protecting the public's health, expanding health care coverage and implementing new laws that force the HMOs to put patients ahead of profits. We acted aggressively to protect public health and Mayland's waterways and Bay from the threat of Pfiesteria. We enacted on of America's toughest anti-smoking laws, provided health care coverage to all eligible pregnant women and 60,000 more Maryland children, tripled the amount of general fund money used to pay for breast cancer screenigns, and forced the insurance companies to allow a woman and her newborn to spend 48 hours (instead of just 24 hours) in the hospital after delivery. And Maryland consumers now have the right to appeal an HMOs decision to the State Inusurance Commissioner and ensure HMOs are held accountable for the qualtity of care they provide.
Our environment is well-protected. In partnership with the Legislature, we created a pioneering plan to fight public health-threatening Pfiesteria, manage the nutrients that feed that bacteria, and curb agricultural land runoff into Maryland's rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. We passed Brownfields legislation to provide financial incentives to clean up and reuse contaminated industrial sites for redevelopment. And our Smart Growth plan to contain suburban sprawl, protect Maryland's green spaces and rural legacy, and direct state resources to established neighborhoods has brought new hope and optimism to our older communities and been hailed as a model for the nation.
Over the past four years, working together, we have built a record of read accomplishment. As a result, Maryland families are better off and our future is brighter. But there is more work to be done, more progress we must make to ready our state for the century and the new millennium. We have learned that working together, there is no challenge we cannot overcome, no dream too big to be dared. Working together, we can continue the progress we have made moving Maryland forward.
Parris N. Glendening
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend