Wed. April 9, 2014
Final General Assembly of O’Malley-Brown Administration marks seven-year legacy of squandered opportunities and broken promises at the expense of Maryland families and employers.
Annapolis, MD - April 9 - The final General Assembly of the O’Malley-Brown era adjourned and according to gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan, it couldn’t have come soon enough. Hogan, a business leader and founder of Maryland’s largest non-partisan grassroots organization, says despite spending nearly $10 billion more in FY2014 than in FY2008, Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown achieved not only fewer but worse results in the key areas of cost of living, health insurance, job creation, business retention, education, poverty and energy.
Hogan said, “In nearly every quality of life measurement our state is worse off than it was seven years ago. And even areas that showed modest improvement came at a horrendous financial cost due Martin O’Malley and Anthony Brown’s mismanagement and one-party rule in Annapolis.
Among the failures and shortcomings of the O’Malley-Brown era:
● They’ve eviscerated local arts funding to hike the film tax credit for Hollywood millionaires.
● They raided the Transportation Trust Fund then raised gas taxes to pay for mass transit.
● They hiked income taxes on families, small business and large employers.
● They blew $125,000,000 of our tax dollars on a health exchange website that still doesn’t work and was never needed in the first place; today, more Marylanders lack health insurance than when O’Malley-Brown took office.
● More than 73,000 residents have had their health insurance policies cancelled and tens of thousands more have seen massive increases in their premiums and deductibles.
● They put the teacher union bosses that bankroll their political machine ahead of students, parents and classroom teachers.
● They’ve badly mismanaged the education budget, as a result inner city schools are falling farther behind, state SAT scores are down and elementary school reading aptitude is flat. And, even the teacher union said their rollout of Common Core was a mismanaged “train wreck.”
● Their job-destroying tax hikes on the so-called rich and small businesses - those individuals earning $100k or more - backfired, missing revenue projections.
● Some entry level jobs will pay a little more but there will be fewer of them.
● There’s a federal investigation into the Anthony Brown Health Exchange but state lawmakers aren’t issuing their findings until well after the primaries.
● Thousands of employers are now “paying their fair share” in taxes albeit to Virginia and the Carolinas; about 6,500 companies have left Maryland taking with them more than 100,000 jobs.
● Likewise, more than 31,000 Maryland residents left for more affordable states, taking $1.7 billion each year out of our economy; among these were thousands of seniors on fixed incomes who can no longer afford to retire near their families.
● It costs you more when it rains and more again when you drive to the beach.
In sum, Martin O’Malley, Anthony Brown and their allies in Annapolis have made it more expensive to be born, work, hire, shop, drive, fill up your tank, fish, hunt, shoot, buy a house, sell a house, buy a car or sell a car or heat your home. On the plus side, thanks to an election year reduction in the Estate Tax it will be a little less expensive when we die.
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Authority: Larry Hogan for Governor. John C. Wobensmith, Treasurer
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