Delaware News

Governor’s Weekly Message Transcript: Legislative Focus Remains on Jobs

Former Governor Jack Markell (2009-2017) | News | Date Posted: Friday, January 6, 2012



Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and your year is off to a great start.

This week, our state legislators return to Dover to begin the second of a two-year legislative session. They’re off to a good start.

Last year, they passed, and I signed into law, a number of efforts in areas critical to our state’s success.   Efforts to help get people back to work like the New Job Creation credit.  Legislation that allowed Bloom Energy to pick the former Chrysler factory as its new manufacturing hub.  Encouragement that led companies like Capital One to choose Delaware as a place it wants to put hundreds of people to work.   And more efforts to help our state’s kids go to even stronger public schools, including a bill to help local school districts attract top talent.

Because kids need to be able to show up ready to learn from day one, we saw a significant new commitment last year to early childhood education, which is what helped Delaware win the federal Race to the Top contest, enabling us to help even more kids succeed.

Last year saw legislation become law to improve public safety – including the new Fund to Combat Violent Crimes and efforts to crack down on repeat DUI offenders – and legislation to improve our state’s longer-term financial health through some collaborative reforms around our state’s employee pension and health care costs.

We also saw the passage of another responsible and balanced budget, one that responded to financial challenges while making clear that our state’s top priority remains economic growth.   It was a strong start to a two-year session, but the work is by no means done.

The next few weeks, whether it’s through individual bill filings, or my  State-of-the-State messages, or the presentation of another balanced budget proposal and the investments it will make in Delaware,  through many different efforts and ideas, we’ll be working with the legislature to unveil some new initiatives  – so that we keep making progress on core issues to create jobs, improve schools and govern responsibly.

Those priorities remain our state’s priorities and will be a significant focus the rest of this session.  I know how seriously our legislators take their responsibility to serve their constituents and how committed they’ve been to finding ways to work together to get things done, instead of letting smaller differences derail results. I hope that same spirit of resolve – that same shared commitment – continues to define how we tackle the challenges ahead and how we can keep working together to keep Delaware moving forward.

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Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.

Here you can subscribe to future news updates.

Governor’s Weekly Message Transcript: Legislative Focus Remains on Jobs

Former Governor Jack Markell (2009-2017) | News | Date Posted: Friday, January 6, 2012



Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and your year is off to a great start.

This week, our state legislators return to Dover to begin the second of a two-year legislative session. They’re off to a good start.

Last year, they passed, and I signed into law, a number of efforts in areas critical to our state’s success.   Efforts to help get people back to work like the New Job Creation credit.  Legislation that allowed Bloom Energy to pick the former Chrysler factory as its new manufacturing hub.  Encouragement that led companies like Capital One to choose Delaware as a place it wants to put hundreds of people to work.   And more efforts to help our state’s kids go to even stronger public schools, including a bill to help local school districts attract top talent.

Because kids need to be able to show up ready to learn from day one, we saw a significant new commitment last year to early childhood education, which is what helped Delaware win the federal Race to the Top contest, enabling us to help even more kids succeed.

Last year saw legislation become law to improve public safety – including the new Fund to Combat Violent Crimes and efforts to crack down on repeat DUI offenders – and legislation to improve our state’s longer-term financial health through some collaborative reforms around our state’s employee pension and health care costs.

We also saw the passage of another responsible and balanced budget, one that responded to financial challenges while making clear that our state’s top priority remains economic growth.   It was a strong start to a two-year session, but the work is by no means done.

The next few weeks, whether it’s through individual bill filings, or my  State-of-the-State messages, or the presentation of another balanced budget proposal and the investments it will make in Delaware,  through many different efforts and ideas, we’ll be working with the legislature to unveil some new initiatives  – so that we keep making progress on core issues to create jobs, improve schools and govern responsibly.

Those priorities remain our state’s priorities and will be a significant focus the rest of this session.  I know how seriously our legislators take their responsibility to serve their constituents and how committed they’ve been to finding ways to work together to get things done, instead of letting smaller differences derail results. I hope that same spirit of resolve – that same shared commitment – continues to define how we tackle the challenges ahead and how we can keep working together to keep Delaware moving forward.

image_printPrint


Graphic that represents delaware news on a mobile phone

Keep up to date by receiving a daily digest email, around noon, of current news release posts from state agencies on news.delaware.gov.

Here you can subscribe to future news updates.