Tag Archives: Jobs

Economy, Montgomery County Executive, Roger Berliner

Roger Berliner on Jobs

Job growth has been stagnant in Montgomery County over the past few years. What would you do to encourage increased job growth?

Increasing prosperity — and having that prosperity shared more broadly — is the central platform of my campaign.  As in most things, achieving this will be a multi-prong effort:

1.  In our county, small business is big business. And for far, far too long, businesses in Montgomery County have seen our county as a foe, not a friend.  We need to be a partner to business, not an obstacle.  That is what prompted me to be the lead sponsor on legislation that created both the Small Business Navigator and the Business Solutions Group in county government — to put in county government resources that are intended to make life easier for our small business community. When we adopt new programs and regulations in our county, we need to make sure we are doing so in a manner that will not harm small businesses.  That is how I have done my work on the Council and it is how I will do my work as County Executive if I have the privilege of leading our great county.

2.  We need to attract businesses to Montgomery County. We have extraordinary assets. Amazon’s request for proposals for its new H2Q brought that home:  Montgomery put checks in all the important boxes.  Smart, skilled work force — check. Transit — check.  Vibrant urban amenities – check.  Awesome quality of life — check.  Diverse population- check.  Good government-check.  Strong, national business leaders-check.  We need to do a better job of promoting our county.  As County Executive, I will be a passionate, ceaseless champion of our county.

3.  What are the fundamentals that create economic growth and opportunities? A skilled workforce, which is why I have been the leading champion of workforce development; world class transit, which is why I have championed fixing Metro, building the Purple Line & Bus Rapid Transit and supporting Ride On Extra; affordable housing, which is why I sponsored legislation that requires our county to consider co-locating affordable housing on county property and increases the obligation of developers to provide affordable housing; creating vibrant urban nodes, with world class architecture, that attracts millennials and businesses like Marriott and Fox 5 to Bethesda; embracing innovation, which is why I led the way to create the Office of Innovation in our county government — we either lean forward or fall back.

4.  Build a “green economy”. Under my leadership, our county has become one of the most sustainable communities in our country.  Those efforts have not only led to our county government being “carbon neutral”, but to creating good green jobs.  Solar companies are thriving; energy efficiency firms are flourishing; composting and organic farming is growing; and our commitment to storm water management should increase jobs and job training opportunities.  A green economy is a healthy economy.

5.  Support our immigrant entrepreneurs. Immigrant-owned businesses are the fastest-growing segment of the county’s economy. Often, these businesses need only a little help to get started. That is what motivated me to lead the effort to create our county’s first micro-loan program, modeled after successful programs around the world.

6.  Pay people a decent wage, which is why I support increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour consistent with the County Executive’s proposal.

My record on creating a more favorable economic climate in our county has led four Montgomery County Business Hall of Famers, past presidents of local chambers of commerce, entrepreneurs of the year, minority business leaders and green business leaders to endorse me.

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Economy, George Leventhal, Montgomery County Executive

George Leventhal on Jobs

Job growth has been stagnant in Montgomery County over the past few years. What would you do to encourage increased job growth?

We have seen good news on job growth recently. County Executive Leggett’s office reported in January that the county had added 7,163 jobs since the previous January and in May that resident employment had increased by 10,900 jobs (not all located in the county) since the previous May. High-profile business location decisions recently have included Marriott’s decision to keep its headquarters in the county, Discovery’s decision to keep 230 jobs in Silver Spring rather than relocate them to Virginia, and WTTG/Fox 5’s decision to relocate to Bethesda from Northwest Washington.

Montgomery County has a great story to tell, but we need to do a better job telling it. Our quality of life is high; we have great public schools; honest and effective government; excellent cultural and recreational opportunities; beautiful natural features; proximity to airports, shipping routes, interstate highways and public transportation; high family incomes; a low crime rate, and a low unemployment rate. I supported creating the new Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation and am glad to see it is investing more than ever before in marketing our county’s excellent attributes to grow our job base and retain existing employers.

We have one of the smartest, most diverse work forces in the United States. We should advertise ourselves as the International Gateway to the Nation’s Capital, to attract employers from around the world and entice the talent our employers need to compete in the global marketplace. While our workforce already possesses more graduate degrees than any other community, and a wider array of language skills than most, we must make language education a higher priority in our schools. Language immersion should be expanded, especially in languages critical for global trade and national security, like Mandarin, Spanish, French, German, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic, Russian, Farsi, and Portuguese.

To appeal to the millennial generation of workers, and the generations that will follow them, we must continue our placemaking efforts, to build great urban communities in locations well served by transit, including Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Wheaton, and Glenmont, and we must expand transit options to economic opportunity hubs like Gaithersburg, Germantown and White Oak.

We should increase vocational training in our schools. The courses available at Edison High School are insufficient. Not all students will, or need to, attend college. Many good-paying jobs in industrial, manufacturing, information technology and other sectors can be filled by high school graduates with additional technical and vocational training.

We need to continue focused efforts to streamline our planning, permitting and procurement processes to see where they can be made more efficient and business-friendly. We must also strengthen our efforts to keep Montgomery County tax dollars in our local economy, by strengthening programs like the Local Small Business Reserve (which I originated), and minority, female and disabled business purchasing preferences.

I support designating Enterprise Zones to attract investment to areas that are struggling, like Glenmont and Burtonsville. I have also supported tax credits for investors in life science, environmental technology and cybersecurity, and I am currently exploring a county add-on to federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards. I will seek to reduce our county energy tax, which puts our high-tech and data-intensive businesses at a particular disadvantage.

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Economy, Marc Elrich, Montgomery County Executive

Marc Elrich on Jobs

Job growth has been stagnant in Montgomery County over the past few years. What would you do to encourage increased job growth?

Most job growth comes from new businesses expanding in the location in which they were founded.  Surveys indicate that the quality of life and the quality of public goods in an area – including transportation systems and schools – matter far more when businesses are making their initial location decisions than the taxes and other financial incentives they might be offered.

While there is a lot about the economy that is beyond our control – there’s no silver bullet for job growth – there is much that the county can do to create the conditions for businesses to start and thrive.  To the extent that we have cumbersome and inappropriate regulations, we need to change them, and to the extent that regulatory costs are excessive, we need to lower them.  More importantly, I would focus on incubating new local-grown businesses, nurturing their growth, and improving the county’s economic infrastructure.  Other jurisdictions have creative small business incubators and we can learn from their successes to grow a stronger local economy.  The empty spaces in shopping centers and office buildings were once filled with small businesses, and we need to nourish a new generation of entrepreneurs to refill them.

The bus rapid transit (BRT) system proposal that I initiated and have been advocating for during my time on the County Council also holds real potential as a tool for job growth.  Businesses have made an issue of the lack of transit as an impediment to growth.  If we want people to create startups or expand existing businesses, we need entrepreneurs to feel confident that their employees have a reliable way of getting to and from work, that their customers can get to their stores, and that they will be able to transport the goods and services they need to stay in business.

A well-implemented BRT system would reduce future congestion and move more people than roadways alone, making the county a more attractive location for businesses of all sizes.  It would greatly benefit residents as well.

We also need to work with the school system, including Montgomery College, to make sure our students are prepared for jobs that don’t necessarily require a four-year degree but do require post-high-school education.  And we should expand apprenticeship programs in cooperation with the building trades organizations that need the next generation of skilled workers.

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Bill Frick, Economy, Montgomery County Executive

Bill Frick on Jobs

Job growth has been stagnant in Montgomery County over the past few years. What would you do to encourage increased job growth?

For far too long, our Council has been complacent with the status quo and at times even outright hostile to the private sector.  Resting on the expectation of stable employment from the federal government, the Council has been largely indifferent and even averse to growing the private sector economy.  We can no longer afford to talk about the need for job and wage growth and yet show no interest in facilitating business growth that creates those jobs.  As Norm Augustine likes to say, “you can’t be for jobs and against employers.”

From our notorious permitting process to our burdensome tax policies, we need to stop treating small business as the enemy.  Small businesses are the vital engine that will drive our middle class growth.  We need to reorient our administration to recognize that being punitive to businesses isn’t actually in our interests.

We must also foster and facilitate growth and entrepreneurship.  We benefit from an amazingly well-educated and creative workforce. But our women and men often find DC or Virginia or Baltimore to be more promising environments in which to grow and create businesses.  I want to enhance access to capital by building on our programs to keep local and state dollars in the community banks that are most likely to lend to small businesses, like I did at the state level. And I will help jump-start our hospitality, service, and restaurant economy by reforming or eliminating the Department of Liquor Control, a broken system that has functioned as a repellent to restaurants and consumers alike. I led this fight in the legislature, and will win this fight as County Executive.

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Economy, Montgomery County

Contemplating Life Inside An Economic Engine

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Political and business leaders often refer to Montgomery County as the “economic engine” of Maryland. Interesting words, “economic engine.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, Montgomery County was transforming from farmland to suburbia. I doubt that any of my neighbors in those years imagined that the county would ever be called an economic engine.

In 1950, the county population was 164,000. By 1970, population more than tripled, to 525,000. People were moving to Montgomery County by the thousands because it was a good, safe place to live, with excellent schools. And they could have a yard for the kids and the dog.

The fast pace of growth continued through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s–not only residential development, but construction of shopping malls and industrial parks. The county became a place to work, as well as a place to live. Looking back on those decades, Montgomery County was an engine of constant real estate development.

By the turn of the century, Bethesda was on its way to becoming an “edge city,” with tall office and residential buildings. Cutting-edge industry emerged along the I-270 corridor in Rockville and Gaithersburg, and residential development extended to Germantown.

2014 And The Future

Now, in the year 2014, with a  population of one million, and more jobs than any other jurisdiction in Maryland, we’re not sure if Montgomery County is destined to be a city, a suburb, or something in between. Jobs are a critical concern, but housing is also essential, especially a range of affordable housing for everyone from retail and service workers, to teachers and police officers, to the very affluent.

Taking stock as we approach the 2014 election, and looking to the future, residents might ask the following question:

Do Montgomery County voters want to live inside a constantly growing economic engine?

My own instinctive answer is, “No, Montgomery residents want to preserve, as much as possible, a more bucolic, suburban sense of place.”

At the same time, I wonder, “Maybe we’re too far down the road to urbanization to turn back. We have more jobs than any other place in Maryland. Our population is diverse and multilingual. Wouldn’t it be cool to become a 21st century, cosmopolitan city.”

Imagine a prosperous urban center, combining the best of Montreal and Silicon Valley.

Montgomery County residents and leaders haven’t had much time to catch their breath and fully consider the choices. Growing from 165,000 to one million in six decades, it’s been a constant challenge just for basic infrastructure to keep up with population and job growth.

Past economic growth has been truly impressive, but we have no reason to project that kind of growth into the future. We can’t predict whether future development will overwhelm us, or go elsewhere.

For one thing, the federal government remains the most important economic influence in the Washington, D.C., region. If the federal government did not exist, Montgomery County would still be farmland.

The federal government remains the largest single employer in Montgomery County. But consider that federal job growth has probably peaked. Many workers in both public and private sectors will be replaced by computers and robots. We may well lose jobs faster than we can create them.

No matter what politicians say at election time, it’s not within the power of any one local leader, or even all local leaders acting together, to create private sector jobs.

If economic and job growth is Plan A, we should also have a Plan B. Plan A only works if the American economy returns to the status quo ante 2006. If not, if there’s been an economic paradigm shift, we’ll need a Plan B. What that plan would involve is beyond the scope of this article.

21st Century Infrastructure

Based on geography and infrastructure in the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia region, it looks to me like the economic engine of the future might be the I-95 corridor.

It’s shaped like a barbell, anchored in the south by the federal government and major universities in Washington. In the north it’s anchored by major universities and medical centers in Baltimore, and the Port of Baltimore. In between, along the highway and railroad infrastructure linking the two cities, there’s the University of Maryland at College Park, the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and importantly, BWI Airport.

Now look west, to Montgomery County. The county is not far from the I-95 corridor, but it’s not exactly at the center of the action. You might almost say — in fact, I will say it — Montgomery County looks perfectly located to be a major bedroom community for the Baltimore-Washington corridor, particularly at the southern end.

Historically, major cities developed around transportation by water, railroad or airport. In the 21st century, can Montgomery County expect to be a major economic player without an airport? The county also does not have a professional sports team, or a major research university, a medical school, law school, or even a four-year college.

We’ve had our hands full in Montgomery County building a basic suburban infrastructure of schools, highways, and mass transit.

If we aspire to be a cosmopolitan center with population density and economic growth, we need to commit ourselves to building other kinds of infrastructure, such as a major airport and a university.

The growing Baltimore-Washington region is going to need another modern airport eventually, I’m thinking. Dulles is far to the southwest and BWI is to the north. Reagan National is reduced to boutique-VIP  airport status for obvious security reasons.

But finding a site for a major airport in Montgomery County is a problem that boggles the mind. It would be an epic battle. Possibly Frederick County would like an airport to support the economic growth of both counties. Or possibly not. All in all, an airport to serve the western part of the metro area seems like an unlikely dream.

Besides an airport, it’s hard to imagine a city of  one million, a center of innovation and scientific development, without a university. Lack of affordable, local higher education is a problem for both middle-class families and business development.

Montgomery College and the Universities at Shady Grove fill part of the need, but they’re less than a shadow of the excellent higher education available in Baltimore and Washington.

So what does Montgomery County have to attract businesses? A great public school system, relatively high costs of land, and inconvenient airport access. Seems to me the I-95 corridor might be a better choice for many companies.

Housing, Business and Jobs

It doesn’t make sense for jurisdictions within the region to compete for all types of development. No one can predict the future, but we’ll probably have more than enough growth to go around over the next 50 years. Might Montgomery add another half-million people? Another million? It’s impossible to say.

Since the pressures for growth are mostly beyond our control, wouldn’t it be best to allow the region to grow organically, rather than trying to rush growth, or block it?

Maybe the I-95 corridor has an advantage when it comes to development of business and commerce. Maybe Montgomery County has an advantage as an excellent place to live.

When good companies want to locate in Montgomery County, we should welcome them. But it doesn’t make sense to encourage growth on steroids, or to get into a bidding war with other counties.

Jobs are a critical need, but so is housing. The exact location of jobs is not critical, as long as they’re within commuting distance. Montgomery residents moved here because they want a good place to live and excellent schools. They knew from the start that they’d be commuting. They don’t necessarily need their jobs to be in the county.

Fortunately, the Intercounty Connector and the Purple Line will connect Montgomery County with the I-95 corridor in both north and south. The improved transportation network will make it easier for people who live in Montgomery to get to jobs in Prince George’s, Anne Arundel, and Baltimore, and vice versa. No need to treat our neighbors as rivals. A cooperative approach would enable the region to grow organically, with a balance of businesses for people to work in, and houses for people to live in. It’s a win-win.

Election year 2014 is an opportunity for decision-making. We only get this opportunity once every four years. But I’m afraid most residents are disengaged from politics.

Assuming that continued growth is virtually inevitable, the question is:  What kind of growth and development do the people who live and vote in Montgomery County prefer, and how much? And what do the candidates think?

Is Montgomery County home sweet home, or an economic engine. Perhaps it can be both. What do you think.

Contact: BJohnHayden@icloud.com

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