Blair Unveils Economic Plan

County executive candidate David Blair unveiled an economic plan Tuesday designed to grow the Montgomery County economy.

The plan focuses on weaknesses in the county’s job growth and company expansions. The 22-page plan shows employment growth at 1.3 percent from June 2016 to June 2017, compared to 15 percent in Frederick County and 35 percent in Prince George’s County. The plan also says the county has created only 19 new businesses during fiscal 2016.

“I know what I’m saying may not be popular. No one wants to think we have big problems on the horizons. But it does a disservice to taxpayers to imply otherwise,” Blair, a Democrat, says in his plan.

To turn things around, Blair would:

• Encourage more residents to start their own businesses
• Add coordinators who would help small businesses find assistance
• Teach entrepreneurship in schools
• Undertake a capital assessment that would impose barriers to business growth
• Find opportunities in underserved areas
• Lower the energy tax
• Increase contract awards to minority-owned, female-owned and disable-owned businesses.
• Increase spending for the Montgomery County Economic Development Commission, now at $5.3 million

Curiously, Blair’s plan barely mentions Amazon. Twenty communities across the country are in the middle of a high-stakes effort to lure the Seattle-based company’s “HQ2.” At stake is 50,000 jobs paying in the neighborhood of $100,000 a year.

Here’s the full plan:

About Douglas Tallman

Reporter with 35 years experience throughout Maryland. Reach me at dtallman@mymcmedia.org or via Twitter at @MCM-Doug

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