BALTIMORE — Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. told business leaders yesterday that he needs them to take a more active roll in government for him to succeed during the remainder of his term.
“I am not going to sit here for two more years as a backstop,” he told about 400 business leaders from Maryland Business for Responsive Government, a pro-business group. “We need you to become dangerous, we need you to partner with Annapolis.”
Mr. Ehrlich, the state’s first Republican governor in more than three decades, addressed the leaders at the Baltimore Convention Center.
During the 20-minute speech he outlined his administration’s legislative accomplishments, asked the business leaders to get him more votes and emphasized how much he needed support to fight the Democrats who have blocked some of his key initiatives and who wanted to double minimum wages for businesses pursing state contracts.
“You have yet to convince the legislature that you are a powerful force,” he said. “The days of Maryland as a joke or a second-tier business state are over. … We need you to step up your game.”
James T. Brady, management director of Ballantrae International Ltd, a consulting firm, agreed.
“I thought [Mr. Ehrlich] was absolutely on target,” he said. “I think the message needs to be constantly reinforced because that is the only way change will really happen.”
Mr. Brady was the former state secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development under Mr. Ehrlich’s predecessor, Parris N. Glendening, a Democrat. He said he quit the Glendening administration in 1998 after learned Mr. Glendening was not as pro-business as he had touted himself to be during the 1994 election.
Delegate Patrick L. McDonough, a Baltimore County Republican, who attended the event with about 25 other delegates, said the message was long overdue.
“He said something quite forcefully that needed to be said for many years and that is that businesses should stop giving money to the enemy,” said Mr. McDonough, a founding member of Future Leaders of America, a nonprofit foundation that encourages youth participation in government. He owns Media Team, a broadcast company.
Delegate Warren E. Miller, a Howard County Republican, agreed.
“The pervasive attitude in the legislature is that businesses should pay the bill for everything and get nothing in return.”
Herman L. Taylor Jr., a Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored the bill that would double the minimum wage to $10.50 an hour for those working on state contracts and who owns an office supply store, also agreed.
“He is going to need business to help get him through this,” he said. “That was a call to rally the troops.”
However, Mr. Taylor does not think the wage bill, which was been publicly assailed and been promised a veto by Mr. Ehrlich, is anti-business.
“Being in business is about building the middle class,” he said. “No adult can live on $5.15 an hour. [My bill] helps retention, it helps the quality for work people do.”
Mr. Ehrlich said after the speech the General Assembly was full of good lawmakers but “you have a lot of people who continue to vote against business and they continue to get elected.”
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