Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) cast himself as a turnaround agent behind the state’s pandemic recovery and Maryland as a national model of bipartisanship Wednesday during his final State of the State speech.
“To those who say that America is too divided, that our political system is too broken and can’t be fixed, I would argue that we have already shown a better path forward,” he said, while accusing state lawmakers of both gerrymandering a “cancer on our democracy” and rejecting his proposals dealing with taxes and violent crime merely out of partisanship, not a policy disagreement.
Hogan highlighted the state’s low unemployment rate and record spending — largely paid for by federal stimulus money and a gas tax he opposed — that poured billions into education, high-speed Internet, and road and bridge projects statewide.
He also praised a tax on insurance companies, passed in 2018, that lowered the price of policies purchased on the health-care exchange and brought up his 2015 initiative that cut tolls statewide, along with last year’s pandemic relief package that sent checks to the state’s working poor and many businesses.
“Together, we have changed Maryland for the better by facing our fiscal challenges head-on, easing the tax burden, and paving the way for historic economic growth and record job creation,” Hogan said.
The governor, who is considering 2024 bid for president, made the address in the Old Senate Chamber in the Maryland State House, the same room where then-General George Washington in 1783 resigned his commission to Congress as commander in chief of the Continental Army. Acknowledging that peaceful transition of power to a citizen-led government was also a subtle nod by Hogan to the threat that the Jan. 6 riot at Capitol Hill represented to the future of the country, an aide said.
Hogan has enjoyed popularity throughout most of his tenure, posting job approval ratings above 70 percent in a state that votes deeply Democratic in national elections. He has avoided most divisive social issues, played an anti-Trump critic on the national television circuit and hewed closely to the pocketbook issues that propelled his upset victory in 2014 and helped his 2018 reelection.
The governor has been bruised over the years by his cancellation of a critical Baltimore transit project, a hefty payout to his former chief of staff, buying 500,000 unusable coronavirus tests from South Korea and an unemployment system that left many without checks they deserved during the pandemic.
After record hospitalizations last month from the omicron surge, Hogan noted that Maryland’s state of emergency would end Thursday and encouraged residents to reframe how they think about the pandemic.
“My message to you tonight is that we must all learn to live with this virus, not to live in fear of it,” he said, saying children must be learning in-person and businesses must stay open, while acknowledging the 13,000 residents that have died of covid so far.
“None of us could have imagined how we would all be tested by a once-in-a-century global pandemic and the unprecedented turmoil it caused — the lives and livelihoods lost, the unimaginable personal and economic hardship We stepped up and rose to the challenge by bringing to bear the entire arsenal of government and public health.”
Hogan pitched his signature $4.6 billion proposal to eliminate income taxes for retirees, give corporations a tax break and extend the nation’s most generous cash payments to the working poor. He called on the legislature to pass his plan, the costs of which would crest at the same time the state needs money to pay for sweeping education restructuring that is supposed to take effect, according to legislative analysts.
He implored state lawmakers to pass his proposals to address violence in Baltimore with stricter sentences for violent offenders and gun possession, as well as force judges to publish data on how they sentence people in violent crimes. Democrats have panned his proposals as ineffective at addressing the root causes of violence, prompting Hogan to accuse them of dismissing his ideas in an act of partisanship.
“People are being shot and are dying nearly every single day. It’s time to put the politics aside and to finally get this done,” he said. “There can be no more excuses.”
In his speech, the governor also harangued Democrats for new congressional and legislative boundaries he called gerrymandered and, quoting Washington, for partisanship that creates “a spirit of revenge.”
“Our nation is bitterly divided. We need to find a way to fix the broken and toxic politics that is tearing us apart,” Hogan said. “These maps make a mockery of our democracy. Fortunately, the courts — not the legislature — will be the final arbiter.”
Unlike past pre-pandemic years where the governor has addressed a House of Delegates chamber filled with 188 lawmakers, members of his Cabinet and other political dignitaries, Hogan delivered his 25-minute address virtually.
In the official Democratic response prepared in advance, Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) argued that Hogan and his administration have failed Marylanders with their unwillingness to work with the Democratic-controlled General Assembly.
Smith said the state’s public school system has slipped from top billing; it was previously ranked No. 1 in the country by Education Weekly, an industry news publication.
He blamed the beleaguered unemployment system that left thousands of jobless residents tangled in bureaucratic red tape during the pandemic on Hogan’s lack of investment in the agency and part of the responsibility for rising crime on an underinvested state parole and probation department.
“These are elementary, core functions of government, which have failed under this administration,” Smith said. “ … After seven-and-a-half years in office, you now own the problem.”
