Jim Brady looks at the state's business climate, and he doesn't like what he sees. But he's been given a rare opportunity to do something about it.
"Economic development is the greatest need in this state and is the area where we can make the biggest difference early on," said James T. Brady, co-chairman of Governor-elect Parris N. Glendening's transition team.
Maryland needs to "make the business community a stakeholder in economic development" and "address its reputation as a state that is not pro-business," added Mr. Brady, the Baltimore managing partner of Arthur Andersen & Co., the international accounting house who will serve with the governor-elect's wife, Frances Hughes Glendening, to help shape the new administration.
Mr. Brady said there is an urgency to improve the state's economy.
"In the mid-1990s, economic development has become a contact sport, and you have to be prepared to get down in the trenches fighting. So not having a reputation as a pro-business state is simply an impossible place to be," he said in an interview Monday.
Many Baltimore business executives expressed reservations about a Glendening governorship before the election, both because his political home is Prince George's County and because many saw him as what they called a "spender."
But the appointment of the highly respected Mr. Brady to the transition team is seen as an attempt by the governor-elect to reach out to the business community.
This is just one absolutely sensational guy, who gives of himself to the community with a vigor and an enthusiasm that have rarely been matched in my experience," said Mark K. Joseph, the former president of the city school board who is now president and chief executive officer of Shelter Development Corp. Ltd.
Mr. Joseph has worked with Mr. Brady on the board of directors of the Greater Baltimore Committee and succeeded him as president of the GBC's public policy council.
"Jim Brady has a great insight into private enterprise, a great gift for bringing people together, a low-key working style and a way of going all-out without in any way imposing his own ego," Mr. Joseph said.
Mr. Brady says he is determined to focus on changes the state needs to make in the way it deals with its business community.
"Maryland does not have a reputation as a pro-business state, despite eight years of William Donald Schaefer, whom I admire and who has been a very pro-business governor," he said. "The first thing we have to do is deal with the companies that are here -- do the things that will make them feel good about being here," he said.
He also said it is critical to know how competing states -- such as Virginia and North and South Carolina -- "operate and what they are offering, and understand fully what we are up against."
Mr. Brady said the state should create a "partnership" with the business community "to make the business community a stakeholder in economic development, and not let executives feel that the government goes into a dark room and makes decisions and leaves business people on the sidelines either criticizing or applauding."
He also said the administration should consider ways to make the state's economic development agency "more flexible and nimble."
One possibility is to have one agency responsible for economic development and another for unemployment services, Mr. Brady said.
The transition team's economic development committee has divided its work into four areas, each under a subcommittee -- business retention and attraction, market segments, technology, and international trade.
Those committees will "hear from a lot of business people and others, probably in the hundreds," before making recommendations, he said.
Mr. Brady said he learned the governor-elect wanted him after returning from talks with a client one day last month and finding a message from Mr. Glendening.
"I had talked with Parris from time to time about things the state needs to do, and I had done a bit of fund-raising for him, but I never expected a call like that one," Mr. Brady said.
For Mr. Brady, daily life was about to change.
Preparations for a new administration, and the drive to reshape the state government's relations with its business community, have become, a part of his daily routine.
The transition team is scheduled to give its recommendations to Mr. Glendening by the time he takes office Jan. 18.
Mr. Brady, 54 and New York-born and reared, has been with Arthur Andersen since 1962. He worked in the firm's New York and Long Island offices until being transferred to take over the Baltimore office in 1985. He has been a partner in the firm since 1975 and managed the Long Island office from 1978 to 1985.
After work, he goes home to a household that has not followed him into the business world.
His wife of 28 years, Fran, is a "very contemporary" professional painter who "takes on difficult ideas that come from deep inside her, often with a strong feminist bent," he said.
His son, James, 25, is a sports writer for the Washington Post. His daughter, Linda, 25, is a West Coast rock musician.
Mr. Brady relaxes with golf, reading and "being a sports nut." But he admits to putting much of his personal time into an avocation as "a politics junkie."
He also serves on more than a dozen Baltimore-area boards of directors, ranging from chairmanship of the 1991 United Way drive to arts and cultural organizations that include the Maryland Public Broadcasting Commission, the Walters Art Gallery, Center Stage, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, University of Maryland Baltimore County, College of Notre Dame and two Johns Hopkins University boards.