ACCORDING to the gospel of Gov. Parris Glendening, politics and economics make perfect bedfellows.
His very first state of the state message reads like the boilerplate fizz from a Chamber of Commerce recruitment brochure which, in fact, much of it was. Mr. Glendening's playing the percentages and, like the Mr. Chipps that he is, he struck the right mix of boardroom bravura and classroom cosmetics in the last of his trilogy of speeches.
Aware that Maryland frequently gets a bum-rap as a high tax state, Mr. Glendening, for the moment at least, is offering other forms of relief to the state's business community before talking of reducing taxes. However, the Chamber will push for the cut. Maryland, very simply, has never been a trickle-down economics state.
For openers, the business community will have heightened visibility through a new Economic Development Commission of business executives which the governor himself will co-chair. That commission will give orders to the new Department of Business and Economic Development, which is a slimmed-down version of the old Department of Economic and Employment Development. He's shifting unemployment and job-training agencies to the newly reconstituted Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, the state's regulatory and patronage dumping ground.
Mr. Glendening will also short-circuit the regulatory process, repeal the snack tax, repeal certain taxes on business equipment, give tax credits to businesses that use alternative fuels in their vehicles and, finally, create a $7 million program of grants and loans to help start up small businesses in poor areas of the state. For Mr. Glendening, the bottom line is jobs.
At his first Board of Public Works meeting, Mr. Glendening even went so far as to order that all contracts and bids must reflect the state of their origin, suggesting that Maryland firms should get first crack at Maryland's business. Such a move may violate the state's procurement laws -- typically the state goes with the lowest bidder.
Now all of that sounds dandy. But it may not change the state of the state.
Mr. Glendening's trumpet call to the business community comes at a time when unemployment is down even though Maryland's economic recovery is lagging behind other states in the region and across the country.
Yet there are some things that affect Maryland's economy that Mr. Glendening can address and others that he cannot.
Take, for example, the weather. Short of a powerful assist from the Almighty, there is nothing that Mr. Glendening can do to replicate the sunbelt's perpetual summers. Businesses are heading south not only for temperate climates but also for cheap labor.
Many competitor states to the south, including nearby Virginia, have right-to-work laws that inhibit labor unions from organizing as a way of keeping wages down and minimizing the threat of strikes.
And in Maryland, there's a prevailing wage law that requires contractors to pay union-scale wages to workers on government projects.
But in one of those cyclical ironies, as manufacturing jobs disappear so, too, is labor union membership on the decline. The fastest growing sectors of union membership in the nation are teachers and government workers -- 250,000 of them right here in Maryland. In this state of 5 million people, 24 percent of the total work force is employed by some level of government.
Now if the tight little world of the State House suddenly appears topsy-turvy, there's no cause to summon Dr. Jack Kevorkian and take the pipe. For years organized labor dominated the agenda in Annapolis. But for the past eight years, the business community has come on like corporate commanders and suddenly gotten lawmakers' attention.
Despite his apparent pro-business tilt, Mr. Glendening has excellent relationships with labor, too. As Prince George's County executive he even floated bonds to give government workers pay raises. And he's promised to push for a collective bargaining law for state employees.
There is, too, a competition among business organizations taking place in Maryland, each trying to dominate the state's legislative and business agenda and thus giving strength and symmetry to their pro-business argument.
Yet with all the talk of cutting taxes to attract businesses to Maryland, taxes are not very high on the list of items businesses consider when looking to start up or relocate.
Such quality of life items as housing, schools, hospitals, cultural attractions, crime, the labor pool and the transportation network are their key concerns.
But even in a perfect world, business relocations may be based on other factors. For example, in Baltimore, USF&G; is going and Bell Atlantic is coming. Even churches and synagogues are following the collection plates to the suburbs.
So for all of its short and sweet 26 minutes, the speech omitted any hint of controversy or the arms-length list of campaign promises that got Mr. Glendening narrowly elected as a Democrat. Mr. Glendening is squarely planted dead center -- at least for now.
Maryland's new governor has learned that the rules of politics are the rules of the marketplace.
Frank A. DeFilippo writes from Owings Mills on Maryland politics.