Earlier this week, Governor Jack Markell was named the new vice chairman of the national Governors Association (NGA) at its annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah. In his weekly message, Gov. Markell highlights the issues he and other governors across the nation discussed as part of the meeting and how he expects his new role as NGA vice chairman will assist his efforts to tackle those issues in Delaware.
Governor's Weekly Message
Governor Jack Markell
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Full text of Governor Jack Markell’s weekly message:
Getting people back to work and expanding economic opportunities for people who are working. Making sure our kids get the best education possible – that they’re able to graduate ready to tackle whatever challenges they’ll face in the new economy.
Improving public safety and public health – because they’re critical public policies in their own right but also because they are crucial to our economic viability.
Doing everything we can to ensure our nation retains its competitive edge – making sure we don’t just lead the world in creating new innovations or refining new technologies, but that we make sure there’s still an opportunity to manufacture those innovations here.
And somehow, finding a way to get these things done while delivering sound, responsible, and balanced budgets. Those ideas have helped guide our efforts here in Delaware the last few years. They’ve been the subject of great discussion and debate, of countless hours of hard work and help from people all over our great state.
They’re also the ideas that drove the discussion earlier this week at the National Governor’s Association – a meeting of Chief Executives from across the country Governors spent a few days reviewing what’s worked, what could work better, and how we can collaborate to move things forward together. Because no matter how hard we work, state by state, the headwinds or tailwinds of the national economy play a part in how far we can go and how fast we can get there. And while states are competing with one other to have the strongest possible public schools, the competition coming from other countries is even more intense. The stakes of that competition are even higher.
My fellow Governors have asked me to play a greater role in these efforts - in part because of some of the innovations and efforts they’ve seen from Delawareans. They’ve nominated me to be Vice Chairman of the National Governor’s Association – which not only gives our state greater access to some innovative solutions to some of the obstacles we face, but will also give us the ability to talk more directly with people around the country looking for places to build new jobs. It gives us a chance to make the case to employers that our approach to solving problems is a bit different here in Delaware. That instead of looking to pick fights with each other, we look instead to identify our common goals and work aggressively, relentlessly to meet them together. This gives us more ways of finding partners to keep Delaware, moving forward.