Gov. Deval Patrick: Growing Jobs
By: Governor Deval Patrick
As we enter the holiday season, I am reminded of the extreme gratitude I feel as Governor of the Commonwealth. Nearly a year into my second term in office, I am thankful for our state’s continued success and recovery.
We began the second term with a renewed focus on four priorities: growing jobs and expanding opportunity, strengthening schools and eliminating the achievement gap, controlling health care costs, and bringing an end to youth violence in our communities.
Our strategy for accomplishing our goals has focused on targeted investments in education, innovation, and infrastructure. We invest in education to make sure our students are prepared for the jobs and the society of tomorrow. We invest in innovation to grow new ideas and stay on the cutting edge of growth industries. And we invest in infrastructure to strengthen the foundation on which everything rests.
Working across state government and with the public and private sector, we have accomplished much this first year. We’ve invested in key infrastructure projects in cities and towns across the state to grow jobs and opportunity. At this fall’s Education Summit, we proposed new strategies to help us close persistent achievement gaps among our students. We passed municipal health care reform to ease the burden of health care costs on our cities and towns while protecting collective bargaining rights. We have continued to fund summer jobs programs and launched the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative to work to eliminate youth violence.
We’ve worked to expand opportunity as well by supporting the efforts of small business owners to make Massachusetts a business friendly state. This fall we opened the region’s first Minority Business Development Agency Business Center right here in Boston to provide critical resources to help businesses grow and strengthen their connections with firms in New England and beyond.
Thanks to our strategy, Massachusetts is growing jobs faster than most other states. Of the top 20 cities in America for job growth, three are here in Massachusetts: Boston, Worcester, and Springfield according to a study by the Brookings Institute. Because we are streamlining permitting processes and working to reduce business costs, as well as investing in our future, we have come from the bottom third to the top six best states for business according to CNBC’s poll.
And while these results are good news, we still have more to do to get people back to work. None of this is simple. All of it is challenging. But what motivates us is the idea of generational responsibility – the old fashioned notion that we must do what we can to benefit those who come after us.
So we will continue to compete for every job, in every corner of the Commonwealth, and around the world. And together, we will win the future.
-- Deval Patrick is Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
