Creating a Job Tax Credit

Creating a Job Tax Credit
The Jobs Creation Recovery Tax Credit, signed into law in March, offers a $5,000 tax credit to any Maryland business that hires an unemployed Marylander. The bill is a one-year program: capped at $20 million, and $250,000 per employer. The worker must be employed for at least one year, and must fill a position that is new or that has been vacant for the prior six months. This legislation directly creates 4,000 jobs and will also help the private sector begin to reinvest in the State's economy.

Increasing the Biotech Tax Credit
The Maryland House of Delegates confirmed their continued commitment to the biotech tax credit again this year, by increasing the available funding to $8 million in the budget for a program that creates high paying jobs across Maryland. This credit is a proven job creator that has put Maryland at the forefront of the growing biotech industry. This funding is an essential tool in supporting early stage biotech companies.

Supporting Stem Cell Research
The General Assembly put $10.4 million into stem cell research funding this year. Stem cell research supports at least 514 high paying jobs here in Maryland and keeps our State at the center of this emerging industry. Our investment represents a clear commitment to providing hope for Marylanders to whom stem cells represent the best opportunity to cure their debilitating and deadly illnesses.

Creating a Small Business Loan Guaranty Program
In another effort to support businesses during these tough economic times, Governor O'Malley called for streamlining the loan approval process for small businesses and expanding access to credit by creating the Maryland Small Business Credit Recovery Program, offering a loan guaranty on small business deals through the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development's current loan guaranty program - the Maryland Industrial Development Financing Authority Program (MIDFA). The FY11 budget allots $5M for the Maryland Small Business Credit Recovery Program that will streamline the loan approval process and allow the State to guarantee a small percentage of loans, helping banks provide much-needed capital for our small businesses.

Providing Property Tax Relief for Small Businesses
The General Assembly unanimously passed HB484, legislation which gives small businesses the ability to pay their property taxes in two installments instead one lump sum payment, if the property tax assessment is under $50,000. This bill provides over 93,000 small business properties with added flexibility to avoid making difficult cuts to their businesses or employees to pay their property taxes in one lump sum.

Creating the Sustainable Communities Tax Credit to Promote Construction Investment & Jobs
Legislation sponsored by Governor O'Malley, HB 475, replaces the Heritage Tax Credit with a new program designed to create and sustain construction and design jobs in redeveloping historic structures, and support environmentally-friendly building standards. The Sustainable Communities Tax Credit is funded at $10M for existing commercial and residential structures, as well as qualified rehabilitated structures in Main Street communities. The program maintains the commercial project cap at $3 million and residential project cap at $50,000, but also provides a bonus credit of 5% for LEED certified construction on a commercial project.

Retooling the State Unemployment Insurance System
The product of months of negotiations, a new law has taken effect to reduce the burdens of high unemployment insurance rates on Maryland businesses by:

• Creating payment plans to spread payments out over the entire calendar year
  
• Guaranteeing payment plans and lower interest rates in future times of high unemployment
  
• Reducing interest rate for late payments from 1.5% to .5%, a 200% reduction
  
• Shoring up the UI system with an immediate influx of $126.8 million through cost-neutral modernization by covering more unemployed workers but eliminating sick claims, increasing penalties for misconduct and making adjustments to benefit calculations.
  
  

Having bipartisan support, this bill was signed by Governor O'Malley in March. These changes to the unemployment insurance system in Maryland are critical to continue to give businesses the relief and certainty needed to begin to dig out of this recession and put people back to work.

Protecting Homeowners from Foreclosure
Foreclosures continue to drag on our economy and rip apart Maryland communities. Many of these foreclosures happen without the homeowners ever talking to a live person over the phone much less have a face to face meeting to discuss options to keep them in their homes. Maryland continues to have a high mortgage default rate with one in every 446 households in foreclosure, as of February 2010. The national average is one in every 409 households.

HB472 is the product of more than six months of deliberations with consumer advocates, housing counselors, lenders, loan servicers, foreclosure attorneys and regulators. The bill is designed to: (1) ensure that lenders and loan servicers comply with federal law that requires them to consider whether the terms of a loan can be modified in ways that avoid a foreclosure, and (2) guarantee that a lender whose loan has not been modified and who thinks it should be is given an opportunity to meet with their lender in front of a neutral third party familiar with foreclosure issues to try to work out a solution that avoids foreclosure or reduces its impact on the homeowner. The bill goes into effect July 1st.

Implementing a new Fast Track Process for State permits and streamlining government
Legislators held a series of meetings throughout the session with staff from the Governor's office in order to streamline the State's permitting process to stimulate development across the State. Many different agencies are involved in issuing permits for new developments. As a result of our work, the State will soon have an expedited permitting process for major developments that create jobs across the State of Maryland. The legislature also unanimously passed legislation to streamline the minority business certification process.