Annapolis, MD — As 1,300 employees at Discovery Communications learned yesterday that their jobs were being shipped to New York City, Governor Larry Hogan was callously dismissive, saying,“in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world.”
What about his promise to attract more Fortune 500 companies to Maryland? Instead, he has become the first Maryland governor in decades to lose a Maryland-based Fortune 500 company to another state.
“Governor Hogan should know that when a company the size of Discovery leaves a community, it has a ripple effect on workers and businesses throughout the local economy. Restaurants, coffee shops, contractors, and other local small businesses will be impacted by this loss,” said Maryland Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Matthew. “If we can’t trust Hogan to keep his promises and fight for jobs, then we can’t trust him to lead the state.”
Hogan spent the entire 2014 campaign citing the debunked statistic that 10 out of Maryland’s 13 fortune 500 companies had left in the preceding 7 years, promising to turn it around. Here are some examples:
- July 23, 2013: “we’ve lost 6,500 small businesses, and now we’ve got 218,000 people unemployed, up 110,000, and we have taxpayers fleeing the state in record numbers, and Martin O’Malley continues to falsely claim that he’s a magician whose magically solved all these problems, rather than the guy who has caused all these problems, and he continually blames the whatever problems that people bring up on Bob Ehrlich and George Bush, after seven years, almost, of his leadership here in Maryland.”
- March 9, 2014: “we’ve lost 10 of our 13 Fortune 500 companies, 100,000 jobs because we’ve taxed them out of here … And that’s just simply unacceptable and something we’ve got to change”
- March 12, 2014: “we’ve lost every single Fortune 500 company out of Baltimore City; we’ve lost more businesses in Baltimore City than anywhere else, and more job losses taking place there. So it’s something we’ve got to focus on…”
- May 13, 2014: “…every single Fortune 500 company in Baltimore has left in the past seven years and ten of the thirteen statewide, so we’ve got to change that attitude. That would change on day one in our administration.”