Markell promises boost for small business

Delaware Online by Chad Livengood

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DOVER — Delaware will become the first state to partner with Facebook to foster growth in small businesses, Gov. Jack Markell said today in his annual State of the State address.

“This partnership will help our small businesses fully engage the powerful use of social media to market their products and services more effectively,” Markell told a joint session of the General Assembly gathered in the House chamber.

The first-term Democratic governor did not give specifics about the partnership. But it was part of a theme in Markell’s message of focusing on boosting small businesses and entrepreneurs after devoting a lot of time and taxpayers resources in recent years toward helping big businesses get through the recession.

Markell used the annual address to call on lawmakers to build on their past accomplishments and do more to foster job-creation, improve public schools and make government more transparent and cost-effective.

While Markell has recently been vocal about reining in Medicaid costs, the governor was more restrained in specific ways to trim costs from the $600 million program that provides health care to more than 200,000 poor and disabled Delawareans. He demanded better results from the current Medicaid system.

“The expectation is that year after year we will continue to pay more for health care, whether we receive quality results or not,” Markell said.

The governor said his administration has “quietly” made progress in addressing costs. On April 1, seniors getting long-term care in a state institutional facility will be moved into community-based facilities, Markell said.

Markell said his administration will create a database of Medicaid claims and costs to further scrutinize the escalating budget expense.

“This database will allow us to figure out why some providers get better results and why some providers create more costs without better results to show for it,” Markell told lawmakers, who have resisted instituting copays. “We will be in a position to reward what works and change what doesn’t.

The governor called on the General Assembly to pass legislation requiring Legislative Hall lobbyists to disclose which bills they’re lobbying on. Currently, lawmakers have to publicly disclose their clients.

“Citizens deserve to know who is lobbying and what they are lobbying for,” Markell said in prepared remarks. “The trust of people in their state government should not be undermined by a perception that lobbyists have hidden access here in Dover.”

Markell also called for making state government campuses entirely smoke-free. “Otherwise, we are facilitating behavior that is not only harmful to those who engage in it, but that we know, with certainty, will heavily burden future generations of taxpayers,” Markell said.

The governor also sought to portray Delaware’s politicians as more bipartisan than the rhetoric that has deeply divided Democrats and Republicans in Congress and statehouses in Columbus, Ohio and Madison, Wisc.

“At a moment when Washington, D.C., stands for deadlock and dysfunction, Delaware’s strength resides in the capacity of its people, even in challenging times, to work with common purpose, to choose perseverance in place of pettiness and partisanship,” Markell said.