Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley gave his 7th consecutive annual address to the Maryland Association of Counties Convention today in Ocean City which focused on a litany of what the governor touted as his economic successes and achievements. Business Leader Larry Hogan took aim at the falsehoods in O'Malley's speech. "He was not just stretching the truth, it's worse than that. Nearly everything he said in his speech today was blatantly false, much of what he said was actually the complete opposite of the truth."

Hogan, a former Maryland Cabinet Secretary said, "The governor is entitled to his own opinions but he can't just make up his own facts and pretend that they are true." Change Maryland recently showed that unemployment has nearly doubled under O'Malley from 3.6% to 7%, and the actual number of Marylanders unemployed grew from 108,000 to 218,000 people under O'Malley. "You can't say you are most proud of your success in job creation, and say you recovered 99% of all the jobs lost, when you actually doubled the unemployment rate and lost 110,000 more jobs, more than any governor in history," said Hogan, who founded the group Change Maryland. Larry Hogan, the founder and President of the Hogan Companies, leaders in economic development who have brought hundreds of companies and thousands of jobs to Maryland went on to say, "You can't brag about your success in strengthening small businesses, when you have lost 6,500 small businesses. You can't claim success in economic development when you have lost 10 of the 13 Fortune 500 companies in the state, under your watch."

"How can the governor say that he cut more spending – more than anyone in history, when he actually increased spending by $8 billion, an increase of more than 30%, and claim that he lowered taxes when he enacted the largest tax increases in history, 40 consecutive tax hikes that take an additional $3.1 billion a year out of the pockets of struggling Maryland families and small businesses," said Hogan. The economic think-tank, Change Maryland, has produced a number of economic reports that have shown the decline in Maryland's economy. The group was the first to itemize, and then total, all of the O'Malley tax increases and study their impact on Maryland families and businesses. They did a report which gained national attention showing a mass exodus of 31,000 taxpayers fleeing the state, the largest of any state in the region and one of the worst in the nation. The group also held a business summit on improving economic competitiveness, attended by economists, policy groups, and over 400 business leaders from across the state to come up with proposed solutions to the state's serious economic decline under the O'Malley Administration.