Lt.

Governor Hall-Long, Mister President Pro Tem, Mister Speaker, Members of the 149th
General Assembly, Members of the Cabinet, Distinguished members of the Judiciary, invited
guests, and my fellow Delawareans: Thank you for inviting me into the chamber today.

A point of personal privilege before I begin. I’d like to recognize and welcome my mother who’s
here with my brother Mike and sister Liz and brother-in-law Brendan. And a special thank you to
my wife Tracey for all she’s doing for our state.

I’d also like to recognize our retiring legislators, Senator Brian Bushweller and Senator Margaret
Rose Henry. We’re certainly going to miss you. And I want to thank you for your service to our
state.

A year ago, I stood on the steps outside this building and promised that working hard and
working together, we would begin to meet the challenges our state faces. And that by making
tough decisions, we would put our state on a sustainable path in the new economy.

Despite the inauspicious freezing rain on that day a year ago, I felt hopeful. I knew that if we
worked hard and worked together, we could make our state stronger, and better prepared for the
future. And we have.

When we left here last, we had worked through disagreements in balancing a $400 million
budget shortfall. I said then - and believe today - that more work needs to be done to ensure our
long-term financial sustainability.

But we should not lose focus on the progress we’ve made by working together.

We partnered with the private sector to drive job creation.

We directed new resources to support small business.

We passed responsible changes to the Coastal Zone Act, clearing the way for development and
cleanup of abandoned industrial sites.

We created Opportunity Grants to provide new resources and support for low-income students,
English language learners, and students afflicted with trauma.

We strengthened protections for Delawareans affected by computer breaches, enacting the first
major changes to our cyber security laws in more than a decade.

We made historic investments in the Department of Correction, and gave our officers a pay raise.

We strengthened oversight of opioid prescriptions, expanded access to substance abuse treatment

and better coordinated our efforts to help those battling addiction. And very soon, under the

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leadership of our Lieutenant Governor, we will recommend more reforms to help control this
terrible epidemic.

It is because of all this work, all this work we did together, that I can tell you this. The state of
our state is strong, and getting stronger.

In 2018, these are our priorities:

A stronger economy

Better schools for all Delaware children

Safer communities

A healthier Delaware

A strong and stable state workforce.

I’m here today asking you to join me in making these goals a reality.

We all know that the key to lifting up our state is making sure every Delawarean has a good job.

That’s why we worked with all of you to create a public private partnership to attract businesses
to our state. And to keep them growing here.

It’s why, led by Representative Osienski and others, we passed changes to the Coastal Zone Act
that will bring new manufacturing jobs and clean up old industrial sites along the Delaware
River.

It’s why we created a new Division focused on the needs of entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Because we know that these are two of the biggest engines of job creation in our state.

It’s why we’re working with members of the General Assembly to increase access to venture
capital for Delaware start-ups and to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses, by pursuing the
Angel Investment Tax Credit. I hope to see this bill on my desk in the coming weeks.

It’s why we partnered with the University of Delaware and the DowDuPont Company to create
the Delaware Innovation Space at the Experimental Station. It’s already home to more than 160
high-paying jobs and 9 different companies working to cure diseases, create new materials, and
improve our overall quality of life. Companies like Prelude Therapeutics and Adesis are at work
in state-of-the-art labs, paving the way to create the next Incyte, or W.L. Gore.

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And it’s also why we’ll be creating a new deer management program, to protect Delaware’s
farms from crop damage. Agriculture is part of our Delaware heritage – it’s our number one
industry, and it’s a way of life. The best way to protect and preserve family farms is to help make
them more profitable.

At the same time, our innovation economy is taking off.

In Newark, Chemours will partner with the University of Delaware to build a $150 million state-
of-the-art research facility and innovation center at the Star campus.

Just down the road, FMC Corporation has taken over the Stine-Haskell Research Center and will
continue to drive research and innovation at that site.

And with DowDupont’s specialty products and agriculture units headquartered here in Delaware,
our long history of scientific discovery promises to remain an important part of our future as
well.

None of this would have been possible without government working closely with our private
sector. I want to thank everyone in this chamber, including Nick Lambrow, a member of the
Prosperity Partnership Board, who are helping make this happen.

When employers are deciding where to locate, we know that the number one thing they’re
looking for is a highly skilled workforce. And the states with the strongest workforce are the
ones that will win in the years ahead.

That’s why we’re working to strengthen the Pathways program in our schools, to connect more
students with externships and on-the-job training that will lead to a full-time job.

That’s why we’re investing in our institutions of higher education, particularly Delaware Tech,
so students graduate ready to enter the workforce.

That’s why we need to support programs like Zip Code Wilmington, that transform students into
skilled I.T. workers.

That’s why we’ve reorganized the Department of Education into one focused on supporting
teachers in the classroom – because teachers spend more time than anyone with the workforce of
tomorrow.

Investing in our workforce will pay dividends for generations to come. Join me in making this a
high priority.

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Businesses are also looking for a good quality of life and fun things to do for their employees.
Delaware has a lot to offer, and it’s our job to support and promote the things that make
Delaware a great place to live.

This fall, I kayaked through the bald cypress trees on Trap Pond and toured the Fort Miles
Artillery Park at Cape Henlopen. I took an Eco Tour on the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal, and went to
Bombay Hook to watch the bald eagles. I biked the Mike Castle Trail, walked along the
Brandywine, and did Crossfit on the Riverfront.

I saw a country music concert at the state fair, listened to Loveseed Mama Jump at the Queen,
and heard Blood, Sweat and Tears at the Grand.

I had beers at the Bellefonte Brewery in Marshallton, the Mispillion River Brewery in Milford,
and a glass of wine at Harvest Ridge in Marydel.

I visited the John Dickinson plantation, the George Read house in New Castle, and the Kalmar
Nyckel. And I even had time to stop by a Blue Rocks game in Wilmington.

I ate crab cakes in Leipsic, had sushi in Dover, and ice cream at the UD creamery on Market
Street in Wilmington.

I toured the downtown development districts in Milford, Laurel, Seaford, and Wilmington, and
saw the exciting things that each town is doing to bring new energy and business to their
downtowns.

And as a lifelong Delawarean, I can tell you, there has never been a better time to live and work
and raise a family here in our state.

Businesses tell us that they want a tax and regulatory environment that lets them grow and
innovate.

This year I partnered with many of you, members of the General Assembly in hosting ten small
business roundtables in your districts. The complaint about government that we heard over and
over again was that regulations are too cumbersome and confusing, and they’re bad for business.

In particular, we heard concerns about DelDOT’s permitting process. We listened.

A few weeks ago, Secretary Cohan announced a package of process improvements to make it
easier for employers to do business with the state. We cut project review timelines dramatically,
so businesses can get busy putting Delawareans to work.

There’s more we can do, and we will.

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I firmly believe that the strength of our state lies in the strength of our largest city.
But as everyone here knows, we continue to face significant challenges in Wilmington that pose
a threat to its long-term success. I’ve called Wilmington home for three decades. Tracey and I
raised a family there. And I care deeply about its success. But we all have a stake in helping our
city succeed. Its success is closely linked to the success of our state.

That’s why, over the past year, Delawareans have seen this administration work with Mayor
Purzycki and members of Wilmington City Council to devote unprecedented time and attention
to making Wilmington strong again.

Our approach has three parts:

Support city families.

Improve city schools.

Connect city residents with jobs and job training.

To bring a sharper focus on families that are struggling, we re-established the Family Services
Cabinet Council.

We’ve put a greater emphasis on coordination among state agencies tasked with serving our most
vulnerable citizens.

To do this, we’re implementing the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control report,
which was intended to reduce violence in the city. We’re starting by helping agencies better
share data, and target resources where they’re needed most.

The Department of Health and Social Services launched a unit specifically dedicated to
providing support for Wilmington’s struggling neighborhoods.

We’re stationing caseworkers at community centers, public libraries, and probation offices
throughout the city.

Our probation and parole officers are working arm in arm with Wilmington PD on Operation
Safe Streets. Senior Probation Officer William Walker was grazed by a bullet while helping to
keep the streets of Wilmington safe. He’s here with us today, along with his wife, Angie, and
daughters Michelle and Taylor. Help me thank him for his work.

Of course, our greatest obligation in Wilmington is to our children.

Already we have taken steps that, I believe, will help our efforts in all city schools, and schools
across Delaware. We opened the Office of Innovation and Improvement at the Department of
Education, to focus state energy on these and other high-needs schools.

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We created Opportunity Grants to serve disadvantaged students not just in Wilmington, but
across the state.

We put basic needs closets in schools in all three counties, so students can have access to
hygiene products, school supplies, and winter clothing, in a dignified way.

Christina School District’s portion of the City schools — Bayard, Stubbs, Bancroft, Palmer, and
Pulaski — need our help the most. So for the past six months, we have been trying to form a
partnership with the district to lift up our city children.

The state has offered Christina support for smaller class sizes, more professional development
for teachers, critical capital upgrades, an early learning center and parent supports. We are
working with the Christina community to come up with ideas for using the existing school
buildings in a way that is better for kids.

This may be the most difficult thing we do during this Administration, but it is clearly the most
important. Next week, I’ll be coming to you with a budget request to help us with these efforts,
and I’ll be asking for your support.

In addition to our efforts to help our city schools, we’ve been working to provide stable
environments for these children by helping their parents find jobs.

The work we are doing to expand the port of Wilmington is a critical piece of our plan, both for
the city, and to create blue collar jobs for Delawareans statewide. Every month, hundreds of
people, many from the city, show up at the longshoremen’s hall in Southbridge looking for work.
But the port is at a real crossroads. It needs to grow and change in order to survive.

In the weeks ahead, we will present a plan for a new public-private partnership that holds the
promise of significant new investments at the port. The plan will include a new port facility at
Edgemoor, and expanded job opportunities in the years to come. These good-paying jobs
stabilize families, and the neighborhoods where they live. Creating more port jobs is key to the
economic success of our state.

We can’t undo decades of distress in Wilmington in a single year. But working with the Mayor
and city leaders, we’re determined to turn the ship around. This year has been a good start. Let’s
work together to make Wilmington strong again.

Of course, the best thing we can do to invest in our state’s future is to invest in quality education
for every Delaware child.

And we know that students are best prepared for success when they reach kindergarten ready to
learn. We need to encourage Delaware’s early learning centers to invest in their programs and to

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continue to grow. That’s why, I will propose additional funding for the STARS program in next
year’s budget.

We also will propose expanding the number of math coaches in middle schools across the state.
I saw firsthand the impact of these math coaches at McCullough Middle School in the Colonial
School District. Math proficiency is critical in today’s workforce. I am committed to ensuring
more of our educators get this type of support.

Working with you last year, we created the Opportunity Grants program to provide new
resources to students who need it most. We reached thousands of students across 13 schools last
year. Next week, we will be proposing additional funding for Opportunity Grants that will more
than triple the number of schools receiving this support. Schools could use this funding for things
like after school programs, reading interventions, or other resources to help students and teachers
be successful.

We want to target the resources toward schools like North Georgetown Elementary. There, I saw
an amazing teacher, Maria Hazzard. She works hard every day to help a group of Spanish-
speaking children move one step closer to becoming our state’s doctors, lawyers and teachers of
tomorrow. Maria is here with us today. Let’s thank her and her colleagues for what they do every
day.

Our budget will target resources where they’re needed most: in the classroom. Teachers go to
work every day to help Delaware’s children succeed. Our budget will include a plan to hire close
to 200 new teachers statewide to match enrollment growth in our public schools.

Teachers do our state’s most important job -- working on the front lines to prepare Delaware
children for the future. That’s why, working with Representative Bentz and Senator Townsend
and DSEA, we will create a student loan forgiveness program for educators. This program will
help us retain educators in our highest need schools and in the highest demand subject areas.

As we seek to help our lowest performing schools, we’re studying models of excellence
throughout the state from Frederick Douglass Elementary School in Seaford to Laurel Middle
School to Harlan Elementary in North Wilmington. We’re learning from their success, and will
seek to replicate it.

My wife Tracey has been hard at work as our state’s First Lady, focusing on the needs of our
state’s children.

She secured a generous grant from Casey Family Programs to support partnerships that will give
Delaware’s children a better chance to succeed. Paul DiLorenzo from Casey is here with us
today. Thank you Paul for your support.

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Tracey’s goal is to use the Casey grant as a catalyst to recognize and inspire partnerships to
promote early care for at-risk children, end childhood hunger, promote literacy, and recognize
and respond to childhood trauma. The idea is that no one agency - government or otherwise - can
do it alone. Thank you, Tracey, for working to make a real difference in the lives of the children
of our state.

Tracey is also working with the Division of Libraries on a new statewide library card campaign -
- which we’re officially launching today -- and on initiatives to use libraries as a way to deliver
social services to our communities. We’ve seen a great example of the potential for this in the
opening of the incredible, multi-functional, library on Route 9 in New Castle. Thank you
Representative Johnson and everyone else who made this possible.

We’re standing here today facing a much more positive financial picture than this time last year.
We closed a $400 million budget shortfall. But we did not go far enough, unfortunately, and as a
result, our long-term budget problems continue to linger.

It’s a simple math problem. Our long-term growth rate for state spending is two times the growth
rate of our revenues. We have to find a long-term way to limit our spending growth. I’ve
imposed this type of discipline on the budget I’ll introduce next week.

The budget smoothing task force is considering several good ideas to bring more fiscal discipline
to our spending patterns. For the long-term, we need structural spending reform, just as we need
structural revenue changes. I want to continue working with the General Assembly – Democrats
and Republicans – to do both.

And, this is important, we cannot build new ongoing spending on top of one-time revenues. It’s
just not responsible, and we can’t allow it, no matter how compelling the cause.

Healthcare costs continue to be the biggest driver of state budget growth, accounting for thirty
percent of our budget today. At our current pace, Delaware’s total spending on health care
services will more than double over the next decade. That puts a squeeze on both Delaware
families and business owners. These rising costs also make it harder to invest in education,
public safety, and our workforce.

Here’s the bottom line. We’re spending too much money on healthcare, and not getting the best
results. We all need to come to the table – state government and hospitals most of all – and be
part of the solution. The hospitals and other providers have been laying the groundwork for this
effort for years. Now it’s time to make the hard decisions, and change the way we deliver
healthcare. Secretary Walker is working with many of you to come up with a plan to do just that.

If there’s any place we can do it, it’s here in Delaware.

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Through the work of the Government Efficiency and Accountability Review Board, or GEAR,
we are also focused on making government run more cost effectively. Many ideas have come
from our dedicated state employees themselves. Ideas like changing how we deliver technology
to our schools. Modernizing how we record and process sentencing orders in our courts. And
improving how state agencies utilize banking services and purchasing cards. In the coming
months, we will begin implementing many of these recommendations.

The state is Delaware’s largest employer. And state employees – from DNREC park rangers to
Kids Department social workers to state troopers – are the public’s main point of contact with
state government. Here with us today we have members of the National Guard, First Lieutenant
Michael Kerr and Master Sergeant Lori Friess, who deployed here at home and overseas, missing
time with their loved ones, for the sake of their state and country. Thank you both for your
service.

We need to invest in state employees, and treat them like the professional, dedicated workers
they are. While we’re on this topic, I’d like to acknowledge everyone in this building’s favorite
state employee – Bernard Brady – who announced his retirement earlier this week.

As an initial step toward investing in our workforce, last week, I announced my support for paid
parental leave for all state employees. This is the right thing to do for our workers, and for their
children.

As part of our focus on improving workplace conditions for state employees, I directed Secretary
Johnson to analyze our state’s current sexual harassment policy and training, and to recommend
ways to improve it. In the coming weeks we will announce a series of changes to ensure that no
state employee is made to feel uncomfortable or threatened at work.

At the same time, we’ll be working to improve diversity and inclusion in every state agency,
particularly in hiring and promotion practices. Our first step was to hire the state’s first Chief
Diversity Officer.

State employees deserve to work in spaces that are clean and well-maintained. Unfortunately,
many state office buildings have fallen into disrepair, are poorly lit, and are in need of a little
TLC. I will be proposing money in my budget to invest in our facilities, to increase productivity
and give us a happier workforce.

And finally, and I’ll talk about this in more detail next week, I believe we need to pay our state
workers more fairly.

Nowhere have we made more investments in our state employees than in the Department of
Correction. Fifteen days into my administration, the hostage incident at James T. Vaughn took
the life of Lieutenant Steven Floyd and stole a sense of security from the thousands of
correctional officers who work throughout our system.

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We have been working every day since February 2nd to make our prisons safer, and to address
the conditions that contributed to that terrible tragedy.

Based on the Independent Review Team’s recommendations, we reached an agreement to

increase salaries for Delaware’s correctional officers.

We have implemented significant investments in equipment, recruitment, technology and

training at the Department of Correction.

And we’re installing cameras at James T. Vaughn and other correctional facilities as we speak.

I made a commitment that the Independent Review report will not collect dust on a shelf. It has
not. And it will not.

Changes will continue in 2018, led by Commissioner Phelps and with the guidance of a special
assistant we appointed to make sure this work gets done quickly and well.

As I’ve traveled the state over the past year, I’ve met countless Delawareans who are working
hard, and working together, to make life better for their neighbors.

The National Guardsmen, DEMA and DelDOT employees who deployed at a moment’s notice
to Puerto Rico and Texas and Florida, and who work around the clock in snow storms to keep us
safe.

Maria Hazzard, the teacher at North Georgetown, who holds our state’s future in her hands.

The grandmother I met knocking on doors on Oak Street in Wilmington, who makes sure her
grandkids do their homework each night, and get to Pulaski Elementary School safely each
morning.

Probation Officer Walker, who puts his life on the line to keep our neighbors safe.

These men and women are my north star. They make hard decisions every day in order to make
life easier for somebody else. They expect us to do the same. They’ve put their trust in us, and
we cannot let them down.

This past year, we were faced with our fair share of challenges. But they did not shake our
resolve to get things done. And they will not going forward.

We won’t always agree on the solutions, but we can all agree on the goals.

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To make our economy stronger. Our healthcare system more effective. Our communities safer.
Our state workforce strong and stable. Our children more ready to compete for the future.

Working hard and working together, we can and we will get this done.

Thank you, God bless you, God bless the state of Delaware, and God bless our great United
States of America.

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