As Governor, John will strengthen Delaware’s economy by creating new good-paying jobs, listening to the business community and reacting quickly to changes in the business climate to take advantage of opportunities and address challenges. John will never let a day go by without making sure his administration is doing something positive for Delaware’s economy.

John’s comprehensive plan for statewide economic development includes the following elements:

Creating a Positive Business Climate and Supportive Infrastructure

•  Create the Business-Labor Council, which John announced several months ago.
• Reinstitute the Statewide Marketing Council, a private sector led initiative that grew out of the GM Task Force and actively marketed and promoted Delaware through trade events and missions during the Carper Administration.
• Create an International Marketing Coordinating Council to ensure that Delaware fully leverages the international relationships that are daily being developed through our higher education institutions, state agencies (DEDO, OMB, State, Agriculture, the Port of Wilmington, etc.), private industry and non-governmental organizations such the World Trade Center.
• Direct the Delaware Economic Development Office to develop a strategic plan to reach out directly to our businesses, large and small, to gather information on needs, challenges and opportunities.
• Direct DEDO to develop a plan to aggressively lobby GM and Chrysler to maintain their presence in Delaware; to identify training and employment opportunities for plant employees so we are ready if there is a need; and to identify opportunities for use of the facilities that would contribute to economic development should they become vacant.  This should be part of an overall plan to address the manufacturing sector.
• Break down the turf barriers that exist within state agencies and among state and local government agencies and establish processes for parallel tracking of environmental, design and engineering work.
• Develop a comprehensive inventory of areas with underutilized infrastructure and human capital, drive growth to these areas, and attach specific tax incentives and fast-tracked licensing and permitting incentives in these areas.
• Work with the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership to build on DNREC’s successful efforts at value stream mapping which ensures that project requirements, issues, and goals are identified and clearly communicated prior to submissions of permit applications and engineering reviews.
• Increase the speed of permit processing by improving the transparency and accountability of State agency performance.
• Address DelDOT’s long-term funding needs for transportation projects.
• Identify and purse expansion and growth opportunities for the Port of Wilmington, and identify partners to pursue these opportunities.
• Enact enabling legislation allowing for the creation of special tax districts to fund infrastructure development in counties and municipalities.
• Keep taxes low and simple by committing to hold the top personal income tax rate among the lowest in the nation with no sales tax and continuing to cut personal and business taxes as revenues allow.
• Free up funding for new economic growth areas by completing a full program evaluation of the Return on Investment (ROI) on programs funded through the Delaware Economic Development Office.

Creating an Environment to Stimulate Ideas, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

• Bolster Delaware’s Innovation Economy by creating an environment that makes it easy for emerging companies to incubate, grow or relocate to the State.
• Assess the State’s risk capital structure to ensure that researchers, entrepreneurs and companies have access to capital at every stage of development from early R&D and applied research to the seed, venture and mezzanine stages of development.
• Expand training and mentoring programs for small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to start a business
• Recognize and reward growing, innovation-driven businesses.
• Work closely with our Congressional delegation to boost federal research dollars allocated to Delaware.

Building Partnerships Among Academic, Public and Private Sector Institutions

• Work closely with the University of Delaware’s newly-created Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships to significantly increase the utilization of the University’s intellectual property.
• Work to implement the science and technology plan and other recommendations of the Science and Technology Council.
• Support First State Innovation, a private led initiative focused on increasing Delaware’s entrepreneurial capacity, with its efforts to help technology-based and early stage businesses find traditional seed capital, alternative funding, skilled employees, commercialization assistance, and other entrepreneurial resources.
• Develop a plan to make Delaware a leader in broadband technology access for use in research, communication and knowledge gathering by linking over 80% of Delaware households, businesses, educational and medical institutions to a state-of-the-art, widely accessible broadband cyber infrastructure by 2012. 
• Establish regional partnership to advance Delaware’s interests in the Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) process, which could bring technology jobs to Delaware as a result of relocations to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
• Direct the Department of State to promote the use electronic notarization in Delaware in an effort to establish a leading national position in the emerging information assurance and medical informatics industries.  The Information Assurance Task Force, which Carney chaired, drafted enabling legislation that was recently passed by both Houses of the General Assembly.