2 Year Milestones:
On May 12, 2009, Governor O'Malley joined Virginia's Governor Kaine, Washington D.C Mayor Fenty, EPA Administrator Jackson, and representatives of Pennsylvania, Deleware, West Virginia, and New York in announcing significant acceleration of our collective Chesapeake Bay restoration actions over the next 2 years. Maryland's suite of actions represent a 138% increase in our rate of nitrogen reduction and an over 500% increase in our rate of phosphorus reduction, and put Maryland on a pace to meet our Bay Restoration Goals by 2020.
Maryland's BayStat agencies are currently working on revising the "Solutions" portion of this website to transparently track our progress at meeting these Milestones. We expect to have this completed by early June. In the meantime, more specifics on Maryland's actions can be viewed at Maryland 2 Year Milestones.
About BayStat
Governor Martin O’Malley created BayStat by Executive Order in February, 2007 – a powerful new statewide tool designed to assess, coordinate and target Maryland’s Bay restoration programs, and to inform our citizens on progress.
Each month Governor O’Malley meets with his BayStat team -- the Secretaries of the Maryland Departments of Agriculture, Environment, Natural Resources and Planning, scientists from the University of Maryland and other key staff -- to make sure our Bay restoration work is on track. These sessions provide a regular opportunity for the team to assess progress, evaluate what’s working and what’s not, and adapt our efforts accordingly.
BayStat allows Maryland state agencies to work smarter…
- coordinating efforts and programs
- basing decisions on the best available science
- targeting resources to get the biggest bang for the buck and
- being more open and accountable to Maryland citizens
From the desk of
Governor Martin O'Malley
On Tuesday, nearly 100 local leaders from across our State joined us at our June BayStat meeting. We held the open meeting at the Maryland Municipal League's annual summer conference in Ocean City to provide attendees with an in-depth look at BayStat, and to encourage their involvement in Bay restoration efforts.
At the meeting, I conducted a tour of our BayStat website, and we talked about our new 2-year milestones and the impact they will have on our long term restoration goals. Holding ourselves (and not some future group of policy makers) accountable is helping in our efforts to make our government work. And nowhere is the value of performance-based governance more evident than in our efforts to restore and protect our State's waterways.