HOGAN ON O’MALLEY 'BELIEF' VIDEO: IT’S MORE 'MAKE BELIEVE'

ANNAPOLIS – Business owner and Change Maryland founder Larry Hogan released the following statement on Governor O’Malley's recent release of "Belief." The video is the Governor’s most recent effort to gain relevancy on the national stage.

"Martin O’Malley's ‘belief' video is more like make believe," charged Hogan. “This video is just one more item in a long list of attempts by the Governor to spin his failures into something he can campaign on."

O’Malley's "belief" video makes several claims of success. Change Maryland, the largest non-partisan organization in Maryland released the following fact check of the video:

O’Malley Claim #1: Racial tension down during time as Mayor of Baltimore

Fact: The NAACP and ACLU sued Baltimore City as a result of Martin O’Malley's over-zealous "zero-tolerance" policies. The "mass-arrest" lawsuit led to an $870,000 settlement.

O’Malley Claim #2: Number 1 in education

Fact: Maryland’s exclusion of certain students from submitted test scores has skewed the results in favor of the state. According to the Baltimore Sun, "Maryland excluded 66 percent of fourth-graders with disabilities for the reading test, far higher than the national rate of 16 percent. The state with the second-highest rate of exclusion of special-education students was Georgia, with 32 percent."

O’Malley Claim #3: Number 1 in innovation and entrepreneurship

Fact: O’Malley's own Lt. Governor admits that the business climate in Maryland is bad – 43rd in the country. In addition, the state has lost over 6,500 small businesses and added 120,000 people to the unemployment rate – numbers that certainly don’t indicate a positive climate for businesses or entrepreneurs.

O’Malley Claim #4: Made the Chesapeake Bay healthier

Fact: The overall quality of the Chesapeake Bay remains poor and we consistently miss self-imposed water quality goals. In 2011, most regions of the Bay had Water Quality Index score in the poor range. In 2012, Bay scored 47% for overall health.

O’Malley Claim # 5: He was cutting the cost of statewide government.

Fact: The O’Malley-Brown Administration increased spending nearly eight billion dollars since 2007. The Fiscal Year 2014 Budget, the last for Governor O’Malley, cites a record $37.3 billion, while the Fiscal Year 2007 Budget, the last for the previous administration, was just over $29 billion. He in fact increased spending by 30%.

"This isn’t the first time Martin O’Malley has been caught cherry-picking data," Hogan continued. "In 2012, the governor refuted our Change Maryland Tax Migration Study using taxpayer-funded state resources by eliminating competitive states in our region. Facts are stubborn things for this governor and a slick video can't hide the embarrassing performance of the O’Malley-Brown administration.

"Martin O’Malley hasn’t cut a single cent out of Maryland's state budget. In fact, he has increased spending year after year – nearly 30% since 2007, and has raised taxes and fees on Marylanders forty consecutive times in order to pay for all that spending."