Any Delawarean who wants to work hard should have an opportunity to do so. There should be no barriers between effort and prosperity.
Combining private-sector job openings and consistent public-sector tasks, there is no shortage of work to be done. The challenge is matching workers’ skills with available job openings, tailoring our laws and policies to encourage job and wage growth, and committing necessary public monies to fund critical long-term work that might otherwise be too uncertain or beyond the role of the private sector.
Bryan has supported and will continue to support building an economy that works for everyone and consistently drives job creation. Bryan has advocated for training and re-training opportunities for people of all skill levels and ages. On a monthly and yearly basis, skills programs should be developed and coordinated to help move workers into in-demand fields. These should be supplemented by consistent, long-term investments in infrastructure. To address chronic poverty and wage stagnation, Bryan has consistently and unwaveringly supported increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage.
Individuals’ skills and infrastructure investment are not the only aspects of job creation. It is important to encourage business development and entrepreneurship. In the Senate, Bryan has supported tax and regulatory reform designed to remove barriers to commerce and innovation. Yet he also has insisted on corporate accountability and effective policymaking. As a member of the Joint Sunset Committee, Bryan ensured the Delaware Economic Development Office had developed a policy of tying economic development grants to actual job creation. He also championed legislation to enhance transparency and coordination in state economic policymaking.
In 2017, Bryan served as the Senate sponsor of the Coastal Zone Conversion Permit Act, which establishes a procedure to allow for the responsible, productive reuse of the 14 existing sites of heavy industry use within the coastal zone. The changes to the Coastal Zone Act were robustly debated, as well they should have been, because nationally the CZA was, and remains, landmark legislation. Bryan is confident that the limited scope of the changes in the bill, and the regulations that will govern them, will breathe new life into abandoned industrial sites while staying true to the principles underlying Governor Peterson’s vision for the original legislation. It is a vision of balance and of environmental protection, of limited heavy industry along a largely undeveloped coast. Bryan believes that we owe it to present and future generations to get that balance, and enforcement, right.