| Send to Printer | << Back to Article |
| Local |
|
Ulman heads to India in search of economic development
BALTIMORE -
Howard County Executive Ken Ulman will travel to Bangalore, India, next week to meet with companies and court businesses to the county. “We are interested in [companies] furthering their growth here, and also new companies who may be investing in the U.S. to consider Howard County,” Ulman said. Ulman will be joined by Chief of Staff Aaron Greenfield and Economic Development Authority CEO Dick Story for three days of meetings and visits. The feature attraction of the trip is the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar, a piece of equipment built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Howard. The radar will be one of two U.S.-made instruments aboard India’s first mission to the moon, officials said. Officials also will meet with other businesses, such as Columbia-based Prism Microsystems Inc., which has an office in Bangalore. The trip, which begins this evening, costs about $35,000 for the three officials and a reception, and is being paid for by the Howard County Economic Development Authority, Story said. Taxpayers are not footing the bill, he said, because the money comes from company investments in the authority. One hundred companies pay a total of $300,000 a year for the authority to promote economic growth in Howard. The county also provides more than $1 million to the authority in annual grant funding. Eight or nine county business people who were born in India will accompany the county officials at their own expense. International economic trips aren’t unusual, and officials from Montgomery and Price George’s have been to India several times, officials said. In 2003, Howard’s economic authority took former County Executive Jim Robey to France, Germany and Spain. The trip must be well thought out and fit well into a county’s economic development strategy for it to be worth the investment, said Scott Fosler, a visiting professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. smichael@baltimoreexaminer.com |
