DBED's Youth Movement
An interview with Christian Johansson
By David Callahan
Photos by Bryan Burris

The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) has long been an agency of fits and starts when it comes to overall effectiveness. At times, the agency has been a beacon and significant force for enhancing the overall economic strength of the state. At other times, it has seemed asleep and hardly noticeable. If you informally poll local business leaders, a general consensus emerges that under the leadership of Aris Melissaratos, a Democrat who crossed party lines to work under the Ehrlich administration, the agency enjoyed one of its most effective and visible periods ever. Melissaratos is an articulate and hard-working leader who knew how to focus the agency's efforts and cared deeply about keeping Maryland's industry strong, seemingly having a soft spot for the large-scale manufacturing side of business, from which his teeth were cut over many years.

Today, a very different kind of leader has been chosen to head DBED, taking over for David W. Edgerley who left the role on Jan 30. After just a few months on the job as Maryland's economic development chief, Christian Johansson has already made his presence known in the state. Johansson, who is very tall, very smart and very young for the role, appears to be quickly gaining confidence in his job, despite stepping into it under the most difficult of economic circumstances. He leads an agency that has no time to dither. If a company, state or country is to establish a proper path for growth, the most crucial time to make smart decisions is the period of time coming out of a recession. The O'Malley administration has put that decision-making responsibility on the shoulders of a Harvard MBA venture capitalist whose own "soft spot" appears to favor entrepreneurship and leveraging the state's core business strengths. Whether this former CEO of the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore can succeed in his mission to help foster economic growth in Maryland remains to seen, but all companies should at least pay some attention to what he and the agency are doing.

DBED appears to be looking to regain a close dialogue with the Maryland business community, and with that in mind, we sat down on June 17 for a brief discussion to get to know the agency's newest secretary.

SmartCEO: DBED had a real reduction in the marketing budget. We heard you were mostly looking at social media to get the word out, and we thought this was probably a great time to let DBED have its voice heard. You did have your budget cut, didn't you?

Christian Johansson: Not only at DBED. Most agencies had a rough go out of the recession, obviously. We're looking at budget reductions across the board with declining revenues. And so the question we asked was, given fewer resources, how can we be as effective as possible and get the message out there? I had a dinner with a number of folks from the GBTC, and several of those folks had companies that actually work in the space or were employing a lot of cool and interesting strategies around social media. I thought it would be a good idea if we could learn from the best, so to speak, so we invited three or four of those folks in to present what they're doing and how they thought the state could leverage some of those ideas.

SmartCEO: Is it something you've found any success with yet? Or is it something you're still testing? I didn't really see the value of Twitter for businesses, but I also probably underestimated the power of it because what it's done for Iran is really amazing and has opened my eyes more.

Johansson: Well, it's interesting because there's a unit there - one of my good friends Alec Ross is heading up innovations at state, and part of the mission of that unit is to look at how to use new technologies, including social media, to bring people together or to empower people. Obviously with what happened in Iran and the State Department, even though it was at a low level, telling Twitter not to shut down for a reboot of the system - they kept it running. I'm not sure what the impact of that was in terms of folks in Iran, but obviously there were some of the largest demonstrations there since the overthrow of the Shah. So technology has a way of playing roles when we least expect it.

But in terms of the way we're looking at it at DBED, essentially, it's really simple. How do we get the message out about Maryland as much as possible, as effectively as possible and as creatively as possible? A lot of the traditional ways of doing so are cost prohibitive or they may not be reaching the new stakeholders.  

SmartCEO: You seem more visible than your immediate predecessor, and your appointment seems, to me, to be a bit of a statement about trying to bring new thinking into DBED. Can you talk a little bit about your background? You're a Harvard MBA, right?

Johansson: Yes. I started my first company when I was 21 years old. I was straight out of college. So I know what it's like to build a business, even from a small perspective. I've done that from the startup in my mom's basement to the venture-backed startup that I've done, to being a management consultant for larger firms, to my last juncture being an investor. So I've done the lifecycle of the early-stage thing, where you're trying to rub two pennies together to get a project or a product off the ground, just to make it happen to where you have the resources from institutional investors, to where I've been, as an investor, looking at other young companies and how to back them. I have a lot of comfort in that area.

When you look at job creation and  opportunity, so much of that job creation takes place with small to medium-sized companies. And often, the focus and the emphasis is "we have these big companies here." But if you were to look at job creation, if you look at innovation and how quickly the lifecycle is occurring for that, it's mostly at small or medium-sized companies. So, if nothing else, I think that, given my background, I understand some of the challenges that they have and some of the difficulties they might be facing, especially in the current environment.

The other thing I was going to say is if you look at the industries and the technologies we're talking about, these are fairly new technologies. If you went back to 1980 and you looked up the number of biotech - not pharmaceutical, but biotech - firms in Maryland, I'm not sure how many there would have been. These industries have grown up in a fairly short period of time. If you look at IT and some of the advanced computing, especially in regard to IT and intelligence, a lot of these things have evolved very quickly over the past two decades as computer systems have evolved. And when I think about the economic opportunities for the state, I don't think it's a bad thing to bring, perhaps, a different perspective and a familiarity of having grown up with these technologies.

SmartCEO: Well biotech is interesting. Not that many biotech companies in Maryland are making money. Some are doing very well, but a lot of the biotech startups have not proven their models. We've built a lot of infrastructure for biotech, and it is being used for other purposes - I think Maryland is repurposing some space for an MBA program. Was there a bubble there?

Johansson: One of the challenges we've had here in bio is that we've been phenomenal at basic research, frankly, but look at the inter-linkages that most universities had in Boston that tied in their medical schools and their business schools, where they not only had great science, you also had some of the best business programs. There was a fair amount of flow between them. So I think, if you if you look at the business program taking space [in Baltimore], it's probably something that is a competitive advantage.

But addressing your point about biotechs making money - if you look at bio in general, there are about 400 companies in the state of Maryland. About 8 percent of bio as an industry is in Maryland, while the state has less than 2 percent of the country's population. In the last two years, this has been one of our areas of strength - we have either retained or helped grow 1,800 jobs on the bio side. Now, you point out a very important point, and that's that bio requires a long vision. It takes time, right? The regulatory process to get from phase one to phase two to phase three is not easy, and there are a lot of pitfalls along the way. We have a great pipeline. We need to push a number of those companies up that pipeline to make sure we deliver products.

SmartCEO: And having an MBA program can obviously help in making the conversion, but I guess what I worry about with bio is basic market understanding. I'm in the media business, and a lot of people rushed into cyberspace, and they built these rockets to get out there, and they didn't know how to survive once they got out there. And a lot of these scientists, they may have great ideas, but do they know how to make money at the end of the day with what they're doing?

Johansson: You're familiar with our Bio2020 plan, right? A huge component is a $1.3 billion plan over a decade to basically address a number of the areas you just talked about. Because it's not just about having great science; it's about being able to tie it in with great management. It's being able to make sure you protect the intellectual properties. Being able to put in place the support services and companies that can help you - just call it the "infrastructure" - as you move it up the value chain. And Bio2020 addresses a number of those points for how do we do that. Maryland is the number one per capita state in federal R&D, but we lag behind when it comes to commercialization. That gap is an opportunity, and if we look at it as such, what are all the different barriers that prevent us from closing that translational gap and mining that opportunity?

SmartCEO: The stated vision is, "Let's create Silicon Valley here." Do you think we can really do that with bio? Can what's being done really lead to that kind of  thing in 10 years?

Johansson: The answer is yes. Let me put it to you this way: There are a number of communities in the U.S. that would like to create a center for bio. Very few of them have the key assets to make that possible. So what are the key assets? You're looking at all the key federal facilities that either help innovate in the industry - the NIH and all the dollars that flow from that. Regulation comes from here with the FDA. You have the key institutions not only for research and science here, between Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland and others, but you also have the clinical platform for all the clinical trials. On top of that, you already have a concentration of companies that is a critical mass.

And you just brought up an important point, and that is that this is a dollars-driven industry. We have the highest per capita concentration of doctorates in bio and life sciences, bar none. The people who can innovate are here. The one piece that we do need some help on has been that translational piece. And I think you're seeing not only the University of Maryland and the Smith School coming up, taking space here, but you're also seeing Johns Hopkins, which has the Carey Business School, their whole focus is around this. It's around healthcare and biotechnology. And so some of the missing pieces of the puzzle are already being filled in as they are going along.

SmartCEO: My last question regarding biotech is this: I watch the state working so hard to promote biotech and recognizing that it's an important initiative. Is the state also working hard to monitor it, though? We had highly sophisticated weaponized anthrax escape out of Fort Detrick, according to the FBI. Someone smuggled it out, it got mailed to Congress and press organizations. And that dangerous biomaterial came out of this state from a highly secure military installation. Now we're dealing with a swine flu scare and there have been some people who are asking, did this come out of a lab? And it's a valid question to raise when you're talking about what these biotech facilities do in terms of researching viruses, etc. Are the discussions about safeguarding the community equally robust? Because we're all living in the closest proximity to it.

Johansson: Well, first of all, on the federal side, I'd say the answer is definitely yes. The federal government, especially after the suspicions on anthrax, I would pretty much guarantee that there were a lot of lessons about how to safeguard materials that came out of that. On a state level, when we had the swine flu case, Governor O'Malley had every aspect of the cabinet involved from day one, planning. And I would argue that we were one of the best-prepared states in terms of communicating to the public what was happening, in terms of having a response hotline set up immediately, in terms of proactively working the problem.

The third thing I would say is we're talking about virulent diseases that could affect us all. Maryland is home to the companies that are trying to prevent them. And obviously you have Fort Detrick and the entire complex that is being built developing vaccines for some of these most dangerous diseases. It's not just there. You have Medimmune, Digene and NovaVax, which is doing one of the most advanced swine flu vaccines. You have Aeras Global for tuberculosis. On the flip side, one of our strengths is actually developing responses to some of these things.

And what I would say about accidents is, I don't know of a single example where a federal facility in Maryland has put this dangerous toxin out to people. Now people would say something around anthrax. To my knowledge, there's not anything definitely proven that it came from that facility. I'm not sure, but obviously that investigation stopped short. But to my knowledge, there is not a single case where you have had dangerous organisms negatively impact Maryland during the past eight years that I've been here.

SmartCEO: Moving on from the biotech industry, you have some other industries you've held up as key to Maryland's future.

Johansson: [Pulls out small marketing card] Everything that we do, we start from our mission. And that was one of the points I needed to clarify quickly. Our mission was long - half the people didn't know it. Now it's one sentence, and we're all supposed to have a card on us at all times. "Create, attract and retain jobs while promoting the state's vibrant cultural economies." That's what we do, and on the back are our priorities. And what you're talking about is point three here. Essentially, the economic development strategy that we've outlined is really focused on building on our core competitive strengths. If you're going to build a business case for anything, you have to start with, "What are the foundations that we have in place that we can build off of?" And that's really leveraging our federal, our scientific, our medical, our university assets - the fact that we have one of the most talented workforces anywhere on the planet. And if you look at what that translates to in terms of our biggest opportunities, collectively, you can just call it "feds, meds, eds and beds." "Feds" is the federal government and all of the businesses that flow from that and are associated with that. "Meds" is healthcare and bio. Healthcare is a huge industry here, independent of bio, as you know. Obviously, Johns Hopkins is the largest employer in the city of Baltimore. "Eds" is education. We are very rich in educational institutions, and they are an economic driver by themselves. "Beds" is tourism. So those industries are all the largest drivers of the economy. There are other industries, for sure, but those are the largest drivers.

SmartCEO: Do you worry that the industries that aren't highlighted might say, "Oh, DBED's not worried about our industry"?

Johansson: We highlighted those because, in the recession, they all grew jobs last year. And it's just a short list. While the rest of the country was shedding jobs, they were growing jobs, and so, in terms of articulating any sort of strategy, how do we leverage what we have?

We talked about bio, but [another area of focus] is IT and intelligence. Between Northern Virginia and Aberdeen, we have the highest concentration of IT and intelligence of any place on the planet. You have the key federal facilities, such as Fort Meade, which is one of Maryland's largest employers. You have all the key contractors that support that. You have the Applied Physics Lab. You have, in my personal opinion, the highest concentration of talented people working on solving these kinds of problems here, all within close proximity. So if you're a company in this space, you want to be here. This is where the customers are. This is where the key people are. This is where the infrastructure is.

Now what excites us is that we're looking at that opportunity growing, especially with President Obama's cyber initiative. Because as this president asks the question, "Where do I want to put these types of operations that protect American networks? Where is that concentration of people today?" Well, it's right here. And that initiative is anywhere from $15 billion to $30 billion.

SmartCEO: Let's talk about IT and intelligence. One of the main missions, you say, is to restore DBED to the voice of Maryland business. When our largest and fastest-growing companies are doing classified work that they can't talk about, is that a challenge for you?

Johansson: In the last hundred days, I've spoken to 75 business groups - 6,000 businesses - and part of that, as much as speaking, has been to listen because DBED should be the voice of business inside the administration. And we should be looking at how to make sure the voice of business always gets a hearing. We're leveraging the best ideas that are out there. And part of what I wanted to do in my first hundred days is really to do an active listening tour, sitting down almost every day, talking to different business groups. These are pretty small groups where you could actually have conservations about some of these topics, and I've gotten a fair sense of some of the things they think are important and how we can help. Part of this is making sure that we are being their voice, and we're listening to them, and we're leveraging their ideas.

In that spirit, we're re-establishing the Maryland Economic Development Commission. The MEDC has been dormant for a decade. Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who headed the NIH for the last seven years - he's going to chair it, and we've put together what I think is an economic development dream team of folks from around the state, from different industries that will be another voice of business for the governor and myself in terms of policy ideas for how to move the state forward.  

SmartCEO: What, specifically, will the economic development commission be empowered to do?

Johansson: The economic development commission is a sounding board for us. It's to look at the best development strategies to take our state forward. We need a broader coalition to make the case for business issues to the legislature and others. This is really a coalition effort when you're pushing for policies that will make Maryland business more competitive and create a climate for how we can be successful. The LSAB - the Life Science Advisory Board - was sort of a first generation for that. They've come up with a great report for life sciences, but there is much more to this economy than life sciences, as you pointed out. There's a whole host of opportunities, and we need to think about how to take advantage of them.  

SmartCEO: One of things about Maryland is, because of the way it's shaped, the people in Cumberland and on the Eastern Shore sometimes feel a little disconnected from what happens in places like Baltimore because they think that everything is going to be corridor-centric.  

Johansson: I've been out to Western Maryland three or four times now. I can tell you that there's not a cookie-cutter solution for economic development. Western Maryland's most important economic priority over the last decade was to diversify its economy, and it has done that. In the economic downturn, Maryland is holding up very well, but there are pockets that are having a bit of a harder time. Obviously, Western Maryland is one of those pockets. The Eastern Shore is one of those pockets. Some of those areas, such as Western Maryland, if you look at prior recessions before they diversified the economy, unemployment went as high as 13 percent up there. They're at 9 percent today.

Even when we're looking at challenges, it's important to put it in context and know the history of what has happened there. When I have been out there talking to them, part of that question has been around how do we help you in that diversification process? How do we make sure that we provide the support necessary for you to look at some of these other industries, for you attract and retain your young people? Because that's another issue out there, in terms of young talent having, perhaps, more opportunities in the corridor and wanting to be a part of those communities. So you're right, there's not a one-size fits all.

[Holds up card] The first thing we put on this list was business confidence. And what that really is, is telling the Maryland story. Because we're in an environment where, for the first time since World War II, global economic output went down. It didn't go down in the '80s. It didn't go down in the '90s. There have been over 5 million jobs lost in a very short period of time. We've had three waves of challenges to confidence. The first one was the financial crisis. The second one was the housing crisis. And the third one was the jobs crisis. The silver lining to all of this is that Maryland has by far outperformed the rest of the United States.

Now fear, unfortunately, can distort a market environment and a marketplace. We want to make sure that we are articulating the case for Maryland, and we are putting out the economic facts that tell a story - that even in this hard time, Maryland is still a safe and stable place to invest. That's not to say that we don't fully understand that 6.8 percent unemployment is too high - it is - but for the first time in 14 months, it actually went down in Maryland in April. We're moving in the right direction. For us, it's just important that as we go out and talk to these business groups, that they're aware of how well Maryland is doing relative to our peers. When they think about their own businesses, they need to put that in context, too.  

SmartCEO: There's a perception that in Maryland, the politics always gets in the way. Slots is a great example. Why are we the last state with racing to do that? That's not how you're going to gain a competitive advantage, being the last state. When I interviewed the governor back during the election, I asked, "Why not be the first state to put in sports betting ?" He said, "I don't think anyone has brought that up." Well, lo and behold, Delaware is now going to be the first state to do that. And that's how you get blue-sky advantages and pull revenue from other states. Is that a problem, in terms of the laggard effect? It may be just be a perception, but it is still a perception.

Johansson: I think it's a perception thing. Let me be clear on this. I don't think the governor has ever talked about slots as being his economic development strategy. What he's talking about is dollars leaving to other states and that we wish it weren't so, but these states have already gone ahead and done some of these things. Maryland is responding to it and deciding that if Marylanders are going to go spend money, then that money might as well stay in Maryland.

But in terms of leading, I think the question is, what really defines a good economic development strategy? For all the industries we are looking at, the common denominator is education. Workforce, workforce and workforce. If you look at that, we have the number one public school system in the country. It's not by chance; it's because we have invested in it. Higher education is actually affordable at a very high quality here because for the last four years, we've had a tuition freeze. We're the only state that's done that. So as a consequence, we have the second-best educated population, right behind Massachusetts. Unemployment for those who do not have [four-year degrees], depending on where you are, is anywhere from two to three times higher, so all these states that have fairly uneducated populations are getting absolutely hammered during this recession while Maryland is doing fairly well. And that's one of the reasons. So obviously you can talk about location, you can talk about the federal government and other things that we have here and the fact that the education of the workforce plays a huge role when you look at the macro number for how well the economy has performed in these other places.  

SmartCEO: You talked, earlier, about social media. Another business that is in trouble is the Baltimore Sun. Given your mission, are you discussing media strategies and how your media strategies need to change?

Johansson: There are two things here. From a personal opinion, I think that a vibrant, free press is essential for democracy. Newspapers have traditionally played that role. I hope that they play it for some time to come, still. From a department's point of view, we would look at the Baltimore Sun as a business here that has a number of jobs that we would like to retain and be successful. There are larger headwinds from a national point of view, in terms of the types of media that, especially, young people are choosing to interact with. You know this. I mean, you're in the business. The folks who are 18 to 25, most of what they're reading is likely online, which presents other issues for newspapers. Having said that, I still believe there is a role for newspapers. I'd still like the Baltimore Sun to be a vibrant voice. We need it.  

SmartCEO: Most people would. Where I'm going with the question is Ben Cardin has a bill that would allow newspapers to go non-profit. And I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that the Sun figured in his thinking. Your organization lobbies on behalf of business concerns. Have you had any involvement or discussions about any of the things that have been going on in Senator Cardin's office?  

Johansson: To the best of my knowledge, I'm not sure if we have yet. I'm slightly familiar with it, having read about it, but it's not enough where I'd feel comfortable commenting on it. But you're looking at the Baltimore Sun, and you're looking at the Boston Globe and all of these publications, and you're coupling change in consumer behavior with a precipitous decline in advertising. It's a little bit like a perfect storm. So there are many creative ways in which we can make sure that these institutions survive. How they distribute the news may change, but we need strong media institutions to play that vigilant role in society, especially when it comes to democracy, and it has to happen on a local level.  

SmartCEO: Newspapers are telling us now that the line between government and business is sharply moving. The Obama administration put something out this morning (June 17), naming a ‘pay czar,' who is going to regulate pay at certain large companies. So government is taking an activist role in areas that it never considered itself part of before. DBED is sort of this liaison that goes between the business community and government. How do you draw the lines? Where do you build your walls in terms of what is OK to do and what is not OK to do?
Johansson: We view our mission as making sure we create the environment for Maryland companies to be successful. We're doing everything we can to articulate that business case and that story to companies that aren't here so that they may see the wisdom of joining the companies that are already here.

At a national level,I think the challenge, especially when it comes to financial services, was that we're in an environment where the financial services system was on the verge of collapsing if the government hadn't stepped in and put absolutely tremendous amounts of resources to backstop it. And the reason they got to that point was a number of different issues in regards to regulation and oversight and just common sense. I'm not sure what they've said about the pay czar, but in general, I don't believe that's the government's role. They can say, though, that we think there are guidelines to encourage compensation not to be too short term when it comes to financial services. We want people to have skin in the game for the long run. My personal opinion is the government doesn't set somebody's salary. The government can say, "If you're in a position that sets our financial services system at risk, we can talk about guidelines that can be helpful to think about."

SmartCEO: As an advocate for business, it's a delicate balance that you have to draw in terms of standing in the way of regulation. We had an algae bloom out here in the harbor that killed all these fish, and it happens all the time. My daughter was talking about how bad it stank, and she didn't want to come back in the city. That hurts businesses, too. And a lot of that algae bloom is because there is pesticide runoff going out of our farms. So you want to encourage farming, but it's a delicate balance.

Johansson: What you have to do is make sure the government is doing this very proactively, and we have a number of self-cabinets, where the different folks that work with different stakeholders come together to debate and discuss these issues. When we put forth a piece of legislation, we will have talked to our sister agencies and said, "Look, Maryland Department of the Environment, is there something that you would find objectionable to this? Can we safeguard environmental protections? Can we do something that makes sense for business?" So that dialogue has to take place. If it doesn't, you get into trouble, but it's something that we've built into the way we do business. I've only been here since February, so I'm kind of the new kind on the block.

If there's one thing I'd like to make sure is imparted, it's that one of the first things that we've done is try to connect with the business community. That's something that I intend to do as long as I serve in this capacity. I want that very much to come across. To me, this is an agency that really considers the different things we can do to make sure this is a great environment for these companies to be successful, as well as, obviously, telling the story for others. We want their help, we want to be a partner, and it's something that we're 100 percent committed to.

SmartCEO: What about taxes? Isn't that the main thing business people bring up with you?

Johansson: If you listen to what folks say about taxes, they'll say [Maryland is] not business friendly. There are three things that businesses say are a priority when we ask: number one is going to be workforce education. Number two is going to be infrastructure. Every group I talked to, it's infrastructure - making sure we're investing enough because they're tired of roadblocks. And the third is quality of life and the environment that we're living in.

Now when you look at taxes - [low taxation] by itself is not an economic recipe for success. It's not our economic policy. The Tax Foundation does this ranking every year, and they say certain states are the best because they have the lowest taxes. Of the top 10 states that they list, three of them have double-digit unemployment, and four of them are ranked among the worst job-performing states in the U.S. What that tells me is that there's an ideology that says this is an economic development plan. It isn't. It is part of a number of different things, and the first thing is making sure that you're competitive when it comes to corporate taxes. We're ranked 14th in the U.S. When you look at other knowledge-based states, especially in the Northeast, [our corporate taxes are] lower than most of them. When you look at the cost of doing business here, which wraps in more of the other variables, Maryland is the value state in the Northeast corridor for that. So are we investing in the right things? Are we doing the right things to drive economic growth? I would say look at the governor's pledge to invest in our public school system. Look at the governor's pledge to invest four years - at a huge political cost, I might add - to keep tuition freezes for higher ed, to make it more affordable for folks in middle-class families. Looking at the core economic strings that we have here in being able to creatively leverage them, sometimes it isn't throwing that much money. Often, it's just making sure you connect the dots. So I think that's important to think of in context when you ask, "Is this a great place to do business? Is this a real draw, and what are the real drivers that define that?"

SmartCEO: You've got an MBA. What concept from your MBA have you found yourself thinking back on? Or what is most applicable or most interesting in terms of what you are doing now?

Johansson: The Harvard Business School method of learning is through case study. And part of the case study answer is that you quickly have to realize there is not a silver bullet answer. There are multiple ways to approach the problem. When you do an HBS case study, you're looking at an HR component, you're looking at a political component, you're looking at a financial component, you're looking at a retailer component, an end customer component. And you can solve the problem successfully more than one way. If there is anything I took away from HBS, it was that the most important thing is not how you do it; it's that you're asking the right questions. That was 90 percent of it. So when we are approaching any of these things, what are the key questions that we're supposed to be asking? If we're asking those, then the odds are that we're going to get to a better answer and a better solution  

SmartCEO: So your job is to ask the right questions?

Johansson: My job is to make sure that we are asking the right questions and ultimately, as we're doing that, that we're taking the path that we need to be on.

SmartCEO: For the Preakness, which had an incredible decline this year, what's the right question to be asking?

Johansson: That's a loaded question [laughs]. The questions that I ask myself are: How do we make sure that horse racing remains a vibrant part of Maryland culture, history and tradition? It's a more than $1 billion industry in Maryland. People don't realize that. A lot of employment is tied to it, and a lot of environmental preservation as a result of it. That's the first question that I was asking, and I didn't have a better answer.

The second thing was that Preakness is more than a financial number. It defines who we are, not only as a state but this as a city. My mother lives in Mt. Washington. I spent a number of years in Mt. Washington. How do we make sure that this asset stays in Baltimore? I asked those two simple questions. And I didn't say, "This is the answer." But those are the two questions that I asked.

SmartCEO: Do you think that question is being asked loudly enough around town?

Johansson: I think that there are a number of folks who want to make sure that these things happen. And the governor has been proactive in bringing together his legislative piece. He brought together the key resources to pass legislation to make sure that we had the prerequisite protection as these things played out. The governor wants to see a private sector solution for this. And I believe that's a possibility. How that plays out and the shape that takes - that's not something that's been determined yet.

SmartCEO: Secretary Johansson, thank you very much. CEO