Improving access to health care, quality education and expanding services for the disabled are topping Kristin Cox’s agenda nearly three weeks after being named as Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s choice for lieutenant governor.
But Cox said that improvements will not come easy because they will require the coordinated efforts of agencies that need to streamline programs in order to provide the best possible service to the people that need them most.
“There’s plenty of work out there in terms of efficiency,” Cox said during an interview at the campaign’s Baltimore headquarters Friday. “I think all of us can streamline our own services, the job is never done. First thing I tell people is change takes time. You’re not going to fix over night what’s been going on for decades.”
As Maryland’s first disabilities secretary, the first such cabinet-level position in the country, Cox, who has been blind since she was a teenager, was tasked with working with other state agencies and departments to insure across-the-board access for the disabled.
“When you talk about disability issues, it spans just almost every domain you can touch upon because people with disabilities are everywhere,” she said.
A major concern for Cox, if elected lieutenant governor, will be examining and streamlining transportation programs for seniors and the disabled, particularly in Montgomery County, where she pointed to past problems in the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s MetroAccess program.
“It’s a real need in Montgomery County, you’ve got people with disabilities, seniors, people on welfare that rely on public assistance to get to where they need to get to,” Cox said.
Cox sees the three issues as inter-related. Improving health care in the state would mean also pushing for more affordable housing and better economic opportunities for minorities, women and seniors.
Cox said Ehrlich pledged July 1 to provide 30,000 uninsured residents with health care. She said the program is still being worked out.
But she pointed to other strides, such as Ehrlich’s Babies Born Healthy Initiative, which is set to expand pre and postnatal health care for pregnant women and mothers.
Cox has taken some flak from women for not being clear on where she stands on abortion and women’s issues. She said she takes issue with people who equate “all of women’s issues with abortion.”
“It’s not a choice I would make in my own life; however, I do think there’s circumstances in which it may be a viable option for a woman,” Cox said. “Bottom line as lieutenant governor, I will be charged to implement the law of the land and to support the governor’s positions.”
