The 15th Annual Charles County Economic Development Summit revealed a county with mixed economic signals. As the county pulls out of the recession along with the rest of the country, the federal fiscal cliff hangs over the county like a dark cloud. But, the crystal ball shows light rail in a bright county future, several speakers said.

The majority of the county’s workers still commute to Washington. Guest speaker Anirban Basu, an economic and policy consultant and regular at previous summits, asked whether Washington could become another Detroit. He answered his own question by saying he doubted it but didn’t rule it out.

Basu and several other speakers emphasized the need for Charles County to build its own industries and cut its dependence on federal employment for local workers. But the mixed economic signals still show the DC area with the country’s best metropolitan economy.

The area comprised of Charles, Calvert and Prince George’s lost 2,900 jobs from 2011 to 2012 while the DC area as a whole gained 28,700, Basu said. That growth was largely in Northern Virginia, Basu noted.

Maryland’s economy as a whole hasn’t been that good in recent months. The state’s growth is the same as Arkansas, at .9 percent. So even with the country’s best education system four years in a row and even with the BRAC growth at Ft. Meade and Aberdeen, Maryland economy appears to have stalled. But in comparison, Virginia is doing even worse.

Basu said the mantra before the recession was that the service economy would be the leader in the country. That hasn’t proven to be the case, he said. Instead the states with a natural resource economy, such as North Dakota and Nebraska, are the country’s economic leaders.

In the midst of the negatives for the area are some positives, including a relatively low unemployment rate throughout the entire region (6.3 percent in Charles; 6.2 in St. Mary’s and 5.9 in Calvert).

Charles County’s economy in the 90’s became dependent on the housing industry, which of course tanked during the recession. “The recovery here has stalled in terms of the housing market,” Basu said, noting recent increases in inventory and declines in housing unit sales.

The stalling has occurred despite historically low mortgage interest rates. Basu said, “These rates are insanely low,” at 3.36 percent for 30-year fixed. He jokingly said he wouldn’t lend to his daughter at such a low rate.

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