A troika of national surveys recently delivered an old-fashioned drubbing to the Nutmeg State.
Connecticut is at the bottom half of states in which to do business in recent polls by Bloomberg, CNBC and Forbes. CNBC ranked it No. 45 overall and 49th in transportation.
The Connecticut Business and Industry Association has assembled a three-year program, called CT20x17, to change those numbers through action on two broad fronts: business climate and transportation.
Long-term data are being gathered now from the public and private sector ”” businesses and common citizens ”” to determine paths of action by CT20x17. Meantime, the CBIA”™s legislative gears will continue to turn, addressing and influencing economic policy and addressing business-related issues, as with its recent transportation summit in Stamford.
“We won”™t come up with every solution,” said Joseph F. Brennan, 59, CBIA senior vice president, speaking of CT20x17. “But we must accept the premise that unless we improve the business environment and make Connecticut competitive, we run the risk of not maintaining the good quality of life we have.”
Brennan came to the Business Journal office bearing a raft of economic statistics and brochures ”” including a digestible 12-pager titled “How Do We Build A Better Economic Future for Connecticut” ”” all under the broad banner, “Moving Connecticut Up.” Its mission is to march the state into the top 20 business-friendly/business-attractive states in the U.S. by 2017.
CBIA President and CEO John Rathgeber called the top-20 aspiration “a goal that should receive broad-based bipartisan support from Connecticut”™s government officials.” In a letter introducing CT20x17, he wrote, “Reaching that goal is not just a business imperative; it”™s critical for all Connecticut citizens who want the opportunity for a better future that good jobs and economic growth bring.”
“The economy is not a zero-sum game,” Brennan said. “The question is: How can we grow the pie for everybody? That is what this is really all about ”” growing the pie instead of fighting over smaller and smaller pieces of the same pie.
“This is not a cynical business-community effort,” he said “At its core this can help everyone in Connecticut.”
The days when Connecticut”™s status as a slate-roofed redoubt against difficulties ”” if they ever existed outside myth ”” are over. Brennan, an attorney who joined the CBIA in 1989, cited a legislative anecdote from the early 1990s to make the point. “A company had a plant in Connecticut and a plant in Arkansas and they were considering shutting the Connecticut plant in favor of Arkansas. A Connecticut legislator said, ”˜Well, if you want to move to Arkansas, be my guest.”™ That”™s not good policy.
“We don”™t have a lot of resources,” Brennan said. “Our biggest advantage ”” always our No. 1 resource ”” is our world-class workforce.”
The competition, he said, is busy. “It”™s unbelievable what other states are offering,” he said. “Other states are working hard on transportation, education, energy infrastructure and many of them have a lower cost of doing business than Connecticut.”
The state-sponsored competition was represented among the brochures Brennan carried in the form of a slickly produced “Start-Up NY” promotion. It boasted tax-free zones for businesses. “Come and join us,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo urges from across the border. “I”™ve enclosed a Start-Up NY video.” The ads are prominent on TV, too.
Brennan described the CT20x17 campaign as data-gathering in nature, although it will coincide with the CBIA”™s ongoing, pro-business legislative agenda.
“We hear businesses say they want to invest, but not in Connecticut,” Brennan said. “We”™ve got to turn that around. We”™re trying to make this positive. There”™s no blame and there”™s no finger-pointing.
“The question is, what kind of state can we be?” he said. “Can we be one that offers benefits to its citizens and its businesses? How do we get there? Let”™s work together to come up with solutions.”
