Foley, Malloy outline agendas - Westfair Communications

As Tom Foley and Dan Malloy emerged victorious from their party primaries, both candidates geared up for a fall campaign expected to focus on jobs, taxes and the state”™s massive deficit ”“ with a little mudslinging thrown in for good measure.

Connecticut Democrats chose former Stamford Mayor Malloy over the better-financed Ned Lamont as their candidate for governor, with Republicans selecting the former Ireland ambassador Foley of Greenwich over Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele of Stamford and Simsbury businessman Oz Griebel.

Malloy”™s Democratic running mate for lieutenant governor is state Comptroller Nancy Wyman, while Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton will run alongside Foley.

In the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, which has drawn national attention, former World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. CEO Linda McMahon beat back a renewed challenge from former Congressman Rob Simmons and Weston businessman Peter Schiff. She will take on the Democrat and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal this fall for the seat of outgoing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd.

In the primary debates and on their campaign websites, Foley and Malloy gave a preview of how they will focus their campaigns, including in the areas of economic development and the state budget deficit ”“ on which point they share some views ”“ and on taxes, on which they diverge significantly. In the primary debates, both men demonstrated a glib ability to counter attacks by opponents while delivering jibes of their own, all the while underscoring their campaign planks and experience.

Create benchmarks
“He”™s going to be talking about being a CEO and running Connecticut like a business,” Malloy said, in a press conference following his primary victory. “I”™ll make this prediction: no one currently serving in Hartford state government is going to be elected governor. We”™re both outsiders. We both come from a different perspective. I ran a half-billion-dollar corporation called the city of Stamford for 14 years, and we did some amazing things.”

Heading out of the primaries, Malloy offered far more specifics than Foley on various issues ”“ some of them ideas already floated by others, others purporting to solve problems like mildly contaminated industrial brownfields that have bedeviled policymakers throughout the Northeast for decades.

As a broad goal, Malloy said he would create benchmarks to assess progress toward the state”™s economic goals, with the idea of targeting limited resources most effectively. He would also review business incentives already in place, and recast or discard those that do not appear to be working. And he would hold companies accountable to the promises they make at the time of receiving incentives, without spelling out how.

In addition Malloy says he will:

Create a new fund using close to $1 billion in unused research and development tax credits to “leverage” new research and advanced manufacturing space, and encourage state and municipal pension funds to co-invest in projects.
Produce a $500 million revolving account to help communities clean brownfields, with unspecified measures in place to help the state recoup the money over time.
Expand on Connecticut”™s existing $100 million commitment to stem-cell research and other life-science.
Establish public-private teams to recruit out-of-state businesses.
Develop the ports in Bridgeport, New Haven and New London to reduce freight traffic on highways.
Expand Bradley International Airport flights to and from Europe.

Taxing issues
As part of his broadest policy goals, Foley said he will compare Connecticut”™s tax rates and policy to neighboring states and those elsewhere to be sure taxes are not driving away businesses and workers ”“ a vow also taken by Malloy, though he promised under his administration the state”™s richest residents will see their taxes go up.

“I firmly believe that Connecticut”™s taxes need to be more progressive,” Malloy said during an August primary debate with Lamont. “It is a simple truth that the middle class of Connecticut spends a substantially larger portion of their total income in paying the tax bill in the state of Connecticut, whether it”™s property taxes or taxes on income.

“Having said that, I want to be very clear that as governor I will benchmark all of our taxes against our competing states: New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and ”¦ the rest of the country,” Malloy added. “I also want to benchmark all regulations that have impacts on businesses to make sure that we are modernizing our government and our relationships with employers.”

”˜More business friendly”™
At deadline, Foley offered few specifics on his stated goals of reducing taxes, offsetting state spending and meeting the state”™s looming entitlements like health care and pensions for state workers.

“We need to make this state more business friendly; we”™re not particularly accommodating to our employers,” Foley said, in an August debate with Fedele and Griebel. “There are a lot of employers being driven out of the state by ”¦ mandates from the legislature that tie them up in all kinds of red tape, (making) it difficult to employ people.

“We need to reverse all that. We need to take care of our employers; we need to make them feel welcome here; we need to make them willing to invest in capital and in human resources here in Connecticut, and to do that we need to give them some sense of what the future will look like ”¦ we need to reestablish that credibility with our business community, and once we”™ve done that, we also need to close the budget deficit because no out-of-state employers are going to come here when we face a $3.5 billion budget deficit and they”™re going to be afraid that we”™ll raise taxes to solve that budget deficit.”

To make Connecticut more business friendly, Foley promises to:

Repeal excessive state mandates, regulations and fees.
Change the attitude of state agencies to better support employers.
Simplify and expedite state approvals to invest in Connecticut.
Provide incentives to lenders to extend credit to small businesses.
Market the “knowledge corridor” from Enfield to New Haven as a national asset, with quality workers, schools and infrastructure.

A useful tool or bribery?
Foley said he believes in tax incentives for target industries that make sense for Connecticut”™s strengths, at least for companies that cannot be persuaded to come without them. He sees those industries as life sciences, including pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical devices; health services; highly engineered manufacturing; alternative energy; and financial services.

“I spent several years in Ireland as the ambassador, and Ireland”™s economy was very strongly driven upward over a number of years by carefully crafted tax policy,” Foley said. “We actually have done that here in Connecticut. We have offered tax credits to the film industry (and) to certain parts of the R&D sector, and I think the report card is a little mixed. Some people believe it”™s actually brought jobs here and benefited the economy and been a net plus for the government, meaning ultimately it generates more revenues than it costs. But others say they don”™t believe it has.

“I do believe that”™s a useful tool in the bag of the governor for getting our economy going,” Foley added. “But we need to be very careful about where we use it, which industries it”™s targeted toward, and making sure that we”™re not spending more money than we”™re getting back from the revenues as a result of the economic growth.”

On his website, Malloy derides what he calls a policy of “begging companies that we”™ve bribed with taxpayer dollars to keep their jobs in Connecticut” ”“ while in the next breath touting Stamford expansions by UBS AG and Royal Bank of Scotland jobs that would likely not have materialized without major incentives from the state.

Many of those are high-paying jobs, and Malloy strongly insinuated he would make Foley”™s wealth an issue of the campaign.

“Mr. Foley represents a different class,” Malloy said, in his primary press conference. “Every time I hear someone worth hundreds of millions of dollars talk about someone who makes $50,000 a year and their pension, (it) is a good day for me.

“He”™s been loaning his campaign a lot of money,” Malloy said at a later point. “I hope he doesn”™t mortgage the yacht.”