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Talking Dollars & Common Sense
New CBIA chair Carol Wallace speaks her mind on money, power and politics
Carol P. Wallace is president and CEO of the Middlefield-based Cooper Instrument Corp., a family-owned manufacturer of temperature, time and humidity instruments employing 110 workers. She is also 1998 chairwoman of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) which, with 10,000 member companies, is the state's largest business group.
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Business New Haven
4/6/1998
By: BNH
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Year to year, how much does
CBIA's agenda reflect that of its chairperson?
It changes more in response to the business climate in Connecticut. The chair guides what the focus should be.
How long have you been involved with CBIA?
I've been involved ever since I began working for the company in 1991.
What are CBIA's most pressing legislative agenda items for this session?
Fiscal policy is the first. We want to make sure that state spending stays under control, and we want to improve the efficiency with which state government runs.
Let's stop there for a moment. The governor just proposed spending $350 million to revitalize downtown Hartford. That's a lot of money. Does CBIA have a position on that?
We've haven't taken a position. From my perspective it's a great thing to do. It's the capital of our state, and we need a place to go, frankly. We need to improve the quality of the downtown in order to present the state in the light in which it should be presented. If we don't have anything that attracts young people to stay in Connecticut, then we're going to lose all our well-trained young workforce.
As a small-business owner, do you see a special role that CBIA could play - that perhaps it hasn't played in the past - in advancing a small-business agenda?
I think the advocacy part is probably most important, and keeping small-business people involved and informed about what's going on up at the legislature, and making sure that's we're represented. I think CBIA has done a pretty good job at seeing that small-business people are as involved as they can be. It's sort of self-limiting, because small-business people are maybe one of five [workers] in their business, and can't afford all the time to get up to the Capitol and lobby and be as visible as other people.
We'll let you get back to the CBIA agenda.
I mentioned streamlining of state government, and privatization has always been part of that. Then making sure that workplace costs continue to be reduced to make us more competitive with surrounding states - workers comp, unemployment comp. Then, workforce development, which includes school-to-career initiatives and creating a better [correlation between what's going on in academia and what's going on in the real world.
How do we do that?
It's pretty simple, although it's going to cost a lot. We just need to get educators and business folks interacting more. One of the initiatives we're doing is to get people from the schools - not top administrators; I'm talking about teachers - to walk through our plants and sit down and understand what it is we do and the skill sets that we're lacking.
What else is on the agenda?
Electricity restructuring is important. Obviously, that's one of the hot items on the hill right now. The last two are health care - making sure the health-care system is not more overburdened. You know, finally employers were getting a break on health-care costs, and now there's a movement afoot to mandate a lot of things on the HMOs to make it more burdensome for the employer. And the last one is the environment - how user-friendly the different departments are, making sure the regulations are
not more onerous than in surrounding states.
As a female business owner, do you think we have achieved a fairly level playing field in Connecticut?
No. For me to have elected as [CBIA] chair is a step forward. But I think there are still male-dominated bastions that make it a little more difficult for women to get involved.
Will that continue to improve with the passage of time?
Yes. Through time, and through women in the workforce demonstrating their abilities, taking the gender issue out of it.
We currently have small-business and minority- and women-owned business set-asides. Is that something CBIA is in favor of, or ought to be?
Frankly, I don't know what position CBIA has taken. If they were speaking they'd probably say - off the record - that it's good thing. But there are so many large companies that are [CBIA] members that for them to say that would be shooting themselves in the foot.
Speaking of minority businesses, how can Connecticut do a better job with minority business development, and economic development in urban areas?
Oh, boy. Certainly capital is always the hurdle people throw out there, and we should look at ways to make capital available. In the past we've given out a lot of money to non-viable business efforts, and I think that turned around and bit us, and now we say, 'No money to startups.' It's a pendulum swing. But we ought to find a way to get some capital into startup companies.
What do you think the state's role
in economic development ought to be? It has evolved from what was derogatorily called 'corporate
welfare' during the Weicker years to what seems to be more of a scattershot approach driven by individual projects.
I think they should be the strategists. The state ought to look at what are the core competencies of our state, and build on those. And I think that where the legislature's focus is on now, and developing the educational aspect of Connecticut. Also, the focus on downtown [Hartford] - I think that will make us more viable as a state.
That sounds a lot the Department
of Economic & Community Development's 'Cluster Initiative,' which focuses on six industry groups. Are you comfortable with that kind of approach?
Yeah, I am. Because I think if we do a shotgun approach we won't do well at any of them.
The countervailing view, as many economists will say, is that the state should simply lower business costs and get out of the way.
It hasn't worked well - of course, we haven't done a good enough job of getting the costs down. I mean, that's a given: In order to make us a viable state, it has to be a competitive state. I think it's a good idea to get a lot of people together, as they did with the cluster initiative, to do some strategizing.
What's the one single thing state government could do that would be most beneficial to businesses?
Reduce the state debt. Reduce long-term debt. So much of our operating budget goes toward paying interest on the debt. We have the highest per-capita debt in the U.S. It's not very sexy or interesting to 'reduce the debt.' That sounds like watching paint dry. So it doesn't have the appeal of giving money back to people or cutting taxes going forward.
Do you think we in Connecticut have a strong enough belief in free markets? We always see one business group after another going up to the Capitol to ask for handouts or specific tax breaks.
I think what you're seeing are individual companies going up there and lobbying because, frankly, that's the way it's currently done. People wouldn't go to the Capitol if they didn't think they could have their voice heard as an individual business.
What about some of the 'corporate responsibility' legislation that's being introduced in Hartford?
And why are we seeing it now, in good economic times?
Because people - i.e., labor - are looking at resurgent businesses and saying, 'Hey - I want a piece of the pie, too,' painting all the companies with a broad brush as to look like the Travelers. The fact that their president makes millions is applied to all of the businesses in Connecticut, and they're trying to put mandates on companies. This will of course impact smaller businesses more than larger businesses. A $50,000 mandate on a large corporation isn't going to impact them as much as it would a small company.
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