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Getting So Much Better All the Time
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Business New Haven
11/3/1997
By: BNH
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John Rowland was elected on a promise to make Connecticut a better place to do business. Now, as he begins his quest for a second term, he discusses what his administration has done - and what remains undone
Gov. John G. Rowland will speak on “Connecticut Information Technology & Resources for Small Business” at the University of New Haven November 25 at 7:30 p.m. BNH asked Rowland to discuss small-business issues as well as a range of matters of important to the general business community.
Since assuming office you've been very visible in the small-business community. What have you learned in that time from small-business people about the state of small business in Connecticut?
The small-business agenda for the state is the agenda for the state. One of the things we've recognized is we cannot have total reliance on large industries and companies to carry the economy. Right now the foundation of our economic growth for the last three or four years has been smaller high-tech, telecommunications, biomedical research, smaller manufacturing. Those are the ones that are growing and that have come into the state. We've had hundreds of new companies move into the state, most of them smaller. Many of these companies are doubling and tripling in size in a very short period of time, which is very exciting.
What's most important to them?
Start-up costs, environmental regulations, workers comp costs, getting capital, working with our economic development people, Connecticut Innovations Inc., our CDA [Connecticut Development Authority] programs. Our economic development people have focused on these smaller companies recognizing that you don't get a big blast in the press from these companies but five and ten years down the line it adds up big-time. Most of the good economic news has come from small-business growth - including the unemployment rate, which is the lowest it's been in
ten years.
What's the status of the One-Stop Business Registry?
We've gotten it down to the implementation stage. We're taking the whole licensing and permitting process and getting it all on computer and presenting one-stop shopping for businesses in Connecticut, and for consumers. Rather than having someone starting up a convenience store going to four or five different agencies and having to get ten different permits and licenses - and frankly, giving the same information to everybody - you do it once and pay one fee and get it taken care of in one shot. We're rolling that out this year.
What's the time frame?
It should be operational by March 1999.
Will there be a vendor search?
No, we'll be doing it all in-house. The point of contact will be either a phone call, you'll physically stop by or you'll do it right on your computer. It's going to be great.
When you took office you said you were going to change state government attitudes towards business. We've seen evidence of that, but when you talk to business owners, what do they say?
We're getting a lot of positive feedback. Businesses that have been around for a long time realize that it is easier to work with regulatory agencies. The Department of Environmental Protection is not out to put everyone in jail, but to try to fix the problems that are out there. I think it's an attitudinal change. We want to be partners and support businesses, not to be antagonists.
When you took office the public was pretty supportive of that concept because we were in a recession. Are they still as interested in improving the business climate today?
Absolutely. Make no mistake: There are some state employee union groups which are lobbying against us all the time. But the majority of people in the state have figured out that if we have a good positive business agenda, that will [create] more job opportunities and more income. In addition to that, we've reformed the welfare system. It takes a lot of pressure off of state government [when] you start to empower people. Ironically, when I came into office the employment rate was relatively high, people were worried, there were mergers and acquisitions, there was a lot of tension and fear about the future. Now the biggest problem businesses have is finding enough employees. That's the biggest complaint we get: 'We need more trained people; we need more skilled labor.'
Are we doing enough to train workers for the new jobs?
We've got more people working then ever before, but we're also transitioning about 30,000 welfare recipients who in many cases have been trained through the community tech schools and Jobs First programs. The state departments of labor and social services have now gone from a mind-set of handing out checks to a mind-set of training and preparing people for work. In addition, we're changing the curriculum at our community tech schools; the state university system is totally focused; UConn is totally focused. Everybody is focused on getting people trained and prepared. We also have career-to-school programs in the high schools and the grade schools where we are getting people focused on career opportunities at the earliest age possible.
Has state government gotten friendlier to the public?
I think a classic example is the Department Of Motor Vehicles. That 's probably the agency that has the greatest contact with the public. They have about a million contacts in any given year. The satisfaction rate, if you will, last year was at 60 percent. Now it's gone up to 70 percent.
Moving from small business to a big business: What's likely to happen to Northeast Utilities? Do you see it going bankrupt, as some company officials have indicated is a possibility, depending how some regulatory and court decisions go?
I don't think so. We have to do all we can to keep them alive - but we have to have [electricity] deregulation this year. That is an important legislative issue, and the legislators got cold feet last [session]. We have to have deregulation because that will allow us more reliable sources of energy and, hopefully, more competition and lower prices. I think it will push Northeast Utilities to get their act together.
Is it time for a tobacco industry-type of settlement?
This is going to take years to play out. You have lawsuits, you have Connecticut Yankee decommissioning and you have the argument as to whether it's going to cost $200 million or $400 million. You have Millstone - when is it going to re-open? Is it going to be six months, a year, two years?
Is deregulation going to be able to play out in that environment?
It has to. We have to do deregulation. We should have done it last year. We can do it and still take care of the concerns of Northeast Utilities.
You recently indicated that one piece of unfinished business in your administration was the cities. What approach to revitalizing Connecticut's cities do you now see as most productive?
It's very specific. There is a tendency to think there is a magic wand and all of the ills of our cities would go away. There is no magic wand; you have to grind it out. In Bridgeport we now have Conroy Development focused on doing the waterfront, a $1 billion investment over four years. In the meantime we're doing everything from investing in theater operations downtown to rebuilding the infrastructure to cleaning up Long Island Sound to supporting the manufacturing industry that is moving into the city or being maintained there. In New Haven, the same thing. What are the strengths of New Haven? We've got a good theater district, entertainment and arts. We've invested in those heavily. At the same time we're hoping to demolish blighted buildings. In Hartford we're demolishing about 187 blighted buildings. In Waterbury we're doing one of the main roads in the downtown area. So we're spending billions of dollars, partnering it with local dollars and hopefully private dollars. Its taken 40 years to destroy the cities; it's going to take us a little while to build them back. I think people are starting to feel better about the cities, about education, about the infrastructure, about the state's commitment to the cities.
Many people think it was the public-education that led to the destruction of the cities. Do you agree?
There's no question about it. Everyone says people flee the cities for taxes. I don't believe that at all. If you analyze the people who have left the cities for the suburbs, nine times out of ten it's because they have school-aged kids and they want to get them into better schools. It's frustrating for city dwellers to pay fairly high taxes and put their kids in private or parochial school.
So why did school choice go nowhere in the legislature?
The irony of school choice is that there is school choice - if you have the money. The irony of school choice is that it's really for urban-dwellers. The people who are middle income, lower income - they're the ones who would benefit from school choice more than anyone. We have some limited elements of school choice. One of things I always laugh at is the number of people in Hartford who use different addresses to get their kids into different school systems within the city. Hundreds of people do that every year. The concept is that all the schools are the same - which is not true at all.
Is school choice likely to be a campaign issue?
It's not going anywhere in the legislature. Most of the school choice programs will be within the public schools within municipalities. You'll some of it responding to the Sheff v. O'Neill problems more than anything else.
It's generally acknowledged in the business community that the cities haven't done enough to reduce the cost of municipal government. What can state government do in terms of carrots and sticks to force municipalities to change?
Most of them are afraid of the labor-union leadership, and that's the bottom line - [although] no one will say that. I just said it. That's why you don't see changes made in some of the collective bargaining and binding arbitration [laws]. Those are political realities that we have to deal with. We have always fought in Hartford to get rid of the unfunded and under-funded mandates that are passed on to cities and towns [and] that drive up some of the costs. That's something we've always stood for. The good news is that we've maintained and increased support to the cities, especially the larger cities. They're getting a ton of money from the state. It's increased every year. I looked at a survey that showed that 41 percent of cities and towns have been able to cut taxes locally or keep them the same. In addition to that we're giving people almost $300 property tax credit on their income taxes.
When you were elected you said you would move the state away from bailouts or loans to specific companies. Now we're seeing more 'project-oriented' economic development including such state-aided projects as a UConn football stadium, or Six Flags or a Hartford Science Center. Are we moving into a new version of that old game?
Not at all. One of the things we got away from, I call the bidding process. It was getting kind of silly during the Weicker administration. If you wanted to get a state grant, you had to threaten to leave. In many cases the Weicker administration even told companies, 'Go to another state and see what kind of proposal you can get. Bring it back, and we'll see if we can do better.' What we do [now] is we do loans, and we do loan guarantees, but we do not give out grants to businesses any longer.
Are we putting too many eggs into big projects like Six Flags?
Nothing happened on that, so don't get ahead of yourself. If you're talking about UConn, that's a little bit different. It's a public university that we're supporting and which supports the young people of the state. And a public university that is in bad need of infrastructure repair.
What about the football stadium? It seems that in Hartford all we have to do is put an 'economic development' tag on something, it's the greatest thing in the world.
Well, nobody is proposing [a] UConn [football stadium] as an economic development package. It's clearly an enhancement of the university. If UConn is on the map now, it's because of women's and men's basketball. I wouldn't propose it as an economic development project; it's a long-term enhancement of the university.
One of the things we hear in New Haven is that this region is 'the left-out region' with regard to state economic development efforts. We even hear criticism of some of our state reps from business and community leaders. How would you respond?
Some of the [legislative] leaders are from Hartford. I spend an incredible amount of time in New Haven getting involved in projects from Malley's to the Shubert to the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. But frankly, for our little state of Connecticut everybody has the same feeling: [that the state] only concentrates on Hartford, but New Haven gets more than its fair share of state programs. More importantly, New Haven has so many characteristics that are even better than some of the other cities. The arts, the hospital system, you have people who live downtown. Let me tell you something: Hartford and Bridgeport would die to have the downtown that New Haven has. It's thriving and it's strong. I think people should be more optimistic about New Haven. I love it. I think it is a wonderful, vibrant community that has a lot to offer. New Haven will have probably the greatest recovery because people live in the city and stay downtown and conduct business and education downtown.
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