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Permit Me, Please
State to revise approach to ‘one-stop' business registry
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Business New Haven
10/6/1997
By: Jim Wareck
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Few would argue that in the recent recession the state of Connecticut has suffered greater job casualties than almost any other. The increasingly global economy eroded the traditional job base that for two centuries sustained Connecticut's economy.
As policy-makers scrambled to stanch the hemorrhaging of jobs as well as to cultivate new business start-ups, state government itself came under intense scrutiny. One immediately identifiable culprit was the Byzantine state licensing and regulation processes.
A review of those processes found that up to 22 state agencies have responsibilities which include issuing licenses or permits for commercial activities. For instance, a gas station with a mini-mart requires permits from ten separate agencies before it can operate.
In 1992, in an effort to make the state more business-friendly, then-Gov. Lowell P. Weicker created the Connecticut Economic Resource Center (CERC) with funding from the state's 11 utilities. The following year, Woodbridge State Sen. Joseph J. Crisco Jr. (D-17), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced and engineered passage of a bill that created a “One-Stop Business Registry Program” to be overseen by the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) and the Office of Policy & Management (OPM).
According to Jeff Blodgett, CERC's director of information resources, $1 million in state bonding money was allocated for research and costs associated with implementing the initiative. Trecomm of New Jersey was hired to develop the software system and the departments of revenue services and labor were brought on line. Two contract-service sites were opened, one at DECD in Rocky Hill, the other at the Secretary of the State's office in Hartford. The R&D phase was completed by July 1996. However, the 1996 biennial budget allocated no operational funds to the initiative. Although some $200,000 remains available from the original allocation, bonding moneys have not been deemed appropriate for operations purposes.
As part of a comprehensive review required to advance to the second stage of development, OPM hired Phillip Plottel and Larry Bacharach, two graduate students at the Yale School of Management. According to Plottel, the student interns worked with OPM's Rod Rahe Jr., undersecretary for management and licensing, “to look at other states' best practices.” The Washington state permitting process, a program funneling all licensing through a single agency, “proved to be by far the international model,” Plottel says.
Currently the One-Stop Business Registry program is again under review as part of a renewed initiative by Gov. John G. Rowland to “revolutionize the way Connecticut government does business.” The OPM review proposes to restructure delivery of government services. Says Bruce Carlson, OPM's director of policy development, “The specifics of the initiative have not been finalized, but there is expected to be an announcement in the next several weeks.”
Although the new program's goals will mirror those of the One-Stop Business Registry - ease of access to government services, a master listing of licenses, permits and registrations and a master listing application - there may emerge a new method of delivery. The new initiative may involve a Web-based application enabling businesses to access the program electronically instead of traveling to CERC's Rocky Hill office.
OPM will like continue as the oversight agency, but the government may seek to forge partnerships with regional entities such as chambers of commerce for marketing and technical assistance.
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