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Business New Haven
3/31/2003
By: BNH
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Roger Joyce had it about right when he addressed some 250 or so business people at the state Capitol on March 12.
Joyce, vice president of engineering for the Bilco Co. of West Haven and former chairman of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, was a featured speaker at the annual Connecticut Business Day sponsored by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) and the Connecticut Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (see related story, page 9). His topic: "What's at Stake for Connecticut Business Leaders."
Joyce's listeners - primarily chamber of commerce members, mid-sized to large-company executives and small-business people - had just heard Senate President Pro Tem Kevin Sullivan (D-West Hartford) and House Speaker Moira Lyons (D-Stamford) tell them that businesses were going to feel more pain in the form of higher taxes.
Sullivan said that lawmakers would "unpack" the labyrinth of corporate taxes - exemptions on new equipment, an advertising tax, a surcharge on the corporate income tax - to see which ones ought to be raised, and by how much.
The message many business people heard from the two top lawmakers was: We may feel the pain that you in the private sector are experiencing, but we have no plans to share it by making truly painful choices about cutting state entitlements and employee head-count.
"We have created a good business climate here," said Lyons. We're not sure many Connecticut business-owners in 2003 would agree.
Joyce's message to business-owners: Make a stink.
He was too polite to say "stink," of course. He said it was important for the business community to make a "direct impact" in Hartford. "If we want our legislators to make informed decisions, then we must be involved."
Joyce encouraged his audience "to be leaders in your communities. Work with you business colleagues, work with your employees to oppose rising business costs and taxes."
The stakes are high. When the state's piggy bank is suddenly discovered to be empty, it's easy to look to the "corporate sector" for the quick and easy fix. After all, companies don't vote; individuals do.
But companies can and do vote with their feet.
"There are special-interest groups here at the Capitol who will tell you the deficit can be solved just by raising taxes," Joyce said. "That approach was a disaster in the late 1980s - throwing our economy into a tailspin and costing us 160,000 jobs."
Unless business people want a repeat performance, the only sensible course is to make a stink.
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