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Look Who's Talking Now
Business people, politicians lock horns at Capitol
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Business New Haven
3/31/2003
By: Michael C. Bingham
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HARTFORD - Opportunity for meaningful dialogue, or dog-and-pony show?
Opinions vary, but nevertheless some 250 business people from throughout the state made their way to the Capitol March 12 for that annual rite of spring, Connecticut Business Day. Sponsored by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) and the Connecticut Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (CACCE), the event is designed to foster communication between the business community and the state's political leadership.
Does it accomplish much? Hard to say. Although most of the state's large regional chambers sent delegations to the event, at least one, the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, took a pass on the festivities - even though former New Haven chamber chairman Roger Joyce was featured speaker.
The half-day event was structured around presentations by key members of the state's executive and legislative branches, followed by breakout sessions offering business people the chance to sit down face-to-face with their local lawmakers.
Gov. John G. Rowland's chief numbers-cruncher, Office of Policy & Management czar Marc Ryan gave a detailed overview of his boss' budget proposal - a two-year, $27.66 billion plan that would curb some spending, consolidate or eliminate some state agencies, raise some taxes - make nearly every special-interest group in the state cry uncle.
In Ryan's view, Connecticut "did better than most other state's facing similar [budget] circumstances" with a budget plan that raises taxes by $650 million, including an increase in the state income tax from 4.5 to five percent and a host of new and increased taxes on businesses, especially a hike in the effective corporate tax rate from 7.5 to nine percent.
On the spending side, Ryan said the administration was "committed to consolidations and downsizing" of state government functions. Such measures would include "a major offensive against health-care inflation. We can't give a gold-plated health-care system to everyone who wants or needs it," Ryan said.
West Hartford Democrat Kevin Sullivan, president pro tem of the state senate, said he was "less optimistic" than Ryan that the state would be "over and out" with the structural causes of the deficit by the end of the current budget session.
"The good news is that there was bipartisan agreement on a deficit reduction package," said Sullivan, that ultimately carves out about half of the overall deficit.
However, he said that a "disproportion of cuts fall on lower-income people." Instead, Sullivan said, the state needed to "unpack" the individual elements of a byzantine corporate tax structure to examine which individual elements "made sense."
To CBIA President Kenneth O. Decko, with whom he shared the dais, Sullivan suggested the business group "spend a little less on billboards and more looking at how to unpack the corporate taxes."
House Speaker Moira Lyons, a Stamford Democrat, put it a bit differently. Although "We have created a good business climate in Connecticut," she said, "there is a need to raise more revenue."
And that means just one thing: higher taxes. "You can't reduce a $700 million gap with cuts alone - anyone who tells you that is just being ridiculous," said Lyons.
Not many listeners from the private sector were buying. Ken Brandon, vice president of manufacturing for Bic Consumer Products in Milford, noted that in 1998, his company had 46 factories around the globe. Today, he said, there were just 22 - "and our Milford plant is the highest-cost [facility] in the world."
Offered another listener, Marie Coughlin of Sterling Realtors in Middletown, "I was on the Middletown Board of Education for a number of years, and I quickly learned that there was no correlation between spending and the actual quality of education. Virtually all spending increases go to personnel [in the form of] more days off for teachers and staff, lower co-pays" and the like.
Lyons responded that "Government is not a business - we don't get to choose the people we have to take care of."
So was Connecticut Business Day 2003 a useful exercise - or merely an exercise?
Said panel moderator Paul Timpanelli, president of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council and CACCE's vice president for legislative affairs: "Is it useful? Yes. Is it a dog-and-pony show? Yes. But any time you can get 200 or 300 business people up to the Capitol to express their opinion and let legislative leaders and the governor know that they're interested in participating in the legislative process - that's a real plus."
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