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Mixed Messages
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Business New Haven
4/15/2002
By: BNH
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Connecticut business people and other would-be budget watchdogs forfeit some of their moral authority to preach fiscal parsimony when they are heard from only when times are tough.
Statewide, a recession-related revenue shortfall has created a gap in the coming budget year that could reach, according to some estimates, as high as $450 million (depending in part on this spring's capital-gains receipts).
Thus, as any second-grader could calculate, that means the state must either slash spending or raise taxes - or some combination of both.
Most seasoned business veterans know from (often bitter) experience that cutting budgets is no day at the beach. It's also no way to win popularity contests, which means that elected officials who must face voters every two or four years are loathe to pare local services or allow popular municipal or neighborhood projects to die on the vine. Across-the-board statewide tax increases are amorphous enough for politicians to pin blame for on the Other Guy.
Individual business executives and industry groups such as the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) ands the Southwest Area Commerce & Industry Association (SACIA) are right to urge state officials to resist the temptation to raise taxes on the backs of businesses. We'd like to hear a louder voice from more regional and local chambers as well. After all, absent a healthy, vibrant business environment, the erosion of the high-skill, high-paying jobs that underpin Connecticut's economy will accelerate.
But the message from the business community must be consistent when times are tough - and when times are good. If business advocacy groups or individual business leaders were standing in line five years ago to voice their opposition to big-ticket boondoggles such as Adriaen's Landing or the Long Wharf mall - we certainly didn't see them. As with so many things it life, you can't have your cake and eat it, too.
Of course, the business community is hardly immune to pushing for its own pet projects - whether it be targeted tax relief or direct grants to benefit specific industries such as bioscience, software or manufacturing. (Nagging question: If biotech is to be the savior of Connecticut's economy, how come it can't “save” us without taxpayer subsidy to get it fully off the ground?)
At CBIA's annual “meet the legislators” day April 10 at the Capitol, Gov. John G. Rowland turned the table on one New Haven-area businessperson who used the opportunity to advocate austerity over the politically softer road of raising taxes, especially, business taxes. That's fine, said Rowland. But instead of preaching to the converted, why don't you persuade even one of your exclusively Democratic lawmakers to vote that way too?
The point here, we think, is that if the business community expects to wield real political clout at the state level, individual business people must send a consistent message to their local elected officials - and not just the business-friendly ones. Accepting or even supporting profligate spending policies when state coffers are full is hardly the best way to get a fair hearing when the time for tough choices arrives - as it always does.
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