‘Nice governor’ finds his peeps

I was starting to think that Gov. Ned Lamont is almost too nice for this job he has babysitting 187 ohso-smart lawmakers in the General Assembly. He’s a business guy running a $200-billion-a-year nonprofit with a legislature that cares more about being re-elected than almost anything.

He’s not a killer like Ella Grasso, Lowell Weicker or Dan Malloy. He’s not a backslapper like John Rowland. He’s not an anti-Rowland like Jodi Rell.

The General Assembly mostly has stood in the way of his modest agenda.

But there’s good news: the blush is off the rose. Lamont is finding his own way, even if it’s going to be with limited support from the legislature. Don’t worry, that municipal funding package will ... be .... ... done ... day.

Lamont’s finally admitting the obvious in public: he’s no Dan Malloy.

At the annual lobbying day for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association, he was at home in a meeting room full of his peers in the Legislative Office Building.

Joe Brennan, the veteran president and CEO of the CBIA, was stage-managing various administrative figures up on the second floor. He finally introduced Lamont, who shuffled up to the podium, trademark open-collar as usual with no notes or prepared reAnd marks. He asked Brennan to say something nice. The room chuckled.

“We have a really nice governor,” Brennan deadpanned in a monotone to the chuckles of about 300 business types. He detailed serving with Lamont in the past on workforce development projects and other issues going back years.

“We’ve had a long-term relationship around really just trying to improve things in Connecticut,” Brennan said. “Certainly he’s been very vocal in talking about all the great things in the state of Connecticut. Also he’s very accessible, not just to the business community, but I think every organization around the state of Connecticut ... With that I’ll introduce the really nice Gov. Ned Lamont.”

“One of the things that I love about Joe Brennan is that agree or disagree, he gives me a good constructive alternative, and that’s what I need in this building,” Lamont said. “You don’t like my idea? Give me a better idea so we have something to think about. That’s how we get a middle ground and move things forward.”

in a nutshell, that’s the problem with the General Assembly. There was no better idea than highway tolls for the state to get 30to-40 percent of vehicles — out-of-state cars and trucks — to help pay for Lamont’s 10-year $19-billion infrastructure plan. You know, the one the lawmakers from the Naugatuck Valley want to pay for another train line, but who are dead set against tolls.

“We really want to reorganize and restructure state government,” Lamont said, touting the diversity of his administration beyond gender and race, but from the business community as well, with that perspective. That might be the kind of insight he’ll need to prepare for a 15-percent reduction in state employees over the next few years, when the scheduled 30-month-long freeze on cost-of-living raises will make it advantageous to retire.

“I need some of these people,” said Lamont, who turned 66 last month. “I need some institutional memory.”

About as disgusted as he can get in public is when Lamont spoke about the relative nimbleness of agencies and services.

“We’ve got a bad case of the slows in state government,” said the governor, who had a 25-year career in telecom.

He’s also taking down the Malloy-style giveaways and bribes to companies. “I need to sell this state every day,” Lamont said, stressing the need to change incentives.

“We spent the last eight years saying ‘Hey Amazon please come to the state and we’ll pay you hundreds of millions of dollars in interest-free loans and upfront grants’ and we’re moving away from that,” Lamont continued. “What we are doing is saying look, if you’re a business here in the state of Connecticut, or if you’re a business thinking about coming to the state of Connecticut and you will add 25 jobs over the next five years, get that done and we’ll start giving you a credit for your payroll tax. It’s good for small businesses here in the state of Connecticut, not just the big out-of-state folks we were previously trying to recruit.”

He thinks enticing corporations was bad business.

“Why lead on the defense?” Lamont said. “I thought that was a lousy way to go. Let’s face it, we have an amazing location. Thinking about Boston or New York. How about New Haven? We’re one half the price and we have the same quality of workforce as anywhere else. How about Stamford, Connecticut?And Hartford is really on the cusp right now.”

Lamont’s found some allies.