CBIA proposes ways to stoke growth
Business group hopes to capitalize on better conditions
From giving manufacturing policy a role in the governor’s office to rejecting the use of electric ratepayers’ money that could balance the state budget, Connecticut’s largest business organization on Wednesday proposed a dozen policies intended to stoke economic growth.
Joe Brennan, president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said the group hopes to capitalize on improving economic and political conditions. Gov. Ned Lamont has been “hyperfocused on job creation” as employment numbers have steadily improved, Brennan said.
At the same time, a larger Democratic majority in the state House of Representatives and the party’s recapturing of the state Senate, which was tied 18-18 the past two years, have strengthened the hand of some Democrats who are pushing to raise the minimum wage, expand paid leave and promote other initiatives opposed by business.
“We know those things are out there, but they can’t define the whole session,” Brennan said.
Here are the policies CBIA is proposing:
1. State spending: Use more nonprofit health and service providers that provide services at lower cost and adopt the latest cost-saving collective bargaining reforms from the state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth. The panel recommended last year to reopen the primary contract with state employee unions to freeze compensation and benefits for two years, with exceptions.
2. Taxes: Enact a lower business personal property tax, reduce the top income tax rate and repeal gift and estate taxes. Maintain tax incentives for activities such as research and development and reject expansion of the sales tax base.
3. Education and workforce development: Recruit and retain science, technology, engineering and math teachers and ensure STEM education for students. Increasing middleskill education and training programs.
4. Economic development: Develop a strategic, long-term statewide economic development plan and appoint a secretary of commerce to oversee it.
5. Manufacturing: Establish a secretary for manufacturing policy and programs position in the governor’s office, continue to fund the state’s manufacturing voucher, incumbent worker training and apprenticeship programs.
6. Regulatory reform: Establish a “regulatory improvement
team” under the Office of Policy and Management to ensure regulations are clear, focused and applied consistently.
7. Labor: Adopt federal standards for family medical leave and wage and hour laws, helping businesses spend less time and money on compliance, restore the solvency of the unemployment trust fund by raising the minimum earnings to qualify for unemployment benefits, prohibiting claimants from receiving benefits until they have exhausted severance pay and temporarily freezing the maximum weekly benefit rate. 8. Workers’ compensation: Reduce costs by requiring generic prescriptions when possible and reject proposals that impose new penalties or “undermine workers’ compensation as an exclusive remedy.”
9. Energy: Put in place new requirements for ratepayer impact statements and reject proposals to use electric ratepayer money to balance the state budget.
10. Environment: Reject legislative adoption of a state water plan that would declare, without definition or context, that state waters are held in “public trust.”
11. Health care and bioscience: Conduct a costbenefit analysis on new health care mandates and adopt only those that cut overall system costs, reduce the cost of health insurance by eliminating assessments passed on to individuals and small businesses used to subsidize the state exchange, and help develop a “strategic plan” for Connecticut’s bio-science sector with tax incentives to promote life sciences research and development and recruit venture capital firms.
1 2. Transportation: “Dedicate and protect a sustainable, affordable transportation funding stream” and enlist the private sector to expedite planning and completion of priority projects. CBIA has not endorsed highway tolls and would do so when a plan is announced, a spokeswoman said.