Council to CBIA: Pick lane on tolls

It was only a matter of time before the divisive issue of tolls cut across the genteel divide between business groups.

Joe McGee, vice president of policy at the Fairfield County Business Council, a proponent of bringing back highway tolls, has helped the council show leadership in the pro-tolls movement this year, behind Gov. Ned Lamont’s push.

In Hartford, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, by contrast, has said nothing as an institution. And that doesn’t sit well with McGee.

“You cannot not have a position on an issue of this importance,” said McGee, a former state economic development commissioner. “It’s lack of leadership.”

McGee compared the enormity of tolls to the state income tax, another divisive issue that he knows plenty about — he was commissioner when former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., another Greenwich scion in the governor’s mansion, pushed the income tax through.

CBIA has tried hard to reach a position, Joseph Brennan, its president, told me. “We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, probably more time on this one issue than any other working to develop some consensus on a divisive issue.”

Brennan wouldn’t comment on McGee’s “lack of leadership” remark. I’ve been around business groups a long time and I can’t recall anything like this before, but tolls and income taxes only come up every generation or so.

The trouble for CBIA is that it’s the state’s largest business group, claiming 10,000 member companies. Just over half its members, 51 percent, have 10 or fewer employees, and only 2 percent have more than 300.

To oversimplify, the tolls debate comes down to larger businesses and technology firms leaning for, and Main Street businesses leaning against. The business council, with just 300 selected members, tends toward the big-name employers including the well recognized banks, law and accounting firms.

So it’s easier for the council to reach a position. On April 16, 14 association directors and prominent members sent a pro-tolls letter to leaders of the General Assembly — though there were some holdouts.

CBIA may just be hopelessly divided, especially if it has, for example, trucking firms in its roster.

But division in the ranks isn’t a good enough excuse for McGee.

He said Chris Bruehl, the council president, has spoken with Brennan about it directly.

“We’re saying ‘Joe that’s not acceptable,’ ” McGee said. “Take a vote.”

It would be fine if, like other groups such as the Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce, CBIA opposed tolls, McGee said, or proffered some hybrid solution.

In decades past, the business council — then known as the Southwestern Area Chamber and Industry Association — backed the effort to eliminate tolls. And CBIA back in the ’70s, fought for the state income tax.

“Whether it supports tolls is not the

issue,” McGee said. “You can’t punt ... This is as important as any tax issue you could possibly think of. You have to have a position.”

It’s a good public debate to have — not only tolls vs. no tolls, but how the various business groups should deal with big issues. At a certain point, CBIA — which acts as an insurance agency for many of its members — may become too big and diverse to have a strong voice, and that matters.

And it’s a reminder that engagement means engagement, period.

“We’re continuing to have these discussions, understanding that the clock is ticking,” Brennan said. “We’ll certainly let Joe and others know when a decision is made.”