The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Lamont still big on public-private partnerships
After the recent collapse of Gov. Ned Lamont’s one-year-old, nowfailed public-private collaboration with a hedge fund magnate and his philanthropist wife, the governor says the state must come up with new ways to encourage the participation of the business community.
Lamont wants legislative leaders to consider amending state rules on financial disclosures and public records, if that will make business and corporate leaders more comfortable in lending their expertise.
He calls this a crucial moment, as Connecticut tries to regain an economic momentum that never fully recovered from the Great Recession of 2008, before the coronavirus pandemic shutdown forced hundreds of thousands to seek unemployment
“I love the idea of a bigger table.” Gov. Ned Lamont
benefits.
And Lamont isn’t backing down from publicprivate partnerships even as he attempts to retool the strategy. On Thursday, he rolled out an ambitious worker retraining and placement plan with private companies, chiefly Indeed, which has more
than 1,000 employees in Stamford, joining forces with the state.
The governor also points to a successful private philanthropy effort, 4-CT, that’s working with the state on coronavirus relief.
That follows a cascade of criticism of the Partnership for Connecticut’s workings, including commentary about the group’s exemption from government transparency and ethics laws and some lawmakers’ downright critical assessments of the group’s operations. That led Ray and Barbara Dalio to pull out of the partnership, although the Greenwich billionaire couple remains committed to their $100 million support for Connecticut education.
Similar, but less-fatal sniping centered on the 50-member, private-sectorheavy Reopen CT Advisory Group, which gave Lamont recommendations on how best to tackle the slowmotion recovery.
“I love the idea of a bigger table,” Lamont, a former cable TV entrepreneur whose business experience far outweighed his public service in Greenwich town government, when he was elected in 2018.
“We learned a few things,” Lamont recently told reporters while reflecting on the first 100 days of the coronavirus pandemic. “After a while the Reopen committee started getting some push-back. You maybe heard it. They said ‘Who are these corporate talking heads? Who are these academic elitists? Who are these people coming in and telling us what to do?’ I said thank you. I say it again. We need you. I know the hesitancy about not having everything decided within here, this Hartford ecosystem, but I think we’re better when we keep open on this.”
‘Rules of the road’
It’s still not clear what the new system will look like. The Partnership was dependent on a commitment of $100 million in state money over five years and another $100 million that would be raised from private sources, in addition to the Dalio money.
“That was a little more complicated because there was private money and public money side by side,” Lamont said, stressing a near class-warfare aspect of the criticism. “’Corporate board guys dropping dollars on we peasants.’ I’ve got to tell you that was an attitude that killed any opportunity for us to do much fundraising. I’ve got to figure out how we can do better to put together a structure that is transparent; that gives you confidence that they’re acting in the public interest; and we can leverage their amazing resources, their intellectual resources and their financial resources.”
The governor has asked state Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, both of whom are not running for re-election, to meet with business and labor leaders and come up with some possible changes that will make those from outside government more comfortable.
The goal is “to see if we can figure out the rules of the road, where we don’t stiff-arm people who want to be helpful in any way, but we welcome them to the table in a way that we can tap their expertise, tap their incredible sense of citizenship, to participate and make a difference, just like we used the Reopening committee to make the enormous difference. I don’t want to think our resources end right here in this city,” Lamont said
“The state’s got to look at it if they want people to volunteer,” Fasano said. “We want to get more people involved, but private people may not want to do a complete financial disclosure. There has to be some in-between ground.
He added, “Of course
you want to make sure there are no conflicts of interest. But we should try to make people from the outside feel more comfortable.”
‘Many fiefdoms’
There are many ways in which the business community is involved in supporting state interests. There are about 17 so-called quasi-public agencies such as the Connecticut Lottery Commission and the Connecticut Port Authority, which were set up away from extra governmental oversight in efforts to give them greater nimbleness and flexibility. Results have been mixed. Fasano in particular has pointed out management and operational problems in both the lottery and port authority, and wonders whether it’s worth it to let them stay an arm’s length from state agency status.
“I’m not exactly sure why the Lottery is a quasipublic,” Fasano said. “It likes having its own budget. Those employees are on the state payroll. Board members do not have disclosures. Quasi-publics, they’ve become mini-fiefdoms. Without review they tend to lose the genesis of their being.”
There are about a dozen public-private marketing partnerships, such as the government-affiliated AdvanceCT, the former Connecticut Economic Resource Center, which is partially funded through the state Department of Economic and Community Development and focuses on business recruitment to the state.
Peter Denious, president and CEO of AdvanceCT, who also served on the governor’s Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group, said Lamont gave the panel a very compressed deadline to present ideas.
“It wasn’t about secrecy,” Denious said. “It was about
speed, and I think we assembled an enormous amount of expertise that the governor and his team could consider. We were flying the plane while building it.”
Denious, who has led AdvanceCT for nine months, believes those outside government should be encouraged to invest and participate.
“Any time we can harness private-sector dollars and expertise, if managed properly, can be incredibly effective,” Denious said. “AdvanceCT’s mission is moving the state forward. We’re tapping into a real networks that we marry with state business development and initiatives. I think that’s a winning strategy.”
New models for giving
Ted Yang, co-founder and CEO of the new 4-CT COVID-19 relief non-profit that is affiliated with the Hartford Foundation for Giving, the Community Foundation of Greater New
Haven and Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, said that while there is no state affiliation, 4-CT takes informal suggestions, especially from the governor.
In slightly more than two months of operations, 4-CT has given out $10 million in grants. Yang and Lamont recently announced jointly that 4-CT is giving out $1 million in debit cards to immigrants whose legal status prevents them from obtaining state or federal unemployment benefits. The cards are being donated through affiliations with advocacy groups and local community health centers.
“We’re not taking any money from the state,” said Yang said. “At the end of the day we certainly want to be in partnership with the state. The governor has been kind enough to allow us to use his bullhorn. He and his senior staff occasionally point us in the right direction.”
Mendi Blue-Paca, chief community impact officer
for Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, said Friday that partnerships are historically the name of the game.
“We spend a lot of time thinking how we work cross-sectionally, through grant-making, capacity building, and the agency’s recent adoption of an advocacy agenda approved this week,” she said.
“There is no way to solve historical problems without thinking about our role and the solutions,” Blue-Paca said. “We really take seriously the role of the public sector public leaders, the role of non-profits and social services in addressing the needs of our mostvulnerable populations. We are living in an incredibly dynamic world right now.”
“We have adopted the view that we don’t just want to plug holes through grant-making,” she said. “Ultimately we want to tackle why there is such great need.”
In just over three months, Fairfield County’s
Community Foundation through individuals, donoradvised fundholders, businesses and foundations has contributed $7.4 million for Southwestern Connecticut organizations and others across the state, Blue-Paca reported.
Lamont is likely to consider a realm of possibilities to encourage private citizens to participate in fundraising and advisory groups.
“I want to look forward,” he told reporters outside the Connecticut Science Center in downtown Hartford last Tuesday. “I don’t spend a lot of time looking back. How do we put together structures that the outside folks know that they can come in and participate, in a way? As we put together these commissions, what is the expertise that you want at the table, first of all? Is everybody subject to (the state Freedom of Information Act)? Financial reporting? Give us clear rules that I can tell the greater population.”