Can Connecticut Get Its Mojo Back? CBIA seeks to make state less business-hostile in 36 short months By Felicia Hunter
In three years, it may be accomplished. If so, Connecticut then be among the top 20 states to do business on every major assessment list.
Frank J. Johnson, president/ CEO of the Manufacturing Alliance of Connecticut (MAC). “States that surround us are looking to take our businesses away,” he says. One way to do that is to offer a higher-quality workforce.
That’s if the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) has its way. The organization has set business preeminence for the state as the goal of its new campaign, “CT20x17.” “It kind of grew out of disappointment, with some of our member companies, and conversations they’ve had with our president and CEO [John Rathgeber],” says Joseph Brennan, CBIA’s senior vice president of public policy, about the campaign’s origin. “It was born out of frustration that Connecticut hasn’t been moving forward as fast as it could.” The main, overriding concern that CT20x17 aims to address is economic stagnation, Brennan says. “Overall, the problem is economic growth. Our economy has been growing very slowly. It’s actually shrunk” over the past several years, Brennan says. He adds that two top reasons for the state’s lagging economic situation is its transportation infrastructure — including lack of an expanded rail service — and a workforce that lacks training for available jobs, which leaves managers and administrators with “an inability to find skilled employees for [their] businesses,” says Brennan. Add in factors such as the high cost of housing, highway congestion, energy costs and other variables associated with doing business, and Connecticut finds itself coming up short, Brennan adds. He points, for example, to a 2013 CNBC survey that listed the Nutmeg State 45th among states for business environment nationwide. The survey considered broad indicators such as technology and innovation, education, business friendliness, cost of living, access to capital, workforce, economy, infrastructure, cost of doing business, and 18
quality of life. In all, 51 specific competitive measures were examined. The measures were determined with the help of input from national business groups. While the CNBC survey ranked Connecticut high (No. 5 nationally) in the education category, it was positioned at the bottom of the list for infrastructure, cost of living and cost of doing business (Nos. 49, 48 and 43, respectively). By comparison, Connecticut’s neighbors, Massachusetts and New York, fared better even with comparable metrics in some categories. For example, both border states ranked lower than Connecticut for cost of doing business. The Bay State was listed as No. 47 and Empire State No. 49 in that category. Both also scored low for cost of living: Massachusetts at No. 43 and New York No. 47. But those low scores were tempered for those states by high scores in areas such as technology and innovation (New York tops in the nation; Massachusetts No. 7) and economy (Massachusetts No. 3, New York No. 14). Overall, Massachusetts ranked 16th, while New York ranked 35th among top states in the country for business, according to the CNBC survey. The way business is assessed for surrounding states is important to Connecticut because it can affect the economic climate and opportunities here, according to
“There’s a growing skills gap in Connecticut,” says Johnson. “There’s a huge difference between the number of positions out there and the number of positions [being filled].” Technical jobs in areas such as quality control, computer numerical control (CNC) machine operators, and tool-and-die makers lack qualified people to fill them, he says. Many experienced workers in these areas are retiring, and jobs are becoming available much more rapidly than they can be filled. State programs such as STEP UP — which provides incentives for businesses to train and hire low-income and/or unemployed workers — help. But they are far from a cure-all, Johnson says. “STEP UP has eased [the situation] somewhat, but the number of people who can participate in a program like that, it still doesn’t fill the voids,” Brennan says. However, while Forbes and other surveys report business-ranking findings for Connecticut are comparable to those of the CNBC survey, it must be remembered that many of the variables are not completely dispassionate, Brennan says. “They’re based on data points that are researched. A lot of it is very subjective,” Brennan says, adding, “I don’t think we’re the 45th worst place to do business — I think we’re better than that. “We have a great quality of life in Connecticut,” he adds. “There’s great potential in Connecticut. We have worldclass businesses here, and an educated workforce. There are a lot of assets. He acknowledges, however, that perception is key. “Unless we can eliminate this perception that Connecticut is not a good place to do business,” companies will not take root and/or grow and expand in the state, Brennan says.
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