Majority Leaders’ Jobs Group Announces Plan to Jump-Start Job Creation and Position Connecticut’s Economy for Long-Term Growth

Among group’s recommendations: realignment of tax credits, investment in green jobs and energy efficiency, smarter government, and leveraging private capital for entrepreneurs

A group led by House Majority Leader Denise Merrill (D-Mansfield) and Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney (D-New Haven) today announced a series of recommendations designed “to jump-start job creation in Connecticut and lay the foundation for long-term prosperity.”

The Majority Leaders’ Job Growth Roundtable—legislators, academics, economists, labor and business leaders, and venture capitalists—issued a report calling for a series of initiatives aimed at business innovation and entrepreneurship, infrastructure, government efficiencies, and education to spur job creation and economic development.

The report called the initiatives “the surest path toward providing a positive climate for economic development, creating quality jobs that can be sustained in a competitive world, and ensuring that there will be skilled workers available to fill those jobs.”

Sen. Looney said, “House Majority Leader Merrill and I convened a job growth study group and over the last two months reviewed the state's current economic position. We believe these urgent measures need to be acted on in order to improve our economic competiveness. We must reorganize Connecticut's economic development agencies, restructure tax credits, and offer incentives to small businesses, all with one goal in mind—grow jobs."

Rep. Merrill said, “For too long, Connecticut has taken a ‘business as usual’ approach to job retention and job creation. We need the kind of strategic vision and systematic approach to economic development that can provide our state and its residents with the prosperity and security that all deserve. We must take full advantage of the many assets we have in our state. We need to make Connecticut competitive again. It is clear that “business as usual” will no longer work.

“Our group put a lens on Connecticut assets that can be leveraged, on small businesses, long the backbone of our economy, and on opportunities in high-tech precision manufacturing and emerging technologies that truly can be the engine that drives our economic future.”

Among the key recommendations (details can be found in the full report at housedems.ct.gov/jobgrowth):

Invest at all stages of business growth, utilizing bonding, investor tax credits, state pension funds and private equity funds

• Reinvigorate industry clusters
• Provide export assistance to companies
• Realign selected tax credits
• Create a more seamless, easily accessed government process
• Invest in mass transit
• Incent energy efficiencies and green energy job creation
• Educate a workforce for in-demand jobs

Invest in all Stages of Business Growth

1. Using bonding, create an annual fund in the range of $12 million to support pre-seed/proof of concepts—separate from seed and early-stage funding sources, to provide technical or incubator or mentoring services to high-potential entrepreneurs with ideas in the initial stage of development.
2. Create an Angel Investor Tax Credit program in the range of $7 million to $10 million to leverage private investments by building new angel investment networks in CT that support start-up companies.
3. Create “side car” funding to leverage angel investor money.

Reinvigorate Industry Clusters

1. Renew support of industry clusters with appropriate funding and evaluate appropriateness of current cluster.
2. Consider development of additional clusters such as health care, green jobs, or creative industry.
3. Invest in a Regional Innovation Cluster Hub and Connector, using state and leveraged federal dollars to build an environment of innovation and entrepreneurship in conjunction with the administration of the pre-seed fund.

Export Assistance

1. Expand and improve support for international opportunities to increase business growth as businesses seek new markets abroad for their products.

Realign Tax Credits

1. Redirect the existing Insurance Reinvestment Fund tax credits for funds that will invest in emerging and clean technologies and energy innovation.
2. Implement a new, more general job growth tax credit system that promotes quality job growth to take effect in 2010 and end in 2013.

Innovation in Government

1. Maximize web-based government services. Improve electronic information flow that will facilitate business growth.
2. Provide incentives for regionalization of municipal services.
3. Promote the launch of a “business institute” to promote and foster an ethos of information sharing.
4. Launch a strong initiative to reduce unnecessary paperwork and redundant data collection by the state.

Invest in Mass Transit

The report states, “Traffic congestion and the high cost of energy are some of the largest obstacles to business growth in Connecticut. Investment in infrastructure provides both short-term economic stimulus, and long-term competitive advantage. Infrastructure projects create a large number of jobs that generally pay well. They provide public benefits long after they are completed. If properly conceived and executed, they can benefit the environment and reduce energy usage and cost.

1. Invest capital funds in double-tracking the New Haven to Springfield rail line.
2. Invest capital funds in multi-modal transit systems in the state’s metropolitan areas, to facilitate access between housing and jobs and decrease vehicle miles traveled. Transit reduces costs to workers and companies, and has the positive side benefits of using less energy and reducing the production of carbon and greenhouse gasses.
3. Rebuild and enhance wastewater treatment facilities using Clean Water Fund and federal stimulus dollars.
4. Encourage investment in green infrastructure as a water management strategy.

Energy Efficiencies and Green Jobs

1. Provide incentives, using the Clean Energy Fund and other sources, to enhance energy efficiency in the initial construction and rehabilitation of homes and businesses, and to promote distributed generation facilities that use green resources, including fuel cell, solar, hydro, geothermal and wind.
2. Provide incentives for the manufacturing of green energy products.
3. Create a competitive grant program for schools to make energy efficiency improvements.
4. Allow for municipalities to site renewable generation on their buildings that are owned/installed by private entities.
5. Create and support financing mechanisms for residential users to make efficiency improvements. Allow municipalities to do “green bonding.”
6. To promote more efficient use of existing infrastructure, incent functional collaboration among municipalities.

Educate a Workforce for In-demand Jobs

The report states, “To build innovative and entrepreneurial businesses, we need a workforce with the skills and knowledge in areas that are necessary for a competitive edge in the global marketplace.”

Enhance Early-childhood Education

1. Emphasize science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.
2. Prepare every Connecticut high school student to enter 21st Century technical certification and/or apprentice programs, two-or four-year higher educational institutions, or immediate work opportunities.
3. Develop a workforce to implement new demands for green jobs and energy efficiency programs.
4. Consider a program modeled on Michigan’s No Worker Left Behind legislation, which gives free tuition to community colleges to unemployed workers pursuing high demand occupations.
5. Maximize federal funds available through ARRA TANF Emergency Contingency Fund.