If you thought Gov. Ned Lamont’s economic development strategy begins and ends with imposing tolls on trucks, you were wrong. It only begins with that. But according to David Lehman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD), there is so much more. According to Lehman, who joined Lamont’s team last summer […]
If you thought Gov. Ned Lamont’s economic development strategy begins and ends with imposing tolls on trucks, you were wrong. It only begins with that. But according to David Lehman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD), there is so much more.
According to Lehman, who joined Lamont’s team last summer after 15 years at investment banking behemoth Goldman Sachs, the new administration’s economic-development strategy for 2020 rests on four pillars. He laid out the administration’s plan Dec. 12 at the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce’s Regional Economic Outlook Breakfast 2020.
The first “pillar” is transportation — and not just tolling, which became a lightning rod for Lamont’s transportation scheme and will be the subject of a special legislative session to convene in the new year. In November administration and lawmakers finally agreed on a ten-year, $20 billion transportation plan. The plan includes long-overdue improvements to MetroNorth’s New Haven Line, including faster and more reliable trains to Grand Central Station and service upgrades to the Waterbury line as well.
Pillar No. 2 on the economic development agenda is “talent” — leveraging the state’s educated workforce (nearly 50 percent with at least a bachelor’s degree, vs. about a third nationwide) to jump-start business expansion and attract new employers. Lamont in October announced the creation of the Governor’s Workforce Council, formerly known as the Connecticut Employment & Training Commission.
Lehman named “fiscal stability” the third pillar of the governor’s economic agenda. ”We have not had our fiscal house in order,” he said, of a state that has raised its income tax three times in the last decade rather than confront an “expense stream growing at a faster rate than its revenue stream.” The source of that irreversible expense “stream” — state-employee pension costs — Lehman did not address.
Lehman implicitly criticized the awarding of direct dollar incentives to companies to remain in or relocate to Connecticut, which under the Malloy administration became a conspicuous $200 million-a-year failure as giant employers such as GE defected to greener pastures.
“I don’t think we need to have or should have the best or most aggressive job-creation incentives,” Lehman said. “I think we need to have a competitive strategy that works for taxpayers and grows the economy.”
He said the Lamont team planned to roll out a new economic-development “plan of action” in January or February that will “focus on industries that really grow the state’s economy.”
