The desire to predict the future is as old as man. Certainly we’ve progressed from studying the entrails of animals for clues. Now we use computers and sophisticated software.
But the idea is the same and so are the naysayers who want to challenge the predictions and are all too willing to yell “told ya so” years later when one proves off target.
So it is with a melodrama playing out at the legislature. But we see a true win-win way to achieve a happy ending.
During the fall, the legislature asked the Office of Financial Analysis (OFA) for an estimate of what it would take to predict the impact on jobs for every piece of legislation that emerges from committee — perhaps as many as 900 bills per session.
We applaud the legislature’s decision to seek help and we applaud the honest assessment of Rep. Sean Williams.
“Frankly, I think we’re stumbling around in the dark as a legislature in terms of how what we do impacts the business community and jobs in particular,” he told the CT Mirror. The Watertown legislator should know — he’s the ranking House Republican on the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee.
It’s not surprising the OFA came back with a plan that included pricey economic modeling software and a couple of less pricey analysts to do the extra work. The estimated cost of $246,800 in Year 1 includes the software. The Year 2 cost of $152,100 covers the ongoing analyst positions.
In the larger scheme of things, that’s pocket change, even in the face of a $3.7 billion-and-climbing deficit. It’s a small price to pay if it produces better answers.
But wait. The Connecticut Business & Industry Association, the business lobby with the biggest megaphone, jumped in and objected, saying that kind of analysis is too complex a task for one analysis from one computer model. What if they get it wrong?
That caused backpedaling by the legislators who thought they were doing something pro-business and certainly didn’t want to offend the business community.
So there we sit, apparently dead in the water again. The legislature is busily moving forward on legislation and nobody is studying the potential job impacts. Business-as-usual will bring results as usual. And that will please nobody.
Let’s turn the problem over to the universities. Among the various economics programs and business schools — both public and private — there’s plenty of brainpower to devise a variety of models. There’s plenty of sophisticated software on hand and plenty of student labor to input the data and run the software.
Hands-on projects are all the rage in business schools. Check out the quality programs at Quinnipiac or UConn. Check out Kate Roy’s story on this week’s Business Strategy page about Bay Path College’s program that is helping small companies in northern Connecticut solve real-world problems.
Economics programs thrive on modeling and comparing various approaches. This kind of work is a classic business school exercise. Hand them a teaching tool and let them do their thing.
The simple truth is all 900 bills don’t need an in-depth analysis of their job impact. Pick 100 that do and allocate them among the various programs, collecting at least two reports on each bill. The professors oversee the analytic model and sign off on the results; the students do the hands-on work; everybody wins.
Set it up as a competition on a few major bills and it could be bigger than most intercollegiate sports.
This isn’t about the money. OFA certainly should have that modeling software if that’s what it takes to do its job. It’s about taking advantage of the Knowledge Corridor we tout then forget.
It’s a win-win idea and you heard it here first.
