Senate Bill 307 would strip references to specific offices from state law, giving Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe broader authority to shift staff and resources across the agency’s 108-person workforce.
Commissioner Daniel O’Keefe is pushing to reorganize the state
Department of Economic and Community Development, arguing the agency needs more flexibility to respond to shifting demands from lawmakers and businesses.
“They just want to get [stuff] done,” O’Keefe told the Hartford Business Journal, referring to legislators. “Me too.”
The former technology investor leads an agency that oversees key state programs tied to business incentives, housing and community development and brownfield redevelopment.
DECD operates with about a $50 million General Fund budget — including roughly $9.5 million for personnel services — plus additional economic development program funding.
O’Keefe has already begun reshaping the agency’s leadership structure, recently promoting
Chief Manufacturing Officer Kirti Patel to deputy commissioner focused on economic development.
Patel will also remain CMO, but will “expand his mandate to focus on our economy more broadly,” O’Keefe said.
Deputy Commissioner Matthew J. Pugliese, who also serves as chief investment officer, will continue overseeing community development initiatives.
Patel replaces former Deputy Commissioner
Paul O. Robertson, who will serve as a special adviser “to support the transition,” O’Keefe said.
Separately,
Morgan Nyerick was recently named
director of statewide marketing and tourism, a different post from the chief marketing officer job vacated earlier this year by
Anthony Anthony. Anthony’s successor has not yet been named, according to the agency.
The broader restructuring effort, however, hinges on passage of Senate Bill 307, a wide-ranging measure that would give DECD more control over its internal structure.
The legislature’s Commerce Committee approved the 60-page bill in late March by a 19-1 vote. It awaits further action by the House and Senate.
The proposal would make a series of structural and administrative changes to DECD, including renaming key programs, updating advisory boards and loosening statutory requirements tied to the agency’s internal structure that would allow for greater flexibility.
Most notably, the bill would remove references in state law to specific offices within DECD — including those tied to permitting, brownfields and data center coordination — and instead give the commissioner broader authority to allocate staff and resources.
“In some ways, DECD is a simplistic animal,” O’Keefe said. “There’s economic development and there’s community development.”
The problem is, the agency is currently divided into roughly 17 offices, O’Keefe said, noting even he created one, the Office of Innovation.
The intent of the bill, and his goal, is to eliminate the offices to make it easier to allocate resources and staff to where they are most needed, he said.
Some of those offices were created by statute to elevate specific policy priorities, but they were often funded only with “available resources,” he said.
“Newsflash,” O’Keefe said. “There are no ‘available resources.’”
There is staff — DECD has 108 full-time positions this fiscal year — but O’Keefe said state statutes and union contracts prevent him from reassigning employees with lighter workloads to programs or projects that need more help.
“My flexibility is limited,” he said. “I didn’t know that until I tried to move people. … We need to be able to dynamically assign and reassign resources based on where the demand sits.”
Other changes
SB 307 would make numerous other changes, including revising a state pilot program aimed at reducing concentrated poverty by shifting oversight to an existing DECD office, and eliminating outdated programs such as a defunct biodiesel incentive account.
Several programs would be renamed. The Small Business Express Program would become the Connecticut Small Business Boost Program, formalizing in state law an initiative that already operates under that name. Created by Gov. Ned Lamont in 2022, the Boost program provides working capital loans typically ranging from $5,000 to $500,000 to small businesses and nonprofits.
The bill would also replace the Minority Business Revolving Loan Fund, which provides financing to minority-owned businesses, with a new Connecticut Opportunity Fund, among other changes.
As for the deputy commissioner shake-up, O’Keefe said Patel has run much larger organizations than DECD and has “become an incredible thought partner.”
Patel is “well steeped in the manufacturing world,” O’Keefe said. “Part of his promotion to this role is really in recognition of how important manufacturing is.”
He wants a deputy commissioner focused on manufacturing, he said, “because it’s 12% of our economy and the biggest contributor to our growth.”
O’Keefe said the agency must become more nimble to keep pace with changes in the economy.
“We’re just too small of an agency to not be dynamic, … and I, as the manager, need to be able to dynamically provision resources where they’re most needed,” he said.
