Mickey's Mail: Thoughts from the President and CEO of the BRBC

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day is relatively quiet here at the BRBC compared to the entire rest of the year. It is a good time to focus on the greatest needs in 2017 for our members - all those businesses, large and small, throughout the Greater Bridgeport Region.

In a somewhat surprising report just prepared by Ernst & Young, Connecticut was tied with Alaska and North Carolina on one key metric for the most favorable business climate in the country. That metric measured state and local business taxes as a percent of gross state product (GSP), or the value of all goods and services produced annually in Connecticut.

The report stated that "Connecticut is home to several high-output industries, including insurance, financial services and aerospace" and, our economy "generates a large amount of GSP and gross operating surplus per worker". Thus, our business taxes are significantly below the national average when measured per dollar of GSP.

All well and good, but we all know that business costs in our region remain a huge challenge, and as Joseph Brennan, the President and CEO of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA) has stated "when it comes to taxes, we really have to try this year not to make it any worse".

That's why the Hartford Courant this week cited these two big challenges for state government in 2017: to keep the state's costs down by fixing the state budget and by growing jobs and growing businesses.

As for the state budget, we are facing a $1.5 billion deficit in the state's $20 billion budget for fiscal year 2017, and the Courant challenged the state to focus on surgical spending cuts and union givebacks - not raising taxes.

As for growing jobs, we certainly applauded Governor Malloy and our state legislature when they passed a $220 million package to keep our own Sikorsky Aircraft in Connecticut through 2032.

Not only is this a boon for our region's largest commercial employer, but it benefits an

extraordinary network of local suppliers that also contribute mightily to our state's economy.

Even so, the Courant warns, the "state should guard against throwing money at every company that asks" for incentives to stay or grow here in Connecticut.

It all boils down to capitalizing on our region's strengths such as our high-quality workforce, our strong industry clusters in areas such as defense and financial services, our proximity to New York and Boston, and the high per capita wealth of our consumers. And we must keep our business costs in check - costs which have caused Forbes Magazine to rank our state as the 45th worst in this category, among all 50 states.

One final point: we need to stick up for our region.

A genuine business strength in Connecticut is our insurance industry. In this regard, less than a decade ago, we had two significant health insurers, Oxford Health and Health Net, with large employee populations, right here in Trumbull and Shelton respectively.

Both insurers are now part of United HealthCare, which has a huge presence in Hartford, but not at all in our region. Could we have kept their operations here in our region? I'm not sure, but I suspect we didn't even try.

Kudos to Karen!

On an altogether different note, let's acknowledge our own Karen DelVecchio, Executive VP of the BRBC, who earlier this month was selected by the Trumbull Rotary as its 2016 recipient of the Norman K. Parcells award for "Service above Self".

Here's Karen's Facebook comments to her fellow Rotarians: "You have shown me that one person can make a difference and the world can be changed one person at a time. You inspire me, you motivate me and make me always want to do better".

And we've been fortunate, indeed, to have Karen right here at the BRBC for the last decade!

Happy New Year to all!