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September 2, 2024

CBIA think tank set to unveil long-term economic roadmap for CT

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Connecticut Business & Industry Association President and CEO Chris DiPentima will unveil the CBIA Foundation’s new long-term economic roadmap for the state during the group’s Sept. 4 “The Connecticut Economy” event at the Hartford Marriott.
By Harriet Jones, Hartford Business Journal Contributor

A new think tank effort launched last year by the Connecticut Business & Industry Association will reveal its long-term economic roadmap for the state on Sept. 4.

The CBIA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) formed by the state’s largest business organization, has been working with a consultant to formulate the strategic economic action plan with the aims of boosting the state’s competitiveness, retaining and attracting investment and talent, fostering innovation and expanding career pathway opportunities.

And although the CBIA has been an economic advocacy organization for all of its 200-year history, CBIA President and CEO Chris DiPentima sees this effort as fundamentally different.

“This is beyond election cycles,” he said. “It’s not just the next legislative session. It’s not just the next administration or who the next governor or elected policymakers will be.”

He also says the foundation aims to showcase a broader range of voices.

“It’s way more collaborative than I think any longer-term plan CBIA has taken on before,” he said. “It transcends membership, it transcends the business community.”

To that end, the foundation itself brings to the table not just CBIA membership, but also the teachers union (Connecticut Education Association) and Dalio Education, a grant foundation that engages with public school communities and provides funding to several nonprofits. Companies like Electric Boat, Yale New Haven Health, CohnReznick and the Haynes Group have donated to the foundation and have a representative on the board.

As to the timing, DiPentima believes this is a good moment, with the state’s fiscal house in better shape, to think long term.

“With the fiscal guardrails, a record rainy day budget, paying down our pension liabilities, we’re at a point where we can make investments in Connecticut,” he said.

Among the other factors that make this an opportune moment to launch the roadmap is the administration’s willingness to partner beyond government.

“In my mind — and I’ve lived here for 53 years in Connecticut — it’s never been stronger,” he said. “The government is really trying to work with the private sector, the business community, the nonprofits, the teachers.”

Secretary of Commerce role

The foundation brought in Economic Leadership LLC, a consulting group based in North Carolina, to do a comprehensive survey on which to build the roadmap. Economic Leadership has worked with more than 30 state chambers of commerce across the country to develop similar strategic economic action plans.

Although it won’t reveal the fee paid to the consultants, the CBIA confirmed the Foundation has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the process and the plan.

The consulting firm’s research efforts spanned eight months. To define Connecticut’s current competitive conditions, the firm examined the state’s positioning within four categories: business climate, workforce, infrastructure and innovation.

In tandem with this effort, the CBIA Foundation hosted more than 30 forums across the state soliciting ideas from a diverse group of stakeholders, including business, nonprofit, education and community leaders along with state lawmakers and administration officials.

DiPentima says it was also important not to reinvent the wheel or ignore previous studies that contain valuable information, from the Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Growth of 2018 through the Connecticut CREATES report produced by Boston Consulting in 2021.

“The challenge was some of them were legislatively convened,” he notes. “And then when the people were done with those studies, everyone left the room and no one owned updating them, implementing them.”

CBIA’s effort, he says, will incorporate many of their recommendations, chief among them, the creation of a Secretary of Commerce role at the cabinet level, first suggested by Ned Lamont’s transition team.

All the report’s recommendations are organized around three pillars, business climate, workforce and quality of life.

“It’s a multiyear process,” says DiPentima. “It’s almost 40 recommendations between the three pillars in total. We have a vision of having a lot of this implemented over the next three to five years.”

And he also believes it’s crucial that the ownership of such a long-term economic strategy for the state resides at least partially in the private sector.

“Some ​people ​that ​we ​talked ​to ​at ​the ​forums ​were like, ‘​well, ​that’s ​government’s ​responsibility. ​Why ​don’t ​they ​own ​this ​strategy?’” he said. “​But ​government’s ​not ​going ​to ​put ​a ​long-term ​strategy ​in ​place ​when ​those ​people ​are ​maybe ​getting ​elected ​every ​two ​or ​four ​years.”

Regulatory patchwork

The No. 1 issue CBIA Foundation members heard about during the survey period was overly burdensome regulation, DiPentima said.

“Residents have more optimism about Connecticut than they’ve had in many, many years, but they’re still frustrated,” he said. “They still find it challenging to get things done because of an over-regulatory, complex, non-transparent environment that we have in the state.”

He emphasized that the situation is not just at the state level. Some of it has to do with a patchwork of rules spread over 169 towns, and a lack of county government.

“We ​heard ​from ​a ​lot ​of ​people — residents ​and ​businesses — ‘​I ​could ​do ​something ​over ​here, ​but ​if ​I ​try ​to ​go ​over ​the ​town ​border ​and ​do ​that ​exact ​same ​thing, ​I’m ​met ​with ​a ​different ​set ​of ​challenges, ​a ​different ​set ​of ​requirements, ​yet ​I ​only ​went ​5 ​miles.’”

It was a situation that was new to the out-of-state team from Economic Leadership.

“Our consultants said they had never seen anything like that in any of the other states that they worked with,” he said.

The recommendations

DiPentima says the solutions have more to do with the carrot than the stick.

“In Connecticut, we have a lot of respect for local control, but how do you make that efficient, efficient for residents and businesses?” he said. “Can we create benchmarks where if you’re able to achieve these best practices, instead of it being penalized in the towns and cities, do you get more state funding if you achieve these benchmarks?”

On the education side, as you might expect from a business leader, he’s focused on forging better pathways from education to the workplace.

“We heard the teachers tell us that the way they’re measured, the school scorecard, it’s not incentivizing work-based learning,” he explained. “It’s a college-or-bust mentality. But about 70% to 80% of the job openings don’t require a bachelor’s degree at all.”

A big goal is to adjust that scorecard to see a progression from school to the workforce as an equally successful outcome as a college placement.

“We have a lot of recommendations around career pathways, around reforming the education system to encourage more work-based learning and more internships while in high school,” he said.

And while he recognizes it will take time to build buy-in for the full roadmap, he does look forward to making at least some progress in the upcoming legislative session.

“I think the legislature will have a hard time not embracing these recommendations to make our system more efficient, but also more productive at the same time,” DiPentima said.

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