Government Issues and Politics
Insurance and Employee Benefits
Business and Economic Info
Human Resources and Safety
Education Policies and Practicies
Training and Consulting Services
Welcome to CBIA's Training and Consulting site!
Small Business Human Resources Workforce Development Your Questions Answered Success Stories

January 2007 — Vol. 84, No. 11

CBIA’s 2007 Government Affairs Program

A strategic plan for Connecticut:

Transforming challenges into solutions

 

Pre-election polls in 2006 consistently showed that jobs and the economy were the top concerns of Connecticut voters.

CBIA believes lawmakers should respond to these challenges by making economic growth and job creation their top priorities for the 2007 General Assembly, as they did in 2006.

CBIA’s priorities also remain the same, reflecting the concerns of employers, large and small, throughout Connecticut:

  • Make business costs more competitive.

  • Enhance the skills of our workforce.

  • Improve our energy and transportation infrastructures.

We believe lawmakers should expand on last session’s pro-growth agenda by taking a more strategic approach to economic development that will lead to sustainable growth. Strategic investments in infrastructure, workforce skills and technology can help make Connecticut a leader in innovation, a key to competitiveness in the global economy.

Connecticut’s economic challenges are well known and documented in many studies by CBIA, CERC and others. But by focusing on the opportunities those challenges present, Connecticut can be a leader in forging solutions that:

  • Drive quality and innovation to reduce health care costs and increase access to quality health care.

  • Focus education and job training systems on the skills needed for the 21st century economy to produce a competitive and adaptable workforce.

  • Link economic development, affordable housing and transportation policies strategically, to make Connecticut a pre-eminent location for employers and employees.

Taking these and other actions, along with aggressively attacking the cost of doing business, would make Connecticut a national leader in transforming economic challenges into real solutions.

Using a strategic approach to economic development, lawmakers should adopt legislation that will help job growth, and reject proposals that will not.

CBIA is committed to working with both parties on these important issues, because Connecticut should always be a leading center of economic growth and innovation, and a home of opportunity for businesses and individuals alike.

 

GOVERNMENT PRIORITIES

Competitive business costs

  • Control health care costs and expand access to quality care:
    – Make health care quality and cost data more available to consumers, to allow them to make more-informed medical choices.
    – Encourage the use of electronic medical records.
    – Encourage employer-based wellness and disease-management programs.
    – Allow health plans to create more-flexible health benefit designs.
    – Establish a moratorium on new health care mandates.
    – Reduce cost shifts from Medicaid to private-sector payers by increasing the state’s reimbursement level for providers’ costs.

  • Reduce high energy costs and improve energy reliability:
    – Encourage the development of new generation capacity and alternative energy sources.
    – Streamline the state’s siting process for infrastructure improvements.
    – Reject measures that would discourage a competitive energy marketplace.

  • Use the state budgeting process to help drive economic development:
    – Adopt a state budget that adheres to the letter and the spirit of the state’s spending cap.
    – Target tax incentives for investments in technology, innovation and productivity.

  • Reject measures that discourage job creation in the state, such as proposals that would drive up workers’ compensation or other costs or restrict employers’ ability to communicate with their employees.

Skilled workforce

  • Improve the overall academic performance of Connecticut students:
    – Expand the Vanguard School model to extend the best practices of higher-performing schools to those in need of improvement.
    – Ensure that all three- and four-year-old children whose families are at or below 185% of the federal poverty level have access to quality early childhood education.
    – Expand the role of charter and magnet schools in providing public school choice for more students.

  • Expand apprenticeship and customized job training programs to better prepare employees for the demands of the global economy.

  • Support efforts to expand workforce housing in order to keep and attract quality employees.

Dependable infrastructures

  • Encourage further development of Connecticut’s electric generation capacity and transmission system to reduce costs and improve reliability.

  • Better prioritize transportation infrastructure improvement projects as part of a strategic, comprehensive plan to improve Connecticut’s connectivity to global markets.

Note: CBIA’s complete Government Affairs Program, available online at cbia.com/gov, contains more-detailed recommendations.

 

[back to main article]