By David Cruz
Correspondent
The New Jersey Business and Industry Association public policy forum went on without its keynote speaker today. Sen. Cory Booker was stuck in Washington where the Senate was preparing for a vote on the budget. It was ironic then, that budgets (in this case New Jersey’s) and their effect on business growth was a major topic of discussion during the legislative leaders panel.
“Well, unless we start changing the tax climate and we start being competitive nationally, we got a problem and new mandates, new regulations, no good,” said Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick.
That’s not a shocker coming from a Republican in New Jersey. The party has never been big on regulation or business tax, but this was a business group gathering so even Democrats today were talking about ways to make the business climate sunnier, pointing to Subaru’s recent announcement that it’s staying in Jersey as an indication of their willingness to encourage business. Senate President Steve Sweeney was asked about criticism that the 100 new jobs that are going to be created by the move by Subaru are going to cost about $1 million each.
“We were going to lose 900 jobs,” he insisted. “No one wants to talk about that. Nine hundred jobs were leaving New Jersey to go to Pennsylvania. Were we better off with that than doing nothing? Pennsylvania was offering incentives to bring them over.”
Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean agreed. He said taxes are a wet blanket on the state’s growth, which has lagged behind the region and the nation for several years now.
“People think that we’re just one June away from another tax increase and that’s impacting people’s hiring decisions,” he said. “It’s impacting where they want to keep their families. It’s impacting where they send their kids to school.”
The hot topic here, as it is in the State House, remains how to replenish the Transportation Trust Fund, which everyone agrees must be a priority, even if they don’t all agree on how to get the money, even with record low gas prices.
“I think that that is one of the biggest incentives here, when you have gas average at $2.49, $2.39. The average is like $2.60 across the nation and we are the second lowest,” said Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto. “We don’t need to go to number one but we need to stay, and we’re going to stay competitive because we’ll stay substantially below our neighbors.”
Business leaders are optimistic, by and large, about the state’s economy, but caution political leaders that excess regulations are like toll booths on a highway — filling state coffers, perhaps, but also, slowing down traffic.