By David Cruz
Correspondent
The latest jobs numbers suggest that New Jersey’s business climate is showing signs of life, but there is anxiety among the state business leaders and this so-called summit was intended to bring business and government together to try and figure out how to get the simmer to a boil. The main areas of concern are taxes (too high), Regulations (too many), workforce readiness (not enough) and transportation and infrastructure (it’s all falling apart.)
“We haven’t created any new revenue for our infrastructure since 1988,” noted Utility and Transportation Contractors Association CEO Robert Briant. “Costs have increased, labor rates have gone up, material rates have gone up, right of ways to buy property to build your transportation systems have gone up, yet we’ve not had an increase in revenue there.”
In panel after panel, participants agreed that growth is essential, but that without the help of government, the process will continue to be slow. So, it was at today’s panel of legislative leaders that business people expected to get some answers, and perhaps some hope. What they got was New Jersey’s special brand of legislative bipartisanship.
“You can nibble around the edges all you want, you can have a ten percent program, you can have all kinds of incentive programs, but if nobody’s here, no one’s gonna take advantage of that,” barked Assembly Minority leader Jon Bramnick, “So I tell you it is time to change the legislature, despite the fact that personally I love these guys.”
As participants looked on with impatience, Senate President Steve Sweeney said solutions were at close, but that compromise was necessary.
“The infrastructure has to get fixed. And we have to address — whether it’s a gas tax or a sales tax — it’s gonna be a tax, but what you can do is constitutionally. You can write a question that is so tight that it can’t go for maintenance. It can’t go for operations, that every single penny goes for the purpose that it’s being raised.”
Participants left the panel, unimpressed.
“If we cannot listen to each other and brainstorm the problem, we will never get to a point of understanding the symptom of the illness of the state,” sighed Joseph Hakim, a closeouts and liquidations wholesaler.
But Ruthi Byrne, president of Zinn, Graves & Field Public Relations dismissed the contentious tone of the panel. “That’s the way the legislature works, but it’s a messy business,” she said. “It’s making sausage, you expect that, but what you do hope and expect is that, at the end of the day, you will have a sausage.”
At then end of today’s session, Chamber CEO Tom Bracken asked the lawmakers if they would commit to an ongoing dialogue with business leaders on their big four issues. They said they would and Bracken said he would call them first thing in the morning on Monday, telling NJTV News later that that made the whole conference worthwhile.