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June 7, 2019

Lamont faces the music at manufacturing confab

PHOTO | New Haven Biz Lamont addresses the NHMA’s annual meeting Thursday.
By Michael C. Bingham

Just hours after the close of a legislative session that signed off on a new $43.4 billion, two-year state budget, Gov. Ned Lamont showed up to address some 350 business people assembled for the 106th annual meeting of the New Haven Manufacturers Association (NHMA) at Anthony’s Ocean View in New Haven.

It did not go well.

Lamont received a cool reception from the crowd, even though he tried to put the best possible face on a legislative session widely viewed as hostile to the business community, small and mid-sized companies in particular.

Two measures attracted the most attention — and consternation — from the business community. The paid family and medical leave bill mandates that employers give workers up to 12 weeks at 90 percent of pay. The measure, slated to take effect in 2022, applies to companies with as few as a single employee — something no other state mandates.

Lawmakers also raised the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15 — the highest in the nation. The two measures “hit the state’s smallest companies particularly hard,” observed Connecticut Business & Industry Association President Joe Brennan.

Lamont was billed as the “keynote” speaker, but spoke for just 15 minutes. He praised by name the state’s major “legacy” manufacturers — Electric Boat, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky Aircraft, Stanley — as exemplars of what made Connecticut “the Silicon Valley of manufacturing.” He reminded the audience of his business bona fides — ”I am the first business guy in many, many years to be in the governor’s office.”

Lamont defended the new budget as “honestly balanced and on time,” even though it relies mainly on revenue increases to close a projected $3.7 billion budget deficit.

Although lawmakers punted on the governor’s plan to impose tolls on most major Connecticut highways — the matter will be revisited when the legislature reconvenes next month in special session — Lamont hit the transportation infrastructure issue hard. He called widespread opposition to the tolling plan a “kerfuffle,” and said his plan would “take transportation [improvements] off the backs of taxpayers.

“It takes longer to take a train to New York City than it did a generation ago,” Lamont said. He also said he envisioned New Haven as “the transportation hub for the state of Connecticut.”

Lamont touted a number of workforce-development initiatives in the new budget, including the public-private Partnership for Connecticut and funding for the state’s workforce investment boards. It also included funding for a new administrative position — a manufacturing “czar,” he called it, within the Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD).

Then NHMA executive director Jamison Scott asked the crowd if there were any questions for the governor. There were.

Kathleen Rickard of Compumail, a family-owned design/print/mail company in Southington that employs about 30 workers, stood up to pose less a question than an observation: “It appears to many of us that your administration has declared war on small business,” Rickard said.

Lamont paused. “Let me address your issue head-on,” he said.

“Some people may not be happy that we signed off on an increase in the minimum wage,” Lamont said. “But what we wanted to do was to raise the minimum wage slowly, over the next four and a half years, to $15. It’s a way for us to show a commitment to folks that have a hard time getting by in this day and age. So I hope we’ve done that in a thoughtful and respectful way that gives you [employers] time to plan accordingly.”

The room fell silent. “Okay, that was a real conversation-killer,” Lamont observed, He fielded one more question, this one on the budget’s failure to address the long-term pension obligations that make up the lion’s share of the budget deficit.

And then Lamont, like Elvis, left the building.

Contact Michael C. Bingham at mbingham@newhavenbiz.com.

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