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Governor Dannel Malloy’s jobs summit Thursday brought together economic thinkers from inside and outside Connecticut to brainstorm about how to get the state’s economy moving. As WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports, Malloy also used the event to launch a new initiative.
“Thank you very much – please – we’ve got work to do…..”
Governor Malloy signaled to the crowd gathered at the Connecticut convention center that his attention is now moving from the state budget to the state’s economy.
“It’s time to pivot. It’s time to tackle now, having tackled the deficit, what is Connecticut’s biggest and most systemic problem. That is the loss of jobs over a 22 year period of time.”
The summit heard about the need to create more connections between the state’s corporations, its higher education institutions and its entrepreneurs in order to drive economic growth in promising sectors. Mitch Horowitz from research group Battelle, told the conference there should be one common theme.
“Technology matters. Technology, innovation, knowledge, whether you are in retail, whether you are in manufacturing, whether you are in finance – it matters.”
The administration has been criticized for courting large corporations at the expense of small business, but the event brought a fresh focus on small and emerging companies. Governor Malloy announced Connecticut would be the third state to join the Start-Up America Partnership. It’s a White House-backed program that aims to foster entrepreneurship. Details on the funding of the program and the concrete ways in which it will help companies weren’t disclosed, but its will aim to create a better ecosystem for startup companies, including improved networking and credit availability. Scott Case, the founder of Norwalk’s Priceline.com, is CEO of Start Up America. He says most jobs are created in young companies, those less than five years old.
“I’d contend that there’s actually millions of silver bullets out there in America’s founders and entrepreneurs. And there are 10s of thousands of them here right in the state of Connecticut. And if we focus our energy on supporting those young companies we can drive job growth and drive the economy forward, and ultimately build jobs.”
For some those jobs can’t come soon enough. A handful of protestors stood outside the Convention Center as the summit began to draw attention to the plight of the unemployed. Darlene Herrick from West Hartford was laid off, and says she can’t find new employment.
“We just want the Governor to know that jobs are very important and he really needs to keep that on his agenda, and let him know that there’s not enough representation for working people in our state. He’s going to listen to big business – they hold all the cards right now – they are not creating jobs for us.”
Determining how the summit’s strategic thinking may be turned into real jobs will be the task of a special legislative session due to be convened October 26th.
For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.
