"When a company's making the choice to come to Connecticut, we're not going to overpay. We're not going to promise the company more dollars than we think we can retrieve."
Catherine Smith
Economic development was a major part of the campaign rhetoric this election season, and it seems destined to be a high-profile part of Governor Dannel Malloy’s second term.
WNPR sat down with the administration’s economic development chief, Catherine Smith to talk about what a second term will look like.
Catherine Smith came from business -- a high-level corporate job in insurance -- to be Malloy’s Commissioner of Economic and Community Development early in his first term. And she’d love to remain. "I would be delighted to serve with this governor again," she said during an interview in her Hudson Street office.
Smith said that conversation hasn’t taken place yet, and in the meantime she’s thinking ahead to the work she’d like to do in the next four years. But don’t look for any radical change in direction. "What we have broadly, in terms of the tools in the toolbox, are pretty good right now," she said. "I think it’s more about executing them more efficiently and effectively than it is about abandoning everything and starting a whole lot new."
An aspect of the work Smith has done came under fire frequently in the pre-election debates: what Malloy’s challenger Tom Foley dubbed corporate welfare. Smith fiercely defends the policy of tax incentives and forgivable loans for high profile companies, and she regards herself as a fiduciary of public dollars, carefully considering the return in terms of employment and increased tax revenues on each deal, and enforcing clawback provisions.
"There have been examples in the last couple of years where we have taken money back from companies," Smith said. "We have told them you’re simply not going to get the forgiveness we promised you because you didn’t create the jobs."
Smith insisted Connecticut must be out there competing with other states for business, "but even then, when a company’s making the choice to come to Connecticut, we’re not going to overpay. We’re not going to promise the company more dollars than we think we can retrieve," she said.
One part of the department’s work that may be tweaked is assistance to small business.
Smith said she’d like to target the wildly popular Small Business Express loan program more carefully to economically distressed areas, and she said the long-term aim would be to allow the private sector to take over. "Eventually, could we be out of the banking business? I would hope so, but I tell you I don’t think we’re quite ready, given the demand we still see and given how tough it is for a number of businesses," she said.
The administration will continue its aggressive push on bioscience and advanced manufacturing, and Smith said to look for an increased emphasis on green technology industries like fuel cell. "It’s a small part of our economy today, but there’s so much potential," she said.
Smith also said the administration will continue to work on stimulating financial services, despite setbacks with Bridgewater and UBS. She indicated they hope shortly to be able announce the move of a financial services company from New York City to Connecticut.
Smith is optimistic about the potential for faster jobs growth in the near future, but she says she considers the slow progress made in the last few years to have a silver lining. "This kind of growth, this kind of slower growth is actually much healthier in the long run," she said, "and much more sustainable. Because people are putting on jobs, not because there’s a bubble that’s driving it, but because there’s long-term demand.”
