HARTFORD, CT – A bipartisan panel representing both houses of the Connecticut General Assembly shared their insights and ideas on how to make the state more business-friendly at the Economic Summit and Outlook Wednesday morning.
Moderated by Chris Davis, vice president of public policy for CBIA, the panel, titled “Reimagining Connecticut: The 2024 General Assembly Session,” featured two state senators and two state representatives talking about the needs of their constituencies and the concerns they have. . heard reflect issues nationwide.
Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, addressed the need for reform throughout Connecticut’s occupational licensing regime, a topic she has been working on with Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich. She acknowledged that the licensing itself, which can cost more than $100, along with other fees small businesses must pay, can impose a burden on entrepreneurs.
“Something else I’m thinking about came out of a constituent conversation,” she said. “I have a constituent who is a sole proprietor, and he’s talking about the fact that every year, he has to file a business report, and it’s $80 a year. And for someone who’s a sole proprietor or a photographer, it becomes kind of difficult because it’s like, why am I doing this year after year? So we are thinking about, in addition to the licensing of the profession. We’re talking, well, we still need those business reports to be filed, but do they have to be filed every year?”
Kavros DeGraw described seeing the perspective of the small business owner through her husband, who has owned a small business in Connecticut for more than 30 years. She said she has seen the challenges of running a small business, and the biggest challenge now remains filling the 73,000 jobs that remain open in the state.
“So I think while we’re thinking about how we can cut licensing costs, how we can maybe find other ways to cut here and there so you see some savings, we also have to think about how we’re going to support [business owners] in hiring employees in need,” she said.
Rep. Rep. Tammy Nuccio, R-Tolland, discussed the state of Connecticut’s technical high schools and the apprenticeship program, saying there is great room for improvement.
“We keep telling young people you have to go to college, you have to get a degree, you have to do this,” she said. “And in the meantime, what we’ve done is absolutely slaughter the trade. My husband is a service manager at a small HVAC company. They can only take one student in any given period. [My nephew] graduated with his HVAC certificate, but he can’t get a job right now because of the intern issues.”
Nuccio also talked about how licensing requirements for educators have made it difficult to fill vacancies at tech schools. She shared that at the tech school her grandson attended, he was without an HVAC teacher for 18 months. The class watched Disney movies instead of learning about their field of study.
“We made it more difficult to get teachers into technology schools. We turned our tech schools into something they were never meant to be. My husband, who has been in this field for 30 years, could not go to teach at a technology school because he does not have a teaching degree. Let me tell you, that man can fix almost anything going on in your house. He can do anything with these metal motor conditioners. He can teach these kids.”
Nuccio said the state needs to get back to focusing on a variety of jobs. She suggested expanding the number of places in technology schools and reassessing the qualifications of veteran tradesmen who can become teachers. d the seats?
Just before the debate ended, Sens. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, and Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, exchanged ideas on how to lower the state’s high energy costs.
“Energy costs are the thing I think all of us hear the most from our constituents,” he said. “I’ve gotten hundreds, if not thousands, of emails from constituents saying, how the hell am I supposed to pay an energy bill of this size, even with a good income? It’s hurting low- and middle-income workers and making it very, very difficult to create new jobs and invest in our state.”
Fazio offered some solutions that he acknowledged wouldn’t make Connecticut’s rates the cheapest in the nation, but that he said would bring costs under control in the long run and even bring energy costs down. of the state near the national average, from being the third highest in the country.
His first suggestion was to significantly reduce, if not eliminate, public benefit charges from electricity bills. He described the charges as largely discretionary government programs that the legislature passed. He said that the programs should go through the regular process of budget allocations, debate and public vote. That would lead to a process where Fazio thinks they will be cut for efficiency overall, but they will no longer be funded by an automatic hidden fee or electric bill.
Fazio also said the state should have an all-above clean energy strategy, where all forms of clean energy compete on a relatively level playing field against each other and allow the best to rise to the top, instead of allowing all these silent. programs and bureaucracies to pick winners and losers in the energy industry.
“We need strong regulations. We need fair regulation to protect consumers. It should also be predictable. I think we can do a lot to lower the long-term cost curve,” he said.
Sen. Olsten agreed that energy policy needs to change, but placed more emphasis on expanding nuclear power as a possible solution for the state at large and as a boon to Eastern CT.
I think we have to recognize that in eastern Connecticut, we have Millstone Dominion,” she said. “Part of that public benefit was to stabilize Millstone. And we have to stabilize Millstone. We have to make sure we’re increasing the use of weapons. nuclear.”
Olsten noted that any plan to increase reliance on natural gas could lead to a fight with New York, which has generally opposed the passage of natural gas pipelines.
“They refuse to work with us on those issues,” she said. “So we have to work within the confines of what we have here in Connecticut. That’s why I introduced a bill that eventually passed to allow the development of small nuclear reactors at nuclear sites, which is directly in eastern Connecticut, another place where people go to work and work on a daily basis. , not from home.
She said the state can’t afford for Millstone to follow the trend of closing nuclear power plants across the country, as 50% of the state’s power generation comes from Millstone. However, she acknowledged that it would take time to make significant changes, as the federal nuclear power permitting process is about 15 years.
Olsten said improving the regulatory process for nuclear power is what motivated him to sit on the Eastern Connecticut Nuclear Power Advisory Committee, along with colleagues, representatives from Dominion Millstone and representatives from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
“I know we need those jobs,” she said. “I know we need the power generation that creates and I know we need to expand the nuclear in Eastern Connecticut and we have the people that will be working there tomorrow.”
