Tisei hears concerns from businesses

Date: 7/27/2010

July 28, 2010

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

EAST LONGMEADOW -- While CNBC has painted a favorable picture of doing business in Massachusetts, State Sen. Richard Tisei is hearing something different.

The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Tisei was in Western Massachusetts last week for a series of campaign events and meetings. He went to the Zoo at Forest Park and the Center for Human Development in Springfield and Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer as well as listening to business people in meetings in East Longmeadow and Hampden.

After a lunch meeting in East Longmeadow, he visited briefly at Reminder Publications.

He said what he has been hearing is "pretty much the same all around the state: the business climate in the state."

"It's not just tax rates, it legislation that has been [passed] that makes it more difficult to do business," he said. He added the state regulations regarding business also contributes to the problem.

Speaking the CNBC survey that ranked the Bay State fifth in the nation as a business friendly state, Tisei said, "Most businessmen would say that's crazy."

Tisei noted taxes and regulations put the state in the lowest five of the nation, according to a survey in Chief Executive, a magazine that polls CEOs.

With 320,000 people unemployed, Tisei believes business owners are "holding back" when it comes to re-hiring people and expanding. Their reluctance comes in part about federal issues such as healthcare but also concerns closer to home.

He said that people "view the state as not having been a good business partner and really getting in the way a lot of times."

A real estate agent himself, Tisei said commercial brokers have told him the local business is "dead right now." Businesses are not coming in or expanding to fill empty spaces.

As a realtor, he has heard reasons for people moving from the state that range from unemployment to the high cost of living to companies leaving and requiring their staff to transfer.

Although the foreclosure epidemic was initially the reason for the collapse of the housing sector, Tisei now believes the high rate of unemployment is what is preventing a recovery.

In trying to develop an economic strategy to address these problems one has to look at the strengths of each part of the state and tailor more local solutions, Tisei said. He added while manufacturing may be considered dead in some parts of the state, it's still an important component in Western Massachusetts.

He said he has heard that state government is "too Boston-centric" from many people. While he believes many of the state's problems apply to all of its regions, he acknowledges greater attention must be paid to the different regions.

He said many times businesses that start up in Boston leave the state when they expand. He would work to point them to Western Massachusetts.

Tisei also would not advocate for the state picking "winners and losers" in economic development and used the $58 million given to Evergreen Solar, which is now sending many of its jobs to China, as an example of this policy failing.

Tisei said that truly important elections come about every 20 years and like the gubernatorial election in 1990, he said the 2010 race would also be important. In 1990, the state was in financial turmoil and Tisei said the policies of Gov. William Weld and Lt. Gov. Paul Cellucci turned it around.

He said its time to "restore balance to state government" and like Weld and Cellucci he and gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker have the right matching skills to develop state policies and to work with the Legislature.