Before the confetti from Governor-elect Charlie Baker’s gubernatorial victory celebration was even swept up, the state’s businesses — and organizations that support them — were already at work planning ways to find favor with the new administration.
At stake is legislative policy and backing that Massachusetts businesses need to continue to survive and grow.
While any departing elected official is sure to have detractors, Gov. Deval Patrick’s legacy in business circles is likely to be viewed overall as favorable. During Patrick’s eight years as governor, he has focused on improving Massachusetts economic competitiveness and backing entrepreneurial activity throughout the state. He has also made the state very welcoming for investors and those looking to back startups.
The Great Recession may have skyrocketed unemployment rates in the state — as in most others — but the rates are now back down to a level closer to the historic average in the last 20 years. And employment overall is at an almost record high compared to numbers from the last several decades.
As Patrick leaves office and Baker enters in January, business owners only hope things will continue to get better.
One thing of little doubt is Baker’s business acumen. He is the former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care who led the state health-care giant out of a financial mess to become one of the highest ranking health plans in the country.
He also served as the Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance under Governors Bill Weld and Paul Cellucci and in this role is credited with turning a billion-dollar deficit into a surplus and creating half a million jobs. He also has an MBA from one of the country’s most prestigious businesses schools, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
On the campaign trail, Baker touted a number of policies that hit at the heart of what Massachusetts businesses want — namely more jobs and less red tape to get things done.
Though working to get unemployment rates back down and raise overall employment has been no easy task for Patrick, and is to his credit, Baker has a different view on this.
He says he is not happy to just be at the same numbers this state had 20 years ago, calling the unemployment rate “still too high.”
Jim Klocke, executive vice president of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, says adding jobs is priority one, and his organization fully intends to push Baker on this.
“We think there is no bigger challenge in Massachusetts than promoting job growth,” Klocke said. “We have had job growth in Massachusetts but it needs to grow more.”
The Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is working to develop its 2015 legislative agenda and plans to share that with the new governor once it is done.
Patrick has spent a lot of time reviewing state regulations that control businesses, eliminating or updating some 300 different regulations, which he claims saved Massachusetts businesses tens of millions of dollars.
Klocke acknowledges the governor’s efforts in this regard, but he, like others, still calls for a continual reduction in costly regulations that limit business growth.
“If the new governor could keep doing that it would be a big plus,” Klocke said.
Baker has pledged to a complete review of all regulations. He labeled some regulations “unnecessarily complex and burdensome” and said they impacted the state’s appeal to new businesses.
Klocke also hopes Baker can prioritize developing the talent pool of workers in Massachusetts, from the support of more charter schools all the way up to efforts to keep college graduates in the state to work.
Baker has criticized the state’s current efforts to develop the kind of talent the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce is calling for, saying Massachusetts has a “disjointed and ineffective workforce development system that exacerbates unemployment and weakens our economy.”
His plan to improve workforce development programs includes improving cooperation between the states’ economic planning boards and workforce boards, connecting the Department of Unemployment Assistance and the Department of Career Services, and creating more job training programs.
A spokesperson from Mayor Martin Walsh’s office, said that the mayor’s staff is also hard at work developing a plan to work with Baker on any economic development issues that can back the city’s efforts to support businesses — and in particular hopes for backing on legislative priorities. The Mayor’s Office will release details of the plan later in the year.
Baker’s challenge will be to prove that his campaign talk is more than just empty promises and rhetoric to collect votes.
On the plus side, small businesses, and particularly those in urban areas, can be encouraged that the governor-elect has repeatedly discussed the state’s economy as “a tale of two Commonwealths,” and one in which areas, such as Downtown Boston, are booming, while other areas, such as many urban neighborhoods and cities such as Lowell and Springfield, are hurting as “pockets of persistent economic stagnation and decline.”
Many are counting on Baker’s acknowledgment of this duality as a sign that he will not gloss over the struggling areas — and the businesses located there — and make every effort to bring them into the boom that many other businesses are experiencing.
