Promoting Economic Development

Ned Lamont’s answer to economic development is to keep taxes low and hope corporations take notice. But a tax rate is just one number on a balance sheet - it’s not the whole picture. Businesses are facing a tsunami of rising costs that are keeping Connecticut business leaders up at night. Connecticut businesses are paying some of the highest electric rates in the country. High property taxes stifle meaningful capital investments and limit growth. Health premiums are rising faster than their revenue. Finding workers who can afford local housing is tough, and their customers are strapped with dwindling disposable income. You cannot cut a business tax rate low enough to solve Connecticut’s mounting affordability crisis.

Connecticut’s labor force has shrunk by nearly 47,000 people in a single year while employers advertise more than 80,000 open jobs –the clearest indicator that our problem is a lack of people who can afford to live here. Our unemployment rate is approximately 5.2%, higher than the national average. 

As Governor, I will not chase headquarter relocations with ineffective tax breaks. Instead, I will invest in the 381,000 small businesses that already call Connecticut home, the workers who want to thrive on a reasonable wage here, and the customers struggling with affordability who keep our small businesses' doors open.

The solutions:

• Jobs Incentives that Actually Reach our Small Business Owners

  • Fix JobsCT so small business employers can use it: Connecticut’s flagship job creation incentive requires a company to add 25 net new full-time jobs in a single year, and limits eligibility to a handful of targeted industries. Ninety-nine percent of Connecticut businesses are small, and almost none of them will ever clear that bar. As governor, I would lower the threshold to five new jobs for employees with 75 or fewer employees and open eligibility beyond the handful of industries currently favored. 

  • Stop paying for jobs we already have: Too many incentives reward relocations and headcount shuffling rather than genuine new activity. I would redirect those dollars toward what every employer needs: a trained workforce, affordable energy, and housing for the people they hire. 

• Workforce Development Built Around the “Little Guy” 

  • Make CareerConneCT permanent and state-funded: The state’s most successful workforce program was built from a $70 million one-time grant in federal pandemic money. IFree training, a career coach, transportation support, and child care–all of it running on borrowed time. As governor, I would end the year-to-year funding uncertainty  and make it a permanent state institution. 

  • Open apprenticeships to small employers: As of February 2025, Connecticut has roughly 7,300 registered apprentices across 1,800 companies. I would fund apprentice intermediaries that let small businesses share the administrative load while also offsetting wages during the training period, making it possible for employers to take on trainees. 

  • Train for the jobs we have, in the places that have them: Connecticut’s 14 regional sector partnerships work because more than 500 participating employers in manufacturing, healthcare, IT, and bioscience help design the training. I would expand them, guarantee small-business seats at the table, and tie state training dollars to real hiring commitments rather than only granting completion certificates. 

  • Treat child care as workforce infrastructure: Working parents in Connecticut lose an estimated $2.2 billion a year in earnings and productivity because they cannot afford care, particularly infant and toddler care. Families are still sitting on Care 4 Kids waitlists for subsidies, almost a year after the state committed $300 million to overhaul its child care system. Every dollar we fail to spend here, we lose twice: once when the parent leaves the workforce, and again when the employer cannot replace them.

• Real Investment in Minority-Owned Businesses

  • Finish the disparity study and act on it: Our state studied whether minority-owned firms are shut out of state contracting, found evidence of disparities in business formation, earnings, and credit access, and then never funded the final phase- the one that would have measured actual contract utilization. As Governor, I would push the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities to consistently oversee construction projects and penalize contractors who do not follow through on efforts to engage minority businesses. 

  • Restore accountability to the set-aside program: In 2025, the state replaced its 25% small and minority business set-aside with softer "spending allocation goals," a change minority contractors publicly denounced. I would publish agency-by-agency compliance data every year and give the program a home with real enforcement authority. 

  • Permanently capitalize small business lending: The Connecticut Small Business Boost Fund offers loans from $5,000 to $500,000 at a fixed low rate of 4.5% on 60- and 72-month terms. As Governor, I would fully fund the program and backConnecticut's CDFIs, so that every small entrepreneur turned away by traditional banks has somewhere to turn.

• Lowering the Costs That Actually Drive Business Decisions

  • Rebalance who pays: The state's own Department of Revenue Services found in 2023 that the lowest-earning ten percent of filers pay an effective state and local tax rate several times higher than the highest earners. Property taxes–the most regressive part of that system– are also the state’s largest revenue source, at 38% of total tax collections. That is not just unfair - it's bad economics. Families paying the most are the same families who would spend every additional dollar at a Connecticut small business. I will work with municipalities to reduce that reliance rather than pretending it is somebody else's problem.