Hartford Business Journal

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And then basic things like finding workers, companies are dying for people with basic engineering, drafting, and computer skills. We need to invest in our trade schools. College is not for everybody, there are great-paying electrician and plumber jobs available. Q. What are some changes you would make related to tax policy? A. I want to get rid of nuisance taxes and fees. There are 344 taxes and fees in Connecticut. The bottom 200 collect less than one-quarter of 1% of the total revenue (about $50 million). It's things like a hypnotist regis- tration fee or interior design license fee. I'm not saying people don't have to be licensed, but why are we collecting money for that? I'm going to instruct my Department of Revenue Services, on day one, to stop collecting 200 of these nuisance taxes. Let the other side of the aisle sue me for not collecting a tax for a hypnotist fee. We also rolled out some things that I think Governor Lamont should have done in April, for example, lower the sales tax, give people some relief from inflation. There's a truck user highway tax coming into effect January 1, which should be rolled back. The trucking companies aren't going to absorb that, they're going to pass it down to their customers. (The tractor-trailer highway user fee was pushed by Lamont and is estimated to generate $90 million to $100 million in new annual revenue.) Lamont slapped a 1% surcharge on food — we should be getting rid of that. Q. Lamont and the legislature agreed to dedicate most of last fiscal year's $4.3 billion surplus to pay down the state's massive long-term pension debt. That only made a small dent in the state's $40 billion or so in pension liabili- ties. How would you deal with the state's unfunded pension debt? A. We have to protect people's pensions. Whether they're lucrative or not, people paid into them for their whole life. I think we should be doing something on an optional basis to potentially restructure. Maybe people could, on an optional basis, take 90% of their accumulative benefit and put it in a 401(k) plan so they can participate in some of the market upside. Certainly going forward, we can't be offering the same plan that we've offered historically. But it's not just pension debt. It's the overall debt. Governor Lamont said he wanted to go on a debt diet. Now he goes to the Bond Commis- sion and he's running around handing out gifts every single day. (In July, the state Bond Commission approved more than $850 million in financing, including more than $60 million for dozens of projects in lawmakers' home districts, according to the CT Mirror.) We need to be more fiscally disci- plined and use zero-based budgeting. I know it's going to be harder in the government sector, but I used it at UBS. You start with a blank piece of paper and build a budget from there every year. Q. Four years ago, there was a lot of talk related to your desire to eliminate the income tax. What's your stance on the income tax this time? A. We should get it down over time. My plan last campaign was to get the income tax down over 10 years, then it got misplayed that I was going to get rid of it. We should get it down over time to be more competitive with our surrounding states. But it's more than just income taxes, it's property taxes too, and we need to get those down. Q. What are your thoughts on business incentives and how the state should use them? A. We shouldn't be giving upfront giveaways. If it's a reduced tax rate over time, or if it's a bonus for getting people in-state employment, or if it's agreeing to stay here for longer, particularly with respect to midsize businesses, then I'm OK with it. We need to remain competitive because I talk to companies and they all have five, six states making them offers to move there. Most of these businesses don't want to leave, but they're forced to because they look at the cost here and you can't make an economic argument to stay here. So, I don't have to give a 20-year tax holiday like Florida does, but I need to do things like pay off the unemployment loan and get busi- nesses a better skilled workforce and hopefully reduce the state business tax rate a little bit. Q. What's your assessment of the labor shortage and how would your administration tackle it? A. I think the issue started when we were paying people more to stay home then go to work. You pay somebody more to stay home, they are going to stay home. And then I think we don't have the appropriate match between skills that businesses want and what's coming out of schools. I remember having metal shop and woodworking in high

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