EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE NOMINATIONS COMMITTEE;

TRENDS AND CONDITIONS

1. Many economists attributed the economic downturn of the early 1990s partly to banks restricting the credit flow, and the governor and the legislature responded by authorizing loan guarantees as a way to reopen that flow. What are the causes of the current downturn and can your current policies and programs address them?

2. Recent Connecticut Labor Department reports suggest that the state’s job loss accelerated in September as 10,000 more people joined the now 38,200 (as of December 2002) who have lost their jobs since July 2000.

a. Are these layoffs concentrated in any particular business sector?

b. How will they affect the state’s long-term economic competitiveness?

c. How can the state’s economic development programs reverse this trend?

3. The Connecticut Low-Income Housing Coalition estimated this past Fall that, in lower Fairfield County, a person earning minimum wage ($ 6. 70) would have to work 25 hours a day, seven days a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment there. Does this lack of housing affordable to low-income people affect the region’s economic health? Does the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) analyze regional housing data and does your analysis affect your programming decisions?

4. Senior housing projects continue to report tensions between elderly and disabled non-elderly tenants, particularly those recovering from alcohol and drug abuse or suffering mental illness. How have you addressed this issue in recent years and what is the long-term plan?

Tax Policy

1. Economists debate whether tax incentives really induce businesses to make decisions they would not otherwise have made. DECD administers several tax incentive programs, including the Enterprise Zone Program and the newer Urban and Industrial Sites Remediation Program. If these programs didn’t exist, would businesses have expanded in enterprise zones or redeveloped urban sites anyway? If yes, how would you know that?

Policy and Program Issues

1. DECD has been identifying and organizing the state’s key industry clusters since the mid 1990s. How has this improved the state’s economic development policy and program planning? Has it made the businesses in each cluster more competitive? In what ways has the cluster strategy not lived up to its expectations?

ISSUES RELATING TO AGENCY RESPONSIBILITIES AND PROCEDURES

1. The legislature created DECD in 1995 by merging the former departments of housing and economic development. One of the reasons for merging these agencies included creating housing for employees of the businesses receiving DECD assistance and building or rehabilitating houses in enterprise zones or other targeted areas. Have you integrated housing and economic development programs? If so, explain how these programs complement and reinforce each other.

2. How does DECD monitor and assess economic and housing trends and use that information to modify or change its policies and programs?

3. How does DECD monitor the organizations receiving housing and economic development assistance? What kinds of actions can you take if an organization doesn’t comply with DECD’s terms and conditions for assisting it?

4. Has the state’s supply of affordable housing increased since the Affordable Housing Land Use Appeals Procedure was enacted? Where has this housing been built? Has it kept pace with demand?

5. The Hartford Courant reported on January 31, 2003, that building permits, although up overall in 2002 despite an economic downturn and increase in unemployment in the state, declined in December. Given the demand for affordable housing, but the uncertainty of the economy, in which direction to you expect the trend to go as 2003 progresses?

6. How do you plan to transform DECD to allow it to meet the state’s housing needs given shrinking budgets and manpower?

JRH/JR: eh