Barge

DiPasquale

Hayward

Higgins

Powell

Stokes

Question: Rhode Island has the highest jobless rate in the U.S. What can be done in the next 90 days to turn it around?

Denise Barge, executive director of the Minority Investment Development Corporation

Barge suggests small-business owners take advantage of free advice from the Small Business Administration, the Small Business Development Center, and the Center for Women in Enterprise, to refine their business plans and identify opportunities.

She said, for example, it might be a good time to open a store and offer a deeply discounted product that satisfies the needs of the customer.

“This may be an opportunity to fill a niche,” Barge said. “You have to examine what your business is doing now, and basically who your customers are and how they might be able to spend their money,” Barge said. “It’s a good time to reexamine the market.”

She added that home-based operations are better choices now because they don’t require the large-scale “planning and execution in terms of a standalone business, like a restaurant.”

David Brochu, president and CEO of Strategic Point Investment Advisors

Governor Carcieri should announce the creation of a business advisory committee, made up of volunteers from the business community, to help new businesses form and enter the market. In addition, a new state office should be created to walk prospective businesses through the state’s regulatory hurdles.

“We need to announce that Rhode Island is going to be the business incubator of the country,” Brochu said.

In addition, Rhode Island should allow business owners to deduct passive losses, up to the amount of their investment, on their state tax returns. Brochu also called for an across-the-board tax cut of perhaps 10 percent until the unemployment rate falls to the national average, along with a 20 percent cut in state employment. In addition, he said, the state employees pension system should be terminated for people who are not already vested in it, with newer employees shifted to 401(k) plans. To pay for shortfalls in the state budget, including the underfunded pension system, the state should float a general obligation bond. “The bond issue will be greeted very well,” he predicted. “The state will have cut its spending, get its pension system under control, and in two or three years, it’s going to be in great shape.”

Rick Brooks, director of United Nurses & Allied Professionals, a union representing 4,500 health-care workers in Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut

“We need to provide support for people who currently are suffering from the downturn in the economy … children without health care, children whose parents aren’t employed, unemployment benefits, affordable housing, heating assistance,” Brooks said. “We need to reverse the priorities of the administration in this state and begin to invest in job creation.”

Rhode Island should focus on industries where it has a “natural advantage” such as health care, medical research, oceanography and maritime. The state could become a leader in energy-efficient businesses that build wind turbines, produce solar cells and retrofit houses and buildings.

Brooks said the state can’t afford to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest Rhode Islanders. More immediately, he said, the state should restore coverage to the thousands of poor Rhode Islanders, including some 2,800 immigrant children, who were dropped June 1 from RIte Care, the state-run health plan for poor families.“When we remove people from health insurance,” Brooks said, “all you’re doing is putting greater economic pressure not only on the people who no longer have health insurance, but also on businesses that provide health insurance, because those costs are passed along.”

Wes Cotter, communications director for Gilbane Inc. More companies ought to take a longer view of their businesses and how they serve their customers, focusing on client satisfaction and retaining skilled workers, Cotter said. “It costs this company real dollars when we lose employees.”

“Maybe the answer is not focusing on the short term.”

Raymond DiPasquale, president of the Community College of Rhode Island

Programs offered by CCRI are “part of the solution” to reducing the state’s unemployment rate, said DiPasquale, noting that CCRI has 800 more students than it had last year and many of those students are seeking training for available health-care jobs.

He said that the state’s hospitals and medical centers need nurses, physical therapists, radiographers, dental hygienists and stenographers. He said CCRI is developing a program that will be offered in the spring to train students to become assistants to pharmacists, a growing field that has sought more trained graduates from CCRI.

DiPasquale said that elected officials must continue to fund the state education system if they want to address the unemployment problem.

“We think that CCRI is part of the solution to making Rhode Island stronger,” he said.

Mark M. Higgins, dean of the University of Rhode Island college of business administration

“I think what you don’t want to do is panic,” he said. “But I don’t think there’s a silver bullet that you can do in 90 days.”

Higgins also suggested that the state’s unemployment rate may be skewed by the number of state employees who took early retirements in recent weeks.

Technically, these people would join the ranks of the unemployed even though they may not be looking for work, he said, although many are in their 50s and will eventually try to rejoin the work force.

Mark S. Hayward, district director for Rhode Island, Small Business Administration

“Job creation in this state comes from small business,” said Hayward, which he characterized as “the engine of Rhode Island.”

He said the answer lies in making it easier for those businesses to get loans, which banks are now hesitant to give. “They need capital, they need credit.”

He said the SBA can guarantee up to 75 percent of the value of a loan. “I think it’s time to put that in play and utilize the guarantee.”

But as part of that system, the business also has to pay a guarantee fee. Some have suggested that the state allow businesses to, once again, use that fee as a tax credit, “and clearly we support that.” The credit was repealed three years ago.

“Even small incentives, at this point in time, would be extremely helpful,” he said.

Juana Horton, chairwoman of the Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce of Rhode Island and CEO of Horton Interpreting Inc.

“Access to capital” is essential, Horton said, “because that is what is affecting, especially the Hispanic, small business sector.”

“Hopefully, with the stimulus package which Congress has enacted, that should be able to work its way down, hopefully, to the small-business sector.”

Sandra M. Powell, director of the Department of Labor and Training

Powell said her department is working hard to ensure that job seekers know which resources are available to help them find work. “Our job is to help connect them to all available work opportunities,” Powell said.

The department has a Web site –– www.dlt.ri.gov –– and also operates netWORKri job resources sites in Providence, Pawtucket, West Warwick and Woonsocket, plus a satellite location in Middletown. Also, the department holds regular job fairs, such as one scheduled in November that’s geared toward veterans, but open to everyone.

Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce and treasurer of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation

Stokes stressed that Rhode Island has strong industries that are performing well, such as financial services, marine trades, health care and hospitals and hospitality and tourism –– and that the state has “done a pretty good job of identifying and growing quality jobs over the last 10 years.”

Nevertheless, Rhode Island has lost a large number of manufacturing jobs and now, because of the collapse of the financial markets at the national level, the real impact on the state comes in the real estate and construction trades, he said.

Several approaches are needed, Stokes said. The state now has an opportunity to rethink its tax policies and consider whether it’s the most competitive state to do business in –– “and not only to attract new businesses but to keep existing businesses,” he said. He doesn’t mean, necessarily, tax policies that support large industries, but rather those that allow small businesses to be equally competitive because they, collectively, are the state’s largest employer. The executive and legislative branches must communicate with each other, Stokes said, and it’s important to recognize that Congress can play an important role now. He believes it’s time for Congress to consider “an almost 1930s-type capital projects program,” a real federal economic recovery effort that’s directly tied to putting people to work.

“We need to continue to make Rhode Island the most competitive place to do business, and that means looking very carefully at our tax policies, and we need leadership from Washington to jump-start the economy,” Stokes said.

Also, efforts must be made to guarantee consistent access to capital and credit, particularly because many who have been laid off or downsized are now trying to start up small businesses, and they’re having trouble getting capital and credit.

Henry Shelton, community activist, head of the George Wiley Center in Pawtucket

Shelton, and many of the families he assists, met yesterday with officials from the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, in Pawtucket, to try to find immediate solutions to what he is calling a crisis. He said the first thing that should be done to help bring down the jobless rate is for Governor Carcieri to gather his lawmakers, and also people from quasi-state agencies, such as the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, and the United Way, to think of ways to help people who are struggling, because they have been out of work for so long. He also believes that Carcieri should contact President Bush and have him declare Rhode Island an emergency state, which would relax rules on who can get public assistance.

“This gentleman called himself the ‘jobs governor’ when he got started. He’s not the ‘jobs governor’ right now. We’re a scandal. I hope we have a governor that deals with this and sees this as a real crisis,” Shelton said. “It’s a statewide emergency. The governor should call a summit meeting. That would loosen up a lot of rules. That’s the highest priority. We are faced with an emergency.”

Shelton said too many families and children have been cut from the state’s Family Independence Program, because they exceeded the 60-month limit. (Prior to Oct. 1, adults who exceeded the time limit lost benefits, but children retained them.) “Our position is that they should have never cut off all the mothers and children until they got them jobs,” he said. Some landlords are already heading to court to evict families, he said.

“Our homeless rate is bad enough. This is going to magnify the problem. Then we have to put them in the shelters.”

Another solution he suggested would be to provide transportation to help job seekers look for work.“That would be a simple solution, to get some bus fare,” Shelton said. “We want to help people find jobs. Let’s see what we can do to grease up the process. We have to seize the opportunity to change all the conditions going on in Rhode Island.”

Michael Sigourney, president of AVTECH Software Inc. in Newport

“You find companies that are growing and support them,” said Sigourney. A good way to do that is to streamline regulations that apply to businesses.

For example, Sigourney’s company is moving to the refurbished Cutler Mill in Warren.

“The number of documents and approvals we have to get to buy that building is incredible,” and often the process involves a lot of duplicative work. “We have to reduce the hurdles for small businesses.”

Sometimes, if a small business is successful, it leaves the state because it can’t find space to expand. “Newport has lost three tech companies because they didn’t have the space for 20 or 30 people.”

Fall River, in contrast, aggressively markets its old mill buildings.

Rhode Island still has buildings available. “Let’s quit slicing and dicing them for low-income housing or condos.”

By Journal staff writers Lynn Arditi, Kate Bramson, C. Eugene Emery Jr., Bill Malinowski, Tom Mooney and Lisa Vernon-Sparks