Griebel pledges to resolve pension crisis, add 200,000 more jobs

By Scott Benjamin

HARTFORD – Greenwich’s Golden Triangle was ranked in 2014 by an Alabama college professor as the “wealthiest” neighborhood in the United States.

The New York Times has reported that ESPN in Bristol is the most profitable cable-related company in the world.

Bridgewater Associates in Westport is considered to be the biggest hedge fund on the planet.

Forbes just ranked Yale University in New Haven as the second best college in America.

There are two Native American casino resorts in the southeastern part of the state that are producing state revenue that didn’t exist 30 years ago.

NBC Sports Network in Stamford, according to The New York Times, rented 600 hotel rooms during the height of its 2018 Winter Olympic coverage.

Danbury has one of the largest shopping malls in New England, which reportedly attracts 40 percent of its customers from out of state.

So how come eight years ago, when he was campaigning, departing Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-Stamford) said the Nutmeg State has fewer jobs than it had in 1989, and that still is the case?

Why is Connecticut the only New England state that hasn’t recaptured all of the jobs that it lost during the 2008 recession?

“The erosion of private sector confidence is something I believe is at the heart of the lack of growth in the state,” said Oz Griebel of Hartford, the former head of the MetroHartford Alliance, who is running for governor on an independent ticket.

General Electric’s move from Fairfield to Massachusetts in 2016 has been a talking point for many gubernatorial candidates this election year.

The Boston Globe reported in December 2016 that Connecticut, a largely suburban state, has difficulty competing with the Route 128 corridor innovation hub near Boston.

However, Griebel believes that Connecticut is still viable.

“Our commercial real estate costs compared to New York and Boston are still very competitive,” he said. “I would be a lot more concerned if we were 100 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul.”

“You can’t ignore that people move to Stamford,” he said of The City That Works, which over the last 15 years has surpassed Waterbury and then Hartford to become third in Connecticut in population. University of California-Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti has stated that per capita the Stamford metro area has more college graduates in its work force than any metro area in America.

The state Commission on Fiscal Stability and Economic Competitiveness reported March 1 that the pensions for the state employees were only 29 percent funded. Further, the commission reported that the pensions for the public school teachers, which the state has funded since 1939 are only 54 percent funded.

State Comptroller Kevin Lembo (D-Guilford) has indicated that adequate funding was neglected for decades until Malloy took office in 2011.

“I think businesses are concerned about the unfunded liabilities,” Griebel said in an interview.

“They are cautious about hiring because of the possible increase in taxes and fees,” he added. “They don’t think that state officials have the political will to change things.”

Griebel, an attorney and former bank CEO, said state officials erred from 1999 to 2001 by not applying robust surpluses to where they were stipulated to go under the income tax, which was approved in 1991. He contends that money should have been used to pay down debt, boost the rainy day fund and help fund the state employee pensions.

Griebel said that if he and his running mate, former Democrat Monte Frank, a Newtown attorney and the leader of the Team 26 bicycle team, are elected they’ll try to start discussions with the interested parties even before they take office.

“It’s going to require a lot of discussion,” he said. “The unions have negotiated for an extended set of benefits.”

The fringe benefits, including the pensions were extended last year through 2027 and there also is a no layoff provision through June 2021.

Larry Dorman - the public affairs coordinator for Council 4 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, which represents about 15,000 state workers – has said bargaining units made concessions in 2003, 2009, 2011 and 2017 and over the recent years have accepted six hard-wage freezes.

But Griebel said retired teachers, for example, should be “skeptical” about whether their pension checks will still be arriving 10 years from now.

He said it would be difficult for the state to pay for the long-term obligations and also fund a projected 30-year $100 billion transportation infrastructure program.

“This is the kind of discussion we have to have,” he said. “How are we going to honor obligations without exacerbating generational warfare? We’re pitting retirees against 30 year olds.”

Griebel, who ran for the Republican nomination in the 2010 primary, said he would try to avoid taking court action, recalling that the layoffs that former Gov. John Rowland (R-Middlebury) called for in 2003 ultimately resulted in a more than $100 million settlement with the state employee bargaining units more than a decade later.

The New York Times reported that a program to restructure Rhode Island’s 48 percent funded pension program ultimately was resolved in a 2015 court settlement.

Pointing to recommendations from the Commission on Fiscal Stability, Griebel said he would tell the state employees that he would seek to use funds from the lottery and securitize state-owned assets, excluding public parks, to help shore up the pension funding but they would have to go from a defined benefit to a less-expensive defined contribution plan.

Dorman has said that state officials should look for other revenues to address the budget shortfalls.

State Senate candidate Alexandra Bergman (D-36) of Greenwich and W. Gordon Hamlin, the founder and president of Pro Bono Public Pensions, recently co-authored a column in Bloomberg which called for Connecticut to adopt a shared-risk program with its state employees on their pension benefits.

Under the plan, the collective bargaining units would agree to a base of benefits and the ancillary benefits would be subject to a stress test. When the state had sluggish revenues, the benefits would either be reduced or employee contributions increased within a narrow agreed upon ban. When there were surpluses, the changes would be reversed in an agreed upon order.

“I think the concept has a lot of appeal,” Griebel said of the proposal which has been in place in New Brunswick, Canada since 2012.

He said if the unfunded liabilities are resolved, Connecticut can add 200,000 jobs in the next 10 years.

Griebel said the biggest potential areas for growth are advanced manufacturing, financial services, health services and research, renewable energy and agriculture.

He said that the state is primed for considerable aero-space and submarine manufacturing since the major defense contractors – the Lockheed Martin operation at Igor Sikorsky in Stratford, Electric Boat in Groton, and Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney in East Hartford – have agreed to stay long term.

Griebel said that financial technology will likely grow in Stamford - which is the home of UBS, which a decade ago operated the largest financial trading floor in the world - as well as metro Hartford - which is adding Infosys and Ideanomics - and New Haven.

Regarding health care and the sciences, he said several Connecticut companies are doing research at Jackson Labs, the bioscience center that opened in Farmington in 2014 after receiving state assistance.

Griebel also said that New Haven has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, partly as a result of the 14-story Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven Hospital that opened in 2009 and Yale University’s growing partnership with the city.

“I think that Rick Levin and John DeStefano realized they needed each other,” he said of the retired Yale president and the former New Haven mayor who both arrived in the mid-1990s and stayed in their positions for 20 years.

Griebel said through their efforts and those of Bruce Alexander, the former vice president for campus development at Yale, the university is now one of the largest real estate taxpayers in the Elm City.

On renewable energy, he said the state could increase its production of solar and geo-thermal units.

Griebel also said there is potential for more sales of fuel cell installations. For example, Fuel Cell Energy has an administrative office in Danbury and a manufacturing plant in Torrington and operates a fueling station in California for the fuel cell-powered Toyota Mirai.

He said that Connecticut has “a history” in agriculture production and it would be “a security asset” to have more homegrown products.

The News-Times of Danbury recently reported that Connecticut has had a “15 percent Increase” in new farmers.

Additionally, Griebel said that “Artificial Intelligence (AI”) – a computer’s ability to simulate human intelligence – “is going to have a significant impact in the next two years” and the state should harness the engineering departments at Yale and the University of Connecticut at Storrs to address its impact.

U.S. Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), who is seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and is the founder of the U.S. House AI Caucus, wrote in his recent book, “The Right Answer,” that entrepreneur Elon Musk of Tesla “has darkly warned that AI technology could lead to a time when machines take over the world.”

To oversee his efforts to boost job growth, Greibel wants to reorganize the state Department of Community and Economic Development to include private sector employees.

“To me that’s a big change in how you make decisions in economic development,” Griebel said.

Griebel also said to accomplish his goals he would not continue Malloy’s First Five Plus program in which companies, such as Henkel, a consumer food company that moved to Stamford last year, and Cartus, a corporate relocation company based in Danbury, received financial incentives to either come to Connecticut or stay in the state and increase their work force.

The Stamford Advocate reported earlier this year that the state has provided $322 million in grants and loans and another $160 million in tax credits to a total of 16 companies.

“When you bet on incentives you have to understand that incentives have a finite life,” said Griebel. “It also pits companies against each other.”

“I think taxpayer dollars should be used to strengthen the transportation system and strengthen the work force development programs,” he added.

Griebel said “instead of just throwing money” through First Five Plus he would instead act as the “chief marketing officer for the state” and ask companies what the state could do in revising regulations or encouraging a nearby college to enter into a partnership.

On the public colleges, Griebel said there should be “more cooperation and consolidation.”

“You cannot run government as a business,” Griebel said. “But there are business principles that can be applied to government.”

“When you are looking at a stagnant population of students and you look at the fiscal pressures we have,” he said. “I think that to create multiple locations is going in the wrong direction.”

Retired Webster Bank economist Nick Perna of Ridgefield told CT Mirror last year that the state has “a boat load” of public colleges.

Malloy and the General Assembly apparently began to take steps toward cooperation and consolidation in 2011 by merging the four Connecticut State University campuses, the 12 public community colleges and the online Charter Oak State College into a Board of Regents.

Previously, the Connecticut State University and the community colleges had been governed by separate Boards of Trustees.

The Board of Regents commissioned a $1.83 million study by the Boston Consulting Group in 2014 that became the basis for its Transform CSCU (Connecticut State College University) 2020 plan.

The recommendations included more options for students to complete their first two years at a community college in the system and then transfer to a four-year school in the Board of Regents without losing credits. It also called for consolidating administrative functions and encouraged expanded online learning.

Faculty at some campuses approved resolutions of no confidence in Gregory Gray, then the president of the Board of Regents, and he resigned months later. The Board of Regents did not pursue Transform CSCU 2020 even though they had endorsed it and Malloy had been an earlier supporter.

Gray said in 2014 that due to declining funding, the system could “no longer keep doing things the same way.”

Mark Ojakian, the current president of the Board of Regents, sought recently to move the functions for the presidents of the community colleges into the central office to save $28 million and keep the system solvent.

The proposal was opposed by a number of faculty members.

The New England Association of Schools and Colleges declined to act on implementing the Students First plan immediately. Since then, Ojakian has developed a revised version.

Griebel said the Students First initiative is “a step in the right direction.”

“Throughout the Board of Regents and UConn we have ask how much of the funding is going toward the classroom?” said Griebel.

“The administration has to be looked at,” he added. “How many presidents, CFOs and human resources people do we need?”

Regarding the campaign, Griebel and Frank submitted more than 10,000 petition signature and needed only 7,500 to get on the ballot. No candidate outside the major parties has been elected governor since former U.S. Sen. Lowell Weicker of Essex captured the 1990 balloting while running on the A Connecticut Party line.

Griebel annexed just four percent support in the recent Quinnipiac University poll, but CT News Junkie reported that 83 percent of the voters surveyed did not have enough information to form an opinion on him and that the 10 percent that were aware of him had a favorable view of his candidacy.

He said that he expects to be included in each of the gubernatorial debates this fall.

Since announcing his plans last December, Griebel has insisted that there is a path to victory by attracting the large number of voters in the “radical middle.”

He said, “As a Republican, to get the nomination you have to run right of center or extremely right of center and as a Democrat, you have to run left of center or extremely left of center.”