State Legislative Leaders Say They Won't Be Swayed By GE's Threats

In the wake of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposing business tax rollbacks to the recently approved state budget, the state legislature’s top leaders say they’ll listen but they won’t be swayed by the threats made by Fairfield-based General Electric that led to the plea, according to the New Haven Independent.

State Senate President Martin Looney and House Speaker Brendan Sharkey made the comments while at an event with New Haven Mayor Toni Harp on Monday.

Looney and Sharkey echoed previous comments that suggest GE is making them scapegoats for its decision to spin off GE Capital and Sharkey said that he thinks a lot of GE’s corporate decisions have “nothing to do with Connecticut’s tax structure,” according to the New Haven Independent.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt recently criticized the state budget and sent an email to the company’s Connecticut employees that he has “assembled an exploratory team to look into the company’s options to relocate corporate HQ to another state with a more pro-business environment.”

Sharkey reiterated Malloy’s previous statement that GE pays little or no corporate taxes already to the state and that is pays more in property taxes to Fairfield.

“There seems perhaps to be a disconnect between what is happening internally with GE—its decision to spin off GE Capital—than it has to do with a budget or tax policy,” Sharkey told the New Haven Independent. “I realize that it made a lot of headlines. I’m not sure if it squares with reality.”

Read the full report at the New Haven Independent here.

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