RI Biz Winners and Flops - The PawSox Distraction
Monday, April 13, 2015
Is the PawSox move to Providence a distraction to growing real business?
Rhode Islanders look to a 43-year-old woman to lead the state out of one the worst economies in its history, and hope that Governor Gina Raimondo will begin the process of transforming the economy into a modern and functioning era.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTTo date, the Raimondo administration has offered a number of “safe” economic development ideas like the Anchor Tax Credit that, “incentivizes our large employers to attract their suppliers to Rhode Island.” This initiative should be called the CVS Supplier Tax Credit.
The Governor is also pushing again for her Infrastructure bank. Now coined the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank, it is designed to rebuild Rhode Island’s crumbling infrastructure. This was originally floated in tandem by then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo and then-Speaker of the House Gordon Fox a few years ago.
What has been taking the proverbial oxygen out of the room in discussions of economic development has been the proposed PawSox move.
In the past two decades with debt service on the bonds, Rhode Islanders have already spent approximately $30 million to refurbish McCoy Stadium. Now, the new PawSox owners – the Gang of Ten (who combined are worth billions) are looking for the state to provide free land for the park and a hotel.
The ten CEOs are moving less than 30 full-time jobs from Pawtucket to Providence – a distance of less than 10 miles.
Regardless of the merits of the yet to be disclosed or vetted PawSox project, it seems insignificant in comparison to other more pressing issues.
The Governor, Commerce and the 195 Commission need to be focused on developing the 21 parcels into for-profit, taxable, next-generation commerce that drive job growth and transforms the RI economy.
Winners:
Spring for Small Business: On Monday, Mayor Jorge Elorza joins Martha Sheridan, President of the Providence Warwick Convention and Visitors Bureau and Laurie White, President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce for a press conference to announce the City’s ‘Buy Into Spring’ campaign. The campaign is designed to “encouraging support of local businesses and welcoming in the spring shopping season.” The campaign kicks off at the Arcade.
TEDx Providence: The schedule is set for the Providence event full of speakers on business, innovation and inspiration. The event will take place on Saturday, May 2 at the Columbus Theatre from 9 am-4 pm. Tickets are on sale now at the Columbus Theatre and online at Eventbrite.
Flops:
Snow – Nothing has hurt the RI economy worse than more than 10 feet of snow. As Len Lardaro outlined is his economic index – “February was yet another month of mediocre economic performance for Rhode Island. Fortunately, the actual performance of our state’s economy was a bit better than it appeared to be statistically.” Functionally, according to Lardaro’s measure the economy performed the as it did in February of 2014 – pretty poorly.
Commerce RI: By all measures, for more than seven years Rhode Islanders universally are deeply concerned about the economy. There have been three meetings scheduled this year, two were cancelled and the one that was held, the Governor, who serves as Chair, failed to attend. If Commerce RI’s work is not valuable enough to have monthly meetings, then is it time to reorganize it yet again?
Tourism: The Governor's budget proposes to trim monies away from the regional tourism authorities to better leverage and coordinate the state's efforts. This is a situation in which the locals should continue to recevie support and more dollars need to be poured into both the state effort and the regional.
A GoLocalProv review of Rhode Island's support to promote tourism unveiled that the spending by the State of Rhode Island lagged behind nearly every state in America.
The story published in December showed how other states vastly out spent on a per-capita level:
In order to fairly compare the Ocean State with others, GoLocalProv examined the budgets for state tourism offices as a ratio of overall state spending. Even when adjusted for the relatively its relatively smaller financial footprint, Rhode Island still ranked almost dead last.
In fiscal year 2013, the most recent for which the data was available, Rhode Island budgeted $710,000 for its state tourism office, .009 percent of $7.8 million of overall spending, according to figures from the National Association of Budget Officers and skift.com, a global travel news and information site.
States like New Hampshire have similar-size budgets but devoted more of them to tourism promotion. New Hampshire spent .137 percent of $5 billion in expenditures on tourism promotion, a rate 15 times higher than Rhode Island. Massachusetts spent more than double at the rate of Rhode Island, with $6.9 million of its $57.5 billion in expenditures set aside for marketing the state to tourists. (See below slides for figures for all states.)
Related Slideshow: 20 Cool Small Businesses in RI
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