Letter: It Is Not Just About A Name Change

To the editor,

This time, it has to be different. Economic development in Rhode Island – attracting and growing businesses, creating good jobs for our citizens, improving our state’s overall fiscal climate – is not just about changing an agency’s name or doing a public relations campaign.

With national reports, statistics and surveys essentially telling business to think twice about operating in Rhode Island, our state’s response must be dramatic and comprehensive and sustained.

There is enormous focus this legislative session on improving Rhode Island’s ailing economy and erasing the state’s anti-business aura. Coupled with the Rhode Island Senate’s introduction early this year of the “Moving the Needle” package of business-friendly, business-supportive bills was the recent unveiling by the House of Representatives of legislation to help move our economy forward. 

The Senate’s “Moving the Needle” legislative initiative is designed to improve Rhode Island’s business climate and its position on national business-friendliness surveys. The package of bills was developed from the recommendations of a joint report by the Senate and the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council (RIPEC) called “Moving the Needle.” Among the proposals included in that report were initiatives to reform the Economic Development Corporation, require a long-term strategic vision for economic development, address bureaucratic hurdles, bolster workforce development and reduce business costs.

A major component of this effort is retooling – not just renaming – the Economic Development Corporation into a new agency, the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation. But the change does not end there, it only begins there. As the entity singularly responsible for economic growth, for attracting business, for creating jobs, the Commerce Corporation will, with enactment of the Senate bill, be given the tools to rebuild Rhode Island and will be held to account for the job it is doing. 

Senate bill 2013-S 0718, which is currently before the Senate Committee on Commerce, makes statutory changes to increase transparency and promote a more customer-centric agency. Enactment of this legislation will create the kind of agency that is essential for a better future -- one that focuses on improving our state’s business climate and that meets our state’s goal of increased planning and performance in job creation, innovation, entrepreneurship and global business. 

An essential concern about many of the state’s quasi-public agencies is a lack of transparency and accountability. This legislation will enhance transparency and accountability, provide corporation board members with the tools they need to exercise crucial oversight, establish increased reporting requirements for loan and loan guarantee programs and require regularly scheduled audits. The bottom line will be an agency that can attain its core mission to create jobs, help companies expand and develop their workforce, and identify opportunities to bring new companies into our state.

The legislation sets out these specific guidelines for the agency:

• Board members must adopt a mission statement that states purposes and goals of the corporation, identifies its stakeholders and their reasonable expectations, and lists measurements for performance and achievement of goals. At least every 3 years, the agency must publish a self-evaluation based on these measurements.
• Board members will be required to adopt a code of ethics that applies to officers, directors and employees, and to establish corporate governance and executive compensation committees.
• The board will be required to establish quantifiable performance measurements for all programs of the corporation and its subsidiaries.
• The Chair of the Governor’s Workforce Board will be added to the Commerce Corporation board to assure alignment of the state’s main economic/workforce development bodies, and establishes an Access to Capital Advisory Committee.
• The new corporation will be required to post for public consumption all enabling legislation, mission statement, by-laws, regulations, fiscal information and documents, board meeting agendas and minutes of the corporation and its subsidiaries, strategic and capital improvement plans, monthly financial statements, quarterly reporting of consultants’ payments and all consultants’ contracts (consistent with public records law).
• The new corporation will be required to comply with state purchasing laws and the Administrative Procedures Act.
• The new entity will be required to adopt regulations establishing financing guidelines, including risk assessment, for all loans and guarantees awarded by the corporation and document how each loan or guarantee has met the guidelines. It will also be required to submit a yearly report to Senate and House Finance Committees on each loan and loan guarantee.
• The corporation to be subject to a performance audit every three years conducted by the Bureau of Audits.

The Commerce Corporation is much more than a new name for the status quo. It will play an enormous role in "Moving the Needle" to improve our state’s business rankings and in attracting and growing business in Rhode Island and creating jobs for our citizens.

James C. Sheehan is the Democratic State Senator from District 36, Narragansett, North Kingstown. He is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Oversight, Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development, Secretary of the Senate Committee on Health & Human Services, and is serving his seventh term in the Senate.