NJ's Inaffordabilty Drives People and Businesses to Leave

Paul Boudreau, President of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce, discusses how expensive it is to live and work in New Jersey and how this motivates people to leave the state, negatively impacting business and economy. Boudreau also explains how the new leadership in Trenton will impact commerce in NJ.

#207 3/31/18

Excerpt:

"Paul Boudreau is President of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce. Good to see you my friend. Thank you Steve. Glad to be here. You're one of the most significant, largest Chambers in the state? We've been fortunate, you know, we have a lot of great companies in Morris County. We've taken the organization from about 600 members to 900 over the last seven or eight years, so it's a good place to be. Yeah I remember speaking in front of your group a couple years back, and the audience that you gather, also I should say I met my wife Jennifer when she was working for the Morris County Chamber. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. I was a speaker back in the day. Yeah. So I have a little history to your organization. The point I'm raising is that the diversity of your audience, the business owners, is striking to me and the kinds of questions they ask, what are they saying about the Murphy Administration and its, quote unquote, "business agenda"? Trust me. I don't point here. Well... [laughter] Well, you know, look. It's been two months, right? The Governor's been... We're taping in the Spring of 2018, go ahead. The Governor has, you know, just come to office, and I think we got to give him some time, he's been pretty consistent, right? During the campaign, he talked about, we need to have a fairer economy, as he called it. We need to... Would a millionaire's tax be good for most of your members? It will not... we have always been opposed to the millionaire's tax, I have testified a couple of times in Trenton, in the last five years. What's wrong with it? On the milli... we believe it moves more people to make a decision to leave the state, and if I talk to my large CPA firms, those kind of folks, and I asked them, you know, "What do your people spend most of their time on over the years in New Jersey?" Unfortunately, the answer to that is helping people get out of the state, for increasing taxes. But Paul, the Governor says, and others say, we need those revenues to pay for a whole range of programs, including the fact that you gotta pay for the pension crisis with public employees. Well you know, if you look at government, federal... our state level, in terms of the kinds of actions they've taken over the last, say 20 or 30 years, if you look at the private sector, so many companies have changed their organizations, readjusted their situations, in terms of their global footprint, made..."