MONEY

Four ways for business to turn NJ around

Scroll to the bottom to see monthly job growth numbers for the past year.

Michael L. Diamond
@mdiamondapp

ATLANTIC CITY - Its universities need more money. Its bridges need repair. Its regulations are stifling. And its taxes are too high.

New Jersey is in quite a bind.

“We are a state blessed with enormous resources with enormous potential,” said Tom Bracken, president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “But we are on a so-so rut. We are stuck in neutral.”

About 500 people gathered here on Thursday for The New Jersey Business Summit. The two-day conference, organized by the state chamber, is a bid to call attention of policymakers and come up with a plan to get the state back on track.

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A panel of business leaders talk about improving the state’s work force development at the New Jersey Business Summit in Atlantic City on Thursday.

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They took on long-standing issues that they said have been obstacles to the state’s economic development. New Jersey got a jolt of good news, when the government Thursday reported that the state added 13,600 jobs during the month and its unemployment rate dipped from 5.9 percent to 5.7 percent.

But its economy grew just 0.4 percent last year, ranking 46th lowest nationwide. And it has added jobs at half the rate of the nation since the Great Recession ended six years ago.

The panel was stripped of partisan bickering and finger pointing. Gov. Chris Christie’s name didn’t come up.

What emerged showed the hole New Jersey finds itself in. The state requires billions in investment from taxpayers who not only are tapped out, but also don’t trust their leaders to spend the money properly.

“It’s not always about the resources,” Paul Marciano of Flemington, who attended the event. “There’s only going to be so much money.”

How can New Jersey get back on track? Here are four ways:

1. Restore funding for universities.

New Jersey will be an innovative state only as long as it can attract top talent. And it is losing ground. The state loses 31,000 high school graduates a year to other states, costing taxpayers $10 billion, Nariman Favardin, president of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, said.

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The state is among the leaders in investing in kindergarten through 12th grade. But the state’s higher education funding has fallen 23 percent since the recession, compared with 13 percent nationwide, said Barbara Gitenstein, president of The College of New Jersey in Ewing.

“It’s just going in the wrong direction,” she said.

2. Find revenue for roads, bridges and rails - and don’t spend it on other things.

New Jersey’s economy depends on a transportation network that can get workers to the office and products to the market fast. But the transportation trust fund, which pays for road projects, is on course to run out of money next year. It prompted some panelists to say New Jersey should increase its gas tax for the first time since 1988.

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“We need to invest in transportation and need a stable source of funding,”said Philip Beachem, president of New Jersey Alliance for Action, which advocates for infrastructure improvement

3. Have a regulation in mind? Run it by everyone who would be impacted.

New Jersey is notorious for its maze of regulations from local zoning laws to environmental protections. Business owners said they can adjust, but wish their voices were at least brought to the table.

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It might help the state and municipalities avoid rules that can defy common sense.

“Needing to put an exit sign on an open pavilion tent that is exitable in 360 directions? That bothers me,” said Rick Weber, owner of South Jersey Marina in Cape May.

4. Taxes. What are we going to do about taxes?

New Jersey has the nation’s highest property taxes, the fifth highest corporate income tax and the sixth highest individual income tax, the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., research group found.

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Linda Bowden, New Jersey regional president of PNC Bank, said the state is one of only two that tax residents’ estates and their survivors’ inheritances. She said some of her clients have moved out of state to avoid them. And she called on New Jersey to begin to bring them in line with federal tax law

Another, less specific, but popular idea?

“We’ve got to think of another way to fund education in this state other than the real estate property tax,” said Ted Zangari, chair of the real estate department at Sills, Cummis & Gross, a law firm.

Michael L. Diamond; 732-643-4038;

mdiamond@gannettnj.com