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Recovery a Tough Sell to Local Businesses
By Rod Hirsch
National economists and lawmakers
increasingly are dropping the “cautiously
optimistic” label as they reassess the health of the
nation’s economy, suggesting that after three years
a recovery has begun.
Of course, it was once quipped that
the economy depends as much on economists as the
weather depends on weather forecasters.
While business and industry leaders
in Union County and other parts of New Jersey
agree there is enough anecdotal
evidence at the local and state levels to concur a
recovery has begun, there remains some doubt and
pessimism.
Nationally, there are positive
economic signs:
• Consumer confidence, a
closely watched measure that tracks household
spending, last month jumped to its highest level in
18 months, as measured by the New York- based
Conference Board.
• The Federal Reserve Board
continues to see signs of improvement, recently
reporting, “Economic activity has continued to
strengthen…and the labor market is beginning to
improve.”
However, the Fed also noted
“investment in nonresidential structures is
declining and employers remain reluctant to add to
payrolls.”
Locally, those on the front lines see
mixed signals. Ian Grusd, a commercial sales and
leasing specialist, says the commercial real estate
market in Union County has not suffered as much as
others during the recession.
 
Ian Grusd (left), a commercial
sales and leasing specialist and managing director
of Sperry, Van Ness, Richter & Grusd, has seen
confidence in the economy on the rise since last
October while residential realtor Jonathan
Steingraber of Realty Executives remains more
pessimistic about the recovery.
“What’s unusual about this area is
that it is made up primarily of small to mid-size
businesses with tremendous diversity,” Grusd
explained. “We also have a fantastic location within
New Jersey – proximity to New York, the ports, the
roadways, the airports.
As a result, Union County has been a
lot less affected than many other markets that
rely on large corporations. When you
have one large vacancy, that has a much greater
impact.”
Grusd, managing director of Sperry,
Van Ness, Richter & Grusd, has been in the real
estate business for 22 years, with a
specific focus on Union County since 1994.
“I’m in the trenches dealing with all
sorts of businesses and I can tell you the level of
confidence starting in October and November up until
now is dramatically improved based on the experience
of clients who have moved forward on certain
transactions,” he said.
“The retail market is still the
slowest sector, office is the next slowest,” Grusd
said. “Industrial always seems to be active because
of the ports, airports and Turnpike. There’s always
a demand for industrial space in this area.”
Jonathan Steingraber, a residential
realtor in Kenilworth, is more pessimistic. “I don’t
see it getting any better at all until elections
come along again,” he said. “There might be somebody
else that gives people hope, that’s the only time I
think it will pick up. People have no confidence in
the economy.”
Even the vaunted $8,000 first-time
buyer home credit, which expired April 30, did
little to buoy Steingraber’s assessment of the
marketplace.
“An $8,000 tax credit isn’t going to
make the difference for people on the fence,” he
said. “They need more than a tax credit that they
won’t get until next year.”
The depressed housing market also has
forced many of Steingraber’s colleagues to look
elsewhere for employment.
“I have noticed a lot of people
dropping out of the business,” he said. “A lot of
people
are getting part-time jobs. There’s a
lot of turnover.”
One positive sign of recovery is that
some businesses have returned to prospecting,
willing to spend money on advertising
to attract new clients, according to Mark Bistis
of B&B Press, a family-owned
commercial printer based in Somerville that also
specializes in direct mailing and graphic design.
“What we’ve seen is advertising more
than anything else picking up,” Bistis said.
“Businesses are trying to get
out there and compete for whatever dollars there
are. “I think that things are slowly but steadily
picking up. I’m seeing that both in my longtime
clients and with some new business, as well.” Bistis
said that he and his cousin, the third generation to
own and run the business since it first opened
in the 1920s, benefit from their long years in
business.
“We have the luxury of both observing
and listening to the stories of our parents,” he
said. “We don’t get shook from one year to the next.
We’ve seen all the cycles before.”
Though optimistic the recovery has
begun, Bistis agrees the business climate has been
altered dramatically.
“Business is harder now,” he
conceded. “It’s even more competitive, everyone
keeps on fighting for a little less business. I
don’t know if that’s the printing business or the
economy overall.”
Another significant change brought on
by the recession is that clients are taking longer
to pay their bills, according to Bob Flanagan,
president of Red Flannel, a marketing and
advertising firm in Freehold.
“I’m involved with a lot of business
networking groups and I’m on the board of several
business organizations and you hear
the same thing from small business owners – there’s
a slight uptick in activity but there are problems
with the approval process and payments are slow in
coming,” Flanagan said. “The project cycle is longer
and the payment cycle is longer.
That hasn’t improved yet.
“We’ve been in business 20-plus years
and these past few years are by far harder than our
start-up years.”
Flanagan also is wary of further
belt-tightening in Trenton.
“With Gov. Christie pulling in the
reins on the state budget, we don’t know what the
impact will be on the unemployment numbers,” he
added.
Jim Estabrook, a longtime Union
County attorney whose Westfield firm represents a
broad cross-section of businesses, has observed that
some clients have begun to feel the effects of the
recovery while others are still suffering from the
downturn.
“We represent a lot of people in the
construction business – subcontractors, electrical,
plumbing, pipe fitting, fire sprinklers – and from
what I hear there’s about a one-third reduction in
their work,” said Estabrook of Lindabury, McCormick,
Estabrook & Cooper.
“There are lags in that industry
because supplies and other products are budgeted far
in advance. As the economy begins to creep back up
they will continue to suffer because of that lag.
“(In the) health care industry, we
have seen absolutely no downturn. Pharmaceuticals
continue to grow, there’s no change
in that environment. The manufacturing we represent
has experienced a downturn but that sector seems to
be creeping back up.”
Estabrook added that retail clients
also seem to be faring better than last year.
The law firm has seen its business
slip between 2-3 percent, according to Estabrook.
“Overall, there’s been maybe a 10 percent drop in
the need for legal services, that seems to be the
number going around,” he said.
Behind the bar at The Kilkenny House
in Cranford, owner Barry O’Donovan measures the
health of the economy by the number of regular
customers and families that come through his doors.
“I opened on September 10, 2008, at
the height of the recession, and I still see
families coming in here,” he said. “It’s been very
good for me since I opened, but I have a niche in
this town; it’s a big Irish community.”
O’Donovan is concerned that talk of a
recovery may be premature.
“Gov. Christie’s looking to cut
school and town budgets,” he said. “I think there’s
still going to be some hardship before we pull out
of it. If we have layoffs of teachers in the
schools, I think we still have a ways to go, maybe
(until) the middle of next year.”
Top
Economists Buy In
By Karen Miller
The signs are everywhere, according to the prophets
of the economy. The Great Recession is over and the
recovery has begun.
“This time last year we were staring at the economic
abyss,” said James Hughes, dean of the Edward J.
Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at
Rutgers University. “This year we are staring at
economic recovery.”
This is not to say that the economy has returned to
pre-recession strength, or will in
the near future.
“The entire economy took a huge hit,” says William
Rapp, a professor of international
business at the NJIT School of Management. “We
cannot expect to recover in a few
months, a year, or even two.”
According to Rapp, the recovery actually started in
November or December of 2009,
and points to two types of evidence to back up this
theory.
“I use what I call mother-in-law evidence, the kind
of evidence you get from watching
things on the streets,” he said. “And I use hard
evidence.”
Rapp’s mother-in-law evidence considers the little,
everyday things, such as lines at
Starbucks getting longer and restaurants being more
crowded on a Friday nights.
“When you look around you can see that more people
are out spending money,” he
explained.
Other signs of recovery Rapp has noted in the past
several months include: many retailers predicting a
Christmas disaster only to see sales actually
improve in the last quarter of the year,
particularly at high-end stores such as Nordstrom;
and contractors who were looking for work this time
last year now putting clients on waiting lists.
“People have money and they want to spend it,” he
said.
Of course, most economists agree with physicist W.
Edwards Deming’s philosophy, “In God we trust; all
others must bring data.”
Hard evidence that a recovery is underway consists
of items such as jobs reports. According to
economist Jason Bram of the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York, reports show that regional employment
trends have “signaled modest improvements in
economic activity over the past few months, after
roughly two years of decline.”
In northern New Jersey, the number of jobs lost was
“roughly on par with the national
average,” according to reports cited by Bram, and
the job market has “steadied recently statewide, as
unemployment edged down and private-sector job
growth turned up modestly.
A recovery of lost jobs in finance, professional and
business services and construction may help spur
employment growth statewide.”
Yet many people are reluctant to count on this new
recovery, something both Rapp and Hughes believe
would be unrealistic to expect. The economy may be
turning around but certainly is not back to where it
was before the crash. While the nation and state may
be on the road to recovery, there are still many
miles to go and there will be bumps and detours, the
economists say.
“Things had gotten out of balance in New Jersey, but
I think that Gov. Christie is putting us on the
right path,” Hughes said. “As a state we will have
to swallow some tough medicine if we are going to
stay competitive with neighboring states in the job
market.
“We’ve had four straight months of job increases,
but that’s not enough to turn things
around. We have a long road back if you look at the
hole we are in.” New Jersey has lost approximately
242,000 private sector jobs since 2006. If the state
increased jobs at an ambitious rate of 40,000 per
year, it would still take six years, or until 2016,
to regain all lost jobs.
Nevertheless, Rapp is pleased with the slow but
steady pace of the recovery.
“If things were improving too quickly that would be
scary,” he said. “It would imply that the people
hadn’t really been shaken up by what has happened.”
There remain problem areas ahead that must be
negotiated, according to the economist.
“Foreclosures are still a disaster,” he said. The
European economic woes could cause problems in the
United States and if the oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico causes prices to rise and stay high for a
substantial period of time, that could also slow the
recovery, he added.
“A lot of people have compared this to the 1920s,
but they forget about the 1970s,” Rapp said. “That’s
what this has really felt like to me.”
The “new normal,” he believes, will have many
characteristics of the 1970s economy rather than the
exuberance of the 1990s.
“People will continue to feel a certain sense of
anxiety,” he said, using the phrase “politely
cautious.”
Top
By Andy Gole
A client recently expressed a concern: “My sales
manager can’t motivate the sales team.”
I responded, “Motivation is a leadership quality.”
To what extent is it reasonable to expect your sales
manager to:
• Possess and effectively dramatize a vision
• Inspire
Does the sales manager have the background, scope
and training?
Here’s what I observe. Instead of promoting and
inspiring strong business values and metrics –
particularly intermediate leading indicators of
future success – many well-regarded sales leaders,
even top managers, run a social club. I estimate
maybe one out of 100 managers have the requisite
leadership skills to dramatize vision and inspire.
It is typically a top management/ownership
responsibility to build the proper inspirational
culture – especially for the sales crusade. And in
today’s challenging economy, nothing less than a
sales crusade is acceptable.
What goes into creating a powerful, inspiring sales
culture and crusade? Based on my experience, there
are eight key elements:
1. Vision of what is possible
2. Concepts
3. Visual Components
4. Maxims
5. Community
6. Humor
7. Challenge
8. Becoming efficacious and successful
Vision
– This is perhaps of greatest importance – both
in personal development and for company results.
Generally, this is conveyed most effectively through
foundational stories – e.g., in selling, “Do or Die”
stories, where the salesperson had to close the sale
in a no win scenario.
Concepts
– Unique, powerful concepts explain the world
and help the team become more effective. For
example: measuring intermediate sales success
through payments in kind – what we ask the prospect
to do to make sure the prospect is engaged.
Visual
Components – Iconography to match the concepts.
Maxims
– Commonsense wisdom. For example, “You usually
get zero percent of the requests you don’t make.”
Community
– Tracking and celebrating success; teaching
from within. Case histories are essential. This
process also converts the “private property”
perspective – my prospects, my clients – into a
company perspective.
Humor
– We all perform better when we are having fun.
Caricatures can be helpful, as can incorporating
humor from the culture. For example, the idea of
“crossing the streams” from the movie Ghost Buster
can be used to illustrate mixing social and business
values.
Personal
Challenges – These are essential to the
individual’s growth. In this regard, a paradigm
shift, offering a cohesive vision, provides meaning
and challenge.
Becoming Efficacious – The system has to work,
has to help team members increase sales. When
success builds self-respect, it becomes contagious
and self-sustaining. In this regard, basing the
system on Aristotle’s “Great-Souled Man” is very
helpful.
It is top management’s job to ensure these elements
are present. Then we need a spark, to ignite and
sustain the crusade. Someone needs to provide the
spark. Since I was a teenager, I noticed I had a
fire within. Not everyone had this fire, this
passion. It took me quite some time to control and
channel the fire productively.
Today I use this fire within to conceive and
implement sales crusades.
I was fortunate to have early coaching, to ensure
the fire was always lit. I was coached to always
seek the maximum achievement within my capabilities.
In time this became a fire to always be passionate.
I imagine many of us were fortunate to have such
early coaching – from a mother who cared enough to
ensure we had the fire within.
______________________________________________________________________
Andy Gole has taught selling skills for 14 years. He
started three businesses and has made approximately
4,000 sales calls, selling both B2B and B2C. He
invented a selling process, Urgency Based Selling®,
with which he can typically help companies double
their closing or conversion ratio. Learn more about
Andy’s method at www.bombadilllc.com or by calling
him at 201.415.3447.
Top
In the wake of physical disasters such as the March
12-April 15 flood that damaged many parts of New
Jersey, U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA)
disaster loans are available for businesses,
homeowners and renters.
For businesses, homeowners and renters with physical
damage, the deadline to apply for the SBA disaster
loan is June 1, 2010. For business owners applying
for an economic injury loan, the deadline is January
3, 2011. Those with damages are encouraged to apply
with the SBA immediately – they do not have to wait
to settle with their insurance company.
These loans are the primary form of federal
assistance for nonfarm, private sector disaster
losses. The disaster loan program is the only form
of SBA assistance not limited to small businesses.
Disaster loans from the SBA help businesses of all
sizes, non-profit organizations, homeowners and
renters fund rebuilding. The SBA’s disaster loans
are a critical source of economic stimulation in
disaster-ravaged communities, helping to spur
employment and stabilize tax bases.
The SBA is authorized by the Small Business Act to
make two types of disaster loans:
• Physical Disaster Loans – These are a primary
source of funding for permanent rebuilding and
replacement of uninsured or underinsured disaster
damages to privately-owned real and/or personal
property. The SBA’s physical disaster loans are
available to businesses of all sizes, nonprofit
organizations, homeowners and renters.
• Economic Injury Disaster Loans – These provide
necessary working capital until normal operations
resume after a physical disaster. The law restricts
economic injury disaster loans to small businesses,
small agricultural cooperatives and certain private,
non-profit organizations of all sizes.
The disaster program is the SBA’s largest direct
loan program, and the only SBA program for entities
other than small businesses. By law, neither
governmental units nor agricultural enterprises are
eligible; agricultural producers may seek disaster
assistance from specialized programs at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture.
Disaster victims must repay SBA disaster loans. The
SBA can only approve loans to
applicants with a reasonable ability to repay the
loan and other obligations from earnings. The terms
of each loan are established in accordance with each
borrower’s ability to repay.
The law gives SBA several powerful tools to make
disaster loans affordable: low-interest rates
(around 4 percent); long terms (up to 30 years); and
refinancing of prior liens (in some cases). As
required by law, the interest rate for each loan is
based on the SBA’s determination of whether each
applicant does or does not have credit available
elsewhere (the ability to borrow or use their own
resources to overcome the disaster).
For more information, visit the SBA’s website at
www.sba.gov, call the SBA Customer Service Center at
1-800-659-2955, or contact the agency by email at
disastercustomerservice@sba.gov. Anyone may
obtain program information by calling the SBA’s
Customer Service Center (CSC) at 800-659-2955 (or
800-877-8339 for people with speech or hearing
disabilities) Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to
6:00 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 9:00 a.m.
to 5:30 p.m. All times are Eastern Daylight Time. Or
individuals can also send an e-mail to
disastercustomerservice@sba.gov. Business loan
applications may be downloaded from www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance.
Applications may be returned to one of the SBA
centers or mailed to: U. S. Small Business
Administration, Processing and Disbursement Center,
14925 Kingsport Road, Fort Worth, Texas, 76155.
Flood survivors may apply for home disaster loans
from SBA’s secure website at
https://disasterloan.sba. gov/ela/.
Top
Inside ViewsWhen
Turning a Deaf Ear is Good
Oh how sweet the siren’s song. How enticing is its
sound. But how it clouds our brain and lures us to
our doom.
The sirens are Senate President Steve Sweeny and
Assembly Speaker Shelia Oliver. The song they are
singing is “just tax the rich. . . just tax the rich
. . . just tax the rich.” Said over and over it is
so alluring, so appealing. “Just tax the rich and
all our problems will go away.”
It is a song that has led us into the maelstrom and
will crash us on the rocks of bankruptcy if we
listen.
But unlike Odysseus of old, Chris Christie has
chosen not to hear the song. He has closed his ears
with wax knowing the folly of the song that has been
sung for so long in New Jersey.
Two questions always arise in this debate: “Why does
it matter if we tax the rich a little more, can’t
they afford it?” and; “Why do we need to change the
way we have done things for so long?”
“The rich can afford it” is what makes the siren’s
song so seductive. It is seductive to the folks not
in that top 1 percent of income earners because
someone else pays. It is seductive to politicians
because if you can make 99 percent of the population
happy by screwing 1 percent, your chances of getting
reelected are greatly enhanced.
But putting aside the question of whether it is fair
for 1 percent of the population to pay over 40
percent of the income taxes in the state, is it a
smart thing to do? The answer is a resounding no.
If a lot of people depend on a very few people, it
is a recipe for disaster. And that is what we have
seen these last couple years. Most people think of
the top 1 percent as rich no matter what. But in
reality this group has the highest variability in
income because they are dependent on investment
income and bonuses. When times get bad, their
incomes plummet.
Jon Corzine was a prime example. In 2007 he paid
millions in taxes. In 2008, and probably 2009, he
paid nothing. He was still rich, but his income
dropped and so did his taxes. This happened to a lot
of people and is what caused the big budget
deficits. To use a farm allusion, we had too few
cows to milk, and they all went dry at the same
time.
A much smarter policy is to spread the cost of
government more widely. It is not only fairer, but
smarter, as well. The bigger your herd of dairy
cows, the more milk you are going to get even during
the off season. This is true even if you exclude
even the bottom half of income earners.
Most of the second question – “Why do we need to
change the system?” – already has been answered. We
need to change it because it doesn’t work.
If you keep the system for just one more year, as
Jon Corzine did last year with an income tax
surcharge on those earning more than $400,000, you
will be tempted to do it when you need to again.
This is what we are seeing right now. You can’t keep
saying I’ll just eat this last cupcake tonight and
really start dieting tomorrow, and then tomorrow go
out and buy more cupcakes.
Without crisis we will not change. We will not bring
government employee pensions and benefits under
control. If we listen to the sirens song we will be
dashed on the rocks. Let’s hope the governor remains
deaf to the singing.
James Coyle
President
Copyright James Coyle 2010
Top
When a ship is sinking, most
people focus on bailing water and plugging holes.
That has been the course for the not-so-good ship
New Jersey far too long, leaving the state adrift in
debt, monumental budget shortfalls, a suffocating
tax burden and an anti-business climate that stifles
economic growth.
When voters elected Gov. Chris
Christie last fall they declared they had had enough
of business as usual and wanted a complete overhaul
of the way New Jersey is governed, operated and
steered. The governor wasted no time in heeding
their call, issuing executive orders to immediately
stop unfunded mandates on towns and freeze new
regulations on businesses.
Christie introduced a nonpartisan
Red Tape Review Board to review and address the web
of onerous state regulations that impede business
growth and stifle job creation, a review that
treaded on sacred cows of special interest groups
anxious to protect their turf. He slashed state
funding to towns by more than $400 million and
schools by upward of $800 million, draconian cuts
needed to allow the state to close an $11 billion
budget shortfall.
Then the governor introduced a
budget that relies not on gimmicks and raids of
state funds and pensions but instead on spending
cuts – and related cuts in services – layoffs and
suspension of the state’s popular property tax
rebate program, among other steps.
Most recently Christie introduced
a package of 33 bills intended to rein in property
taxes, cap salary increases and sick leave for
public employees and dramatically overhaul civil
service restrictions. While his proposal was not
unexpected, the shock waves were broad.
The governor has proposed a “tool
kit” that he believes will help balance the rocking
ship of state, enable local governments to curtail
property tax increases and restore sanity to the
state employee arena.
He has proposed: a constitutional
cap of 2.5 percent on annual increases in municipal,
county and school property taxes, with certain
exceptions; a 2.5 percent annual increase in public
employee contracts – including wages and benefits,
inclusive of binding arbitration awards; the ability
for school boards to impose final, best offers in
contract negotiations with teachers; limiting the
amount of sick-time retiring public employees may
accumulate; and the right for towns to opt-out of
the civil service system.
Collectively this tool kit of
reform and options will allow municipal governments
to better control their costs and, resultantly,
their property taxes, a primary battle cry of state
residents and businesses for years.
In the wake of the governor’s
flurry of activity and proposals since the day he
took office, followed by the mandatory “hold-on-now”
responses of Democratic leadership in the
Legislature, not to mention the collective wails of
state employee unions and special interest groups,
what has not escaped the notice of many New Jersey
residents and businesses is the fact that Christie
is not just bailing water and plugging holes. He is
attempting to fundamentally redesign the ship in the
process.
For decades New Jersey was sailed
like a cruise liner island-hopping through the
Caribbean, complete with excesses at the buffet
table in the form of irresponsible governance. Those
excesses left state accounts such as the
Transportation Trust Fund and the Unemployment
Insurance fund, which are vital to New Jersey’s
economic health, repeatedly raided and nearempty.
They left state employees
contributing far less to their health benefits and
pensions than residents in the private sector, and
binding arbitration contract raises that routinely
blow away the 4 percent caps in budget increases
within which municipalities must operate. Meanwhile
public employees were retiring, in some cases, with
hundreds of thousands of dollars in accumulated
benefits.
This excess of governance saw an
increase in government jobs of nearly 70,000 in the
last 10 years while the private sector was shedding
more than 150,000 positions.
In short, while the state’s
residents have been paying higher property taxes,
contributing more to their benefits, tightening
their household budgets and, in some cases, fearing
for their jobs, state government was expanding and
public employees were enjoying above-average wage
increases and retirement benefits and below-average
benefits contributions.
Finally it was the voters’ turn
to say hold on there. We want change.
In November they spoke. Gov.
Christie has been responding ever since. His latest
proposed package of 33 bills creating a tool kit to
restore fiscal sanity on the local level is his
latest and perhaps most comprehensive of answers.
It is a good one that deserves
enactment.
These are good blue prints for a
sea-worthy vessel, not just plugs for a sinking
scow.
Top
 
 
On May 7 the Bureau of
Labor Statistics (BLS) released its job numbers for
the month of April. The economy gained 290,000 jobs
last month, making it the fourth consecutive month
of jobs growth.
Since December, the economy has created an estimated
573,000 jobs, of which 84 percent are from the
private sector.
The economy has concomitantly shown other signs of
life. GDP grew for the third straight quarter – up
3.2 percent. Factory orders, manufacturing activity
and construction spending are up.
U.S. consumer confidence rose in April to its
highest levels since September 2008. Lastly,
consumer spending has risen above pre-recession
levels.
So when people ask, “Has the Recovery Begun?” I must
say yes. However, we cannot let the beginning of an
economic recovery make us complacent or lazy. At the
end of the day, the American people need to see job
openings and increased wages and benefits and
businesses need to see credit lines opened and
greater profits.
Eight million jobs were lost and unemployment hovers
just below 10 percent. In New Jersey, the
unemployment rate stands at approximately 9 percent.
Congress and the Obama administration must continue
to push initiatives that will create sustainable,
good-paying jobs and that will foster small business
growth.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
created or saved 3.5 million jobs, gave 98 percent
of American working families a tax cut and provided
resources for the rebuilding of our road, rail and
water infrastructure. The Hiring Incentives to
Restore (HIRE) Act established tax incentives for
businesses that hired unemployed Americans, extended
ARRA provisions that doubled the amount small
businesses can write off for their capital
investments and purchases of new equipment, and
furnished further fiscal stimulus for
infrastructure.
Much has been done but more needs to be done.
The House will be considering the bipartisan America
COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.
This bill, if passed, makes investments in science,
innovation and education in order to restore U.S.
economic and scientific leadership, bolster
businesses and create employment in the short-, mid-
and long-term.
In the short-term, COMPETES authorizes programs like
Innovative Technology Federal Loan Guarantees, which
will address the immediate need of small- and
medium-sized manufacturers, allowing them to access
capital, thereby becoming more efficient and
competitive. In the midterm, the legislation
strengthens regional economies through such programs
as Regional Innovation Clusters.
To ensure scientific and technological leadership
now and long into the future, the bill also makes
investments in basic research by putting basic
research programs – the Department of Energy Office
of Science, the National Science Foundation and the
National Institute of Standards and Technology labs
– on a path to double funding over 10 years.
The COMPETES Act also establishes the Advanced
Research Projects Agency for Energy and Energy
Innovation Hubs, which will assist in the
advancement of the U.S. transition to a clean energy
economy and to support the growth of new sectors of
the economy – and the jobs that come with them.
This bill garners support from organizations that
represent the broad spectrum of opinions, including
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Association of
American Universities, the Association of Public and
Land-Grant Universities and the Business Roundtable.
The American economy has made great strides since
2009. More Americans are going back to work, GDP has
been expanding when just two years ago it was
contracting at an exponential rate, and Americans’
faith in the economy has been slowly resurging.
We must continue to push our job-creation and
pro-small business agenda. Our initiatives are
bearing fruit and Congress and the Obama
administration will continue to work tirelessly to
put more Americans back to work and to help small
businesses experience sustained growth.
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Berkeley College chairman Kevin Luing (left)
receives the award identifying Berkeley College as
one of the Best Places to Work in New Jersey from
Sam Christopher, vice president of sales, Extensis,
a sponsor of the program.
Berkeley College of Paramus recently was named a
2010 Platinum Award winner for
New Jersey Smart Workplaces (NJSW). The college was
recognized for its strides toward alleviating
traffic congestion and improving air quality in the
state. NJSW recognizes and honors organizations and
individuals who provide commuter benefits to
employees, and strives to demonstrate that
alternatives to drive-alone commuting are
economically beneficial to workers, employers and
the environment.
In addition, Berkeley College was named one of the
Best Places to Work in New Jersey for 2010 by NJBIZ.
The annual program recognizes the best places of
employment in New Jersey that benefit the state’s
economy, its workforce and businesses.
_______________________________________________
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has awarded Rep.
Leonard Lance (NJ-7) with its prestigious
Spirit of Free Enterprise award, citing his votes to
reduce taxes and support economic growth and job
creation. Eligibility for the award is based on how
lawmakers voted on legislation that would promote
economic growth and job creation. The chamber
praised Lance for his fiscally responsible votes in
2009, including those against President Barack
Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, the nearly
trillion-dollar health care bill and the
trillion-dollar stimulus spending bill. Lance
received an 87 percent rating on the U.S. Chamber’s
scorecard, which was tied for second highest among
New Jersey’s lawmakers.
Rep. Leonard Lance (left) and Thomas Donahue,
president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Montgomery Academy of Gladstone recently announced
that Dr. Ronald Larkin has been named the school’s
first executive director. He had been serving as
principal and director of the academy since October
of 2007. Larkin earned a bachelor of arts degree and
a master of education degree in elementary education
from Jersey City State College (now New Jersey City
University), a certificate of advanced study in
educational administration and supervision from
Newark State College (now Kean University) and a
master of education degree from Rutgers University.
_______________________________________________
 Gary
Horan, president and CEO of Trinitas Regional
Medical Center, has been named to the board of the
New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA), the
108-member hospital advocacy group for hospitals and
their patients based in Princeton.
Trinitas also announced that its Comprehensive Sleep
Disorders Center has signed a long-term lease with
Homewood Suites by Hilton in Cranford to convert a
two bedroom suite into monitored sleep study space.
The deal represents the first-ever expansion of a
hospital sleep center into a hotel in the New York
City-region, according to the medical center.
Trinitas conducted 1,320 sleep studies in its
existing 4-bed sleep center in 2009 and expects the
new twobed
hotel-based facility to bring in an additional 600
studies this year.
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