I testified on Monday in favor of Gov. Baker and Lt. Gov. Polito’s latest economic development bill: An Act to Enhance Opportunities for All.
This legislation is a powerful example of the Baker-Polito Administration’s commitment to partner with the Legislature, municipal officials, business leaders, educational institutions, and other stakeholders to promote an even stronger economy. Through these partnerships, we implemented our first comprehensive economic development legislation in 2016, which has already accelerated and spread greater economic vitality through the state.
Our first bill deployed new tools, with an emphasis on local, regional, and statewide growth. Municipalities have benefited from infrastructure dollars that attracted private investment for jobs and housing production. Business competitiveness has been encouraged through innovation and commercialization. Residents have had access to job training while increasingly participating in an economy that is employing more workers than at any other time in the state’s history. Nearly 40 percent of all our communities have already received grant awards that encourage local economic development.
In Lynn, we invested more than $7 million in 2017 to support significant projects for residents, including critical infrastructure improvements for the new Lynn YMCA, enabling the expansion of the current facility by 70,000-square-feet. And, we continue to support the long-term growth of Lynn, through Brownfields funding to help remediate Whyte’s Laundry, and $1 million from the Seaport Economic Council to construct a new seawall along Harborwalk, ensuring access from Lynn Heritage State Park to the Lynn Ferry Landing.
Together, with our investments in workforce development, we’re partnering with Lynn to catalyze locally-driven projects that create jobs, spur new economic development opportunities, and keep Lynn a vibrant, welcoming place to live, work, and play.
Our collaborative approach is making a difference throughout Lynn, the North Shore, and across the entire Commonwealth. We hear that first-hand in our conversations with local officials, in time spent on the shop floors of businesses, and in classrooms where tomorrow’s workforce is training. These and other insights form the basis of our new $610 million bill, which is designed to promote:
- Vitality in communities by funding three more years of critical public infrastructure projects tied to job and local tax base-creating private investments; initiating a new program to encourage major economic development projects with regional importance; and allowing more flexibility for housing authorities to enter redevelopment partnerships to address deferred capital needs and create new local housing options.
- Growth of Massachusetts businesses by investing in the research and then commercialization of next-generation technology; ensuring small businesses and entrepreneurs have better access to financing; and making the sales tax holiday permanent.
- Prosperity for residents by connecting even more people to great job opportunities by updating training equipment at vocational schools and community colleges; and creating a new Apprenticeship Tax Credit, offering businesses up to $4,800 each year for up to 2 years to build a more robust workforce pipeline in key areas of future job growth, like health care, information technology, and advanced manufacturing.
On behalf of the Baker-Polito Administration, I’d like to recognize our many partners in communities like Lynn, in regions like the North Shore, and throughout our entire state for what we have accomplished so far on our individual and collective economic development agendas. We can achieve even longer-term, more sustainable economic growth for all regions of the Commonwealth by advancing our latest economic development bill. I’ll be sharing this sentiment with our legislative colleagues today.
Jay Ash is the Secretary of Housing and Economic Development for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
