Business leaders lay out priorities in Delaware Investment Agenda

DELAWARE – Delaware’s business leaders are calling on lawmakers to take several steps, in the name of creating a better environment for business.

Concerns Loom For Business Community

The call to action comes in the form of the Delaware Business Roundtable’s (DBRT) recently released Delaware Investment Agenda report.

DBRT is a group of leaders of Delaware companies, non-profits, and institutions, that advocates for prosperity and economic growth. Chairman Brian DiSabatino is the CEO of EDiS Company, a construction group operating across the Mid-Atlantic region.

And while DiSabatino says current indicators mark a healthy environment for business in Delaware, there are “troubling” concerns on the horizon. “The expenditures of the state are on a trajectory to begin to exceed the revenues,” he said.

With that trajectory, comes uncertainty for the business community, DiSabatino says.

“[Lawmakers] could pare those expenses down, which isn’t likely,” said DiSabatino. “We could raise taxes… [but] when you raise taxes businesses begin fleeing. Or, we could expand the base of taxes by making the environment better for the existing businesses, and attracting new businesses.”

“Not all doom and gloom”

It’s not all doom and gloom though; Even with these calls for improvement, DiSabatino calls Delaware a “great place to do business.”

“There are very few places around the country where you can gather local, municipal, countywide, statewide, and federal officials at a moment’s notice to solve a problem,” DiSabatino said. “We’re all on the same softball fields, all in the same churches and synagogues and mosques together, we go to the beach together. It forces us into these collegial conversations, that I believe make Delaware a distinctive place to do business, and a better place.”

Looking at the Issues

However, in order to work towards an even better environment, DBRT members looked at the numbers.

DiSabatino says they found that the number of Delawareans participating in the workforce was one of the lowest in the country. He adds that Delaware, as a state, invests among the least, per capita, in the nation.

Making Recommendations

To try and tackle those issues, the DBRT laid out a number of steps that lawmakers could take, focusing on three key areas: innovation and entrepreneurship, talent and workforce, and long-term competitiveness.

Among those steps, is a proposed nonpartisan, independent Delaware Futures Council. The group would be tasked with consulting with the business community, and advocating for strategies to better support them.

DiSabatino said another effort in the pipeline will be better marketing of Delaware as a place to innovate. In order to ensure that success, universities and innovators would need to collaborate, says DiSabatino; individuals and organizations hailing from disenfranchised communities, he says, could be some of the best candidates for that job.

“We believe if we can close that gap, and bring their intellectual capital together with monetary capital, and other areas of investment, we believe we can expose growth in an economic area that has yet to even be uncovered,” DiSabatino said.

“A big leap”

DiSabatino said that all of this work will take big, ambitious steps.

“If we don’t make a big leap, it’ll take us a longer time [to fix it.] We’re going to have to fix it eventually, but it’ll be easier to fix it now. We don’t want to have to try to fix this ten years from now,” DiSabatino said. “It’s definitely a marathon. We will definitely be seeking some low-hanging fruit here, and working on things for the near term. But, we’re setting the stage for the long term.”

And, those efforts will be highly dependent on Delaware’s next choice for Governor, says DiSabatino, as well as state lawmakers.

“This report is going to need all of the energy, and weight, and leadership of the next governor. We are really tied to the leadership capability of whoever sits in that executive seat,” said DiSabatino. “We absolutely have to, without question, expand our tax base by growing business that’s already here, and attracting business from out of state.”