Spearheaded by the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, an economic summit has been scheduled for Sept. 17 and 18 at the Borgata Hotel, Casino and Spa in Atlantic City.
Members of Gov. Chris Christie’s Administration, legislators, non-profit groups, trade associations and academia have been invited to participate. The purpose of the summit is to look for ways to grow New Jersey’s economy.
“We’re not talking about going into this and blaming anybody for anything. We are where we are. All we want to do is get us to a better future faster,” said NJ Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Bracken. “In fact, there’s credit to be given to the Administration and there’s credit to be given to the legislature in many aspects to try to help us move forward.”
The four major topics of panel discussions include: transportation funding, cutting regulations, reform the state’s tax structure and maintaining a highly-trained workforce.
“I don’t think that there are any silver bullets out there that are going to cure any one or all of these issues, but we hope to try to come up with some ideas. By anybody’s admission we need to accelerate the pace of our economic recovery,” Bracken said.
There must be a continuing effort to make the state more business competitive and the way to do that is to address the issues that the business community thinks are holding New Jersey back from that progress, Bracken said.
“Sometimes you have to spur a little activity to accelerate what’s already been going on and that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re just trying to accentuate the positive,” he said.
Bracken hoped the ideas generated by the summit could produce recommendations for Christie and lawmakers. He said it could give them places to look to in rectifying any problem the state might have.