He noted that the Boston area is home to about 55 colleges and universities, that MA spends heavily on research and development, and that Boston has a “diverse, technologically fluent workforce”. The Republican spoke with WBUR in Boston.
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Seth Martin, a GE spokesman, said the Boston location will become home to 200 corporate employees and 600 digital industrial product managers, designers and developers. “I would expect a lot of folks will take a look at us who might not have looked before because of this”.
GE has about 5,700 employees in CT, including about 800 people employed at the Fairfield headquarters.
GE’s headquarters is assessed at $76.5 million and generated about $1.8 million in taxes for Fairfield a year ago. Lawmakers responded by scaling back some increases, but still passed the second largest tax hike in state history.
The $130 billion global industrial giant said it has been weighing a headquarters move for more than three years. After all, the “combined reporting” changes corporate lobbyists in CT complained most vocally about have been in place in MA since 2008.
In her first public comments on Rhode Island’s pursuit of GE, Raimondo said in a statement, “We worked diligently to recruit GE’s headquarters to Rhode Island – and we’ll remain relentless in our efforts to bring jobs to the state”.
However, GE officials last June made it publicly known that they did indeed have qualms with state tax policies.
Their decision was more than a simple reaction to that tax increase, though, said Joe Brennan, president and CEO of the Connecticut Business Industrial Association. While the region has spawned scores of leading-edge startups in the life sciences and technology, some of its highly successful established firms now have out-of-state or overseas owners, making their connection to MA a little less secure.
“You win some and you lose some”, Malloy said. “We get paid by property tax, so whoever owns that property will pay that property tax… assuming that new owner’s not a non-for-profit”. But GE did not seek tax deals that would continue year after year, he said.
According to the State House News Service, the move will be financed in part by the company selling its CT offices, as well as offices at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The Connecticut GOP has sounded off about the announcement, placing blame on Democrats. GE’s CEO says they already have potential buyers interested.
“We had enough on the table to be competitive”, said Jay Ash, Baker’s secretary of economic development. “That’s why he left”. The only obvious drawback to GE’s choice is that the top brass may need to leave their New York Yankees caps behind.
GE, he said, “acted very much above-board”.
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Gov. Dannel Malloy said he was “disappointed” at press conference in Middletown on Wednesday afternoon. The company has not yet announced how many jobs will be lost in CT as a result of the move. “We’re not doing it.’ And that’s why we couldn’t come to an agreement”. Persuading the company to move to Boston involved city and state tax incentives and grants of $145 million at a time when CT is considering raising taxes on businesses.
