Records released this week show that three business groups were upset with political deal-making that ended with a $100,000 award to the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Watchdog.org reported this week that three regional development corporations were taken aback when the Shumlin administration announced six weeks ago that the chamber would get money in this year’s economic development bill to perform outreach with companies from Quebec.
The appropriation started out as a $500,000 fund for marketing Vermont as a good place to do business. That amount shrank to $200,000 during conference committee, and the Quebec outreach proposals appeared in the waning hours of the session as a $100,000 appropriation. The money comes from the Vermont Enterprise Fund, which was originally intended as a cash incentive for the IBM sale to GlobalFoundries but was never used for that purpose.
Tim Smith, the executive director of the Franklin County Industrial Development Corp., said his organization had been doing outreach to Canadian provinces for three years, but he was never consulted about the opportunity to apply or testify for a state appropriation.
Smith said his and two other organizations — the Lamoille Economic Development Corp. and the Northeastern Vermont Development Authority — had been reporting that fact to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development regularly. The groups say they still weren’t consulted.
“My issue wasn’t so much awarding them the money as much as it was process,” Smith said in an interview Thursday. “When the discussion came up the last day of the session, we’re nowhere to be found to be part of the discussion.”
“It was a last-minute deal that myself and other partners, including the Vermont Chamber [of Commerce], were not privy to,” he said. “We talk about transparency on the state level, and this was about transparency, and that’s where my frustration came into play.”
The Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce was not named in the specific text of the bill. The Legislature later wrote a letter of intent to clarify the language in the bill, according to Tom Torti, president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“The fact is that nobody’s been doing a statewide economic development marketing plan for over 25 years,” Torti said. “We went after the money and got the money, and I make no apologies for that. You can focus on landing them, and we can do the sales and marketing piece.”
He both defended the appropriation and said he intended to be held accountable by the governor and the Legislature for how he spends the money. “I had the idea,” Torti said. “I had the initiative, and I went after it. If their noses are a bit out of joint, I apologize.”
Pat Moulton, secretary of the Agency of Commerce and Community Development, said the $100,000 appropriation “came together relatively quickly” but her agency has helped fix some of the communication problems among the business groups.
“What was very clear from the legislative intent language — and from the conversations in committee — was that this would be a statewide effort, that it would be led by a state agency, and it would be used to continue to augment the work that the other organizations have been doing,” Moulton said.
“All of that should and will continue,” she said. “This effort with the Lake Chamber will augment that, and we want to know what everyone’s doing so that we’re not stepping on each other’s toes so much as plowing new ground.”
John Mandeville, executive director for the Lamoille Economic Development Corp., said he and others have spoken to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development about some of their concerns.
“I believe I for one am satisfied with the outcome,” Mandeville said. “I think that number two, a lesson has been learned, that there needs to be better communication up front about these decisions before these decisions have been made.”
The $100,000 has not officially been appropriated, but Torti expects to get it in the coming weeks.
