More Money For Development Agency

Rell Proposes Budget Increase

February 16, 2006
By JEFFREY B. COHEN, Courant Staff Writer

Gov. M. Jodi Rell has proposed a $7.9 million budget for the Capital City Economic Development Authority for the 2006-07 fiscal year, a significant increase from the $4.7 million that the agency in charge of the state's investment in downtown Hartford received the year before.

"It's obviously a huge increase from where we were last year," authority Assistant Director Michael Cicchetti told the authority's board at a meeting last week. "Moving forward, this is the start of the process, not the end."

Cicchetti's next few weeks will be filled with meetings with key legislators on the appropriations committee, and with legislative leadership to ensure that the funding isn't cut, he said.

"I think there's a general realization there that the $4.7 million just did not work," Cicchetti said.

Last year, the authority requested a $6 million budget from the governor, who reduced that figure to $5.5 million. The legislature then cut it further, to $4.7 million - causing concern in some quarters that the state was essentially cutting the authority's marketing budget and retreating from its sizable investment in the city.

Recognizing the marketing funding shortfall and rising energy costs, the state recently gave the authority an additional $1.5 million to pay its bills for the current fiscal year.

"You can't sit there and have this kind of investment if you don't give them the tools to market it," said House Speaker James Amann, D-Milford, adding that he would do "everything in his power" to provide adequate funding to the authority. He would not, however, commit to a dollar figure.

It is unclear whether the governor's proposed budget of $7.9 million, if approved, would mean that the authority could pay to keep its marketing at current levels.

"It's encouraging that people are seeing the important role of marketing," said H. Scott Phelps, president of the Greater Hartford Convention and Visitors Bureau, who added that it's still too early to start celebrating. "The state has made a huge commitment with the Connecticut Convention Center, and we need to sell it."