BOSTON — Gov. Deval L. Patrick was unable yesterday to convince Fidelity Investments co-owner Abigail Pierrepont Johnson to reconsider plans to move 1,100 workers from its Marlboro offices to jobs in bordering states.
The governor said Ms. Johnson apologized during a 45-minute meeting in his office for not giving him more advance notice of the decision, or a chance to compete to keep those jobs in the state. He said she also ruled out any changes in plans
“I am definitely left with the impression that that decision is made, had been made some while ago, and is not reversible,” Mr. Patrick said of the company’s plans to close its major office facility in Marlboro and move almost all of those jobs to newer office buildings the company owns in Smithfield, R.I., and Merrimack, N.H.
“I have also been left with the impression that many of the people, if not all of the people who work in Marlboro today for Fidelity who are Massachusetts residents, will continue to be Massachusetts residents although they will drive to Rhode Island for work,” Mr. Patrick said.
“That is not an ideal solution, but that is the impression I am left with after this conversation,” Mr. Patrick said.
The governor had sought a face-to-face meeting with Ms. Johnson, president of Fidelity Investments Personal and Workplace Investing division and daughter of Fidelity founder Edward C. Johnson III, after complaining last week that the company had not given him a chance to compete to keep the jobs in Massachusetts.
After meeting yesterday with Ms. Johnson and Fidelity Executive Vice President James Johnson, Mr. Patrick said he was assured that the decision was not based on the business climate in the state, and the company headquarters in Boston remains committed to maintaining most of its operations in Massachusetts.
“Ms. Johnson was thoughtful to start the conversation by apologizing for the way this decision from last week was announced, having it happen while I was away,” the governor said.
He said she took pains to assure him that the decision was not a reflection of the company’s commitment to remain headquartered in Massachusetts, where he said most of their worldwide employees work, and that the company will work more closely with the administration in the future.
Ms. Johnson left the meeting smiling, but did not stop to answer questions from reporters waiting outside the governor’s office. “We had a very nice meeting, thank you,” Ms. Johnson said as she left the office, declining further comment.
The governor said the decision to close the Marlboro office had “absolutely nothing to do with the business climate here in Massachusetts or their commitment to Massachusetts,” was “a comfort of sorts.”
“From their perspective it is a real estate deal and has to do with the relative age and utility of the facilities here in Marlboro as distinct from the one in Rhode Island and another up in Merrimack,” Mr. Patrick said.
Mr. Patrick said that the company “is a Massachusetts icon.
Mr. Patrick said there was no discussion of the considerable tax breaks the company has been granted by the state in the past, but noted that is the subject of a legislative committee hearing next week called in response to the Marlboro announcement last week. “They know they will have to address some of those questions at the hearing Tuesday,” the governor said.
“We asked questions about what was on the horizon and we were assured of their continued commitment to Massachusetts,” Mr. Patrick said but no firm promises were offered that more jobs wouldn’t be lost.
“All of the financial services as you know have been re-sizing because of the global economic collapse and Fidelity hasn’t been spared that either,” Mr. Patrick said. “But now as they are stabilizing and starting to grow again, my point to Fidelity and other Massachusetts companies is we want this to be the place where you grow.”
TEXAS LEGISLATURE
AUSTIN -- House Democrats on Thursday seized on an analysis by the Legislative Budget Board to escalate their attacks on a committee-approved state budget, saying the proposed cuts will result in the loss of thousands of jobs over the next two years.
The analysis forecasts that in 2013, as many as 335,244 jobs will be lost in the public and private sectors. A statement from the board's director said the reductions in the proposed budget stem largely from the "steep downturn of the Texas economy" over the past several years.
The board, the Legislature's chief budget agency, was required by a House rule to issue the economic impact statement after the House Appropriations Committee OK'd a spending blueprint Wednesday. The proposed budget would reduce state spending by $22.9 billion over two years, eliminating outright more than 8,000 state jobs and forcing deep cuts in healthcare, education and other services.
Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, who wrote the rule requiring the impact statement, said the board's findings showed that Texas faces the elimination of "hundreds of thousands of jobs."
"We can't grow the Texas economy with a budget that destroys jobs, hurts neighborhood schools, and makes college more expensive," Villarreal asserted.
The House plans to vote on the budget April 1.
"There's absolutely no way I would vote for the budget," said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, who holds the second-ranking post in the House Democratic leadership. "It would be impossible for me to vote for this budget."
Later in the day, Lt Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate's presiding officer and co-chairman of the budget board, issued a statement disputing Villarreal's interpretation.
"The LBB report clearly shows that job creation is tied to the size of the economy, not the budget," Dewhurst said. "What it does not calculate, however, are the dramatic job losses Texas would suffer if the Legislature raised taxes just as our economy is starting to rebound. You cannot expect to grow the economy and create jobs by growing bigger government."
The budget board report forecast that 271,746 Texans will lose their jobs in 2012, with the number growing to 335,244 in 2013, Villarreal's office said. Total employment in the state would drop by 1.9 percent in 2012 and by 2.3 percent in 2013.
The forecast seems to run counter to projections by state Comptroller Susan Combs, who has predicted a modest upswing as Texas recovers from the recession.
In the statement, board Director John O'Brien said a "correct interpretation" of the forecast "is essential to properly understand the effects" of the proposed budget on the Texas economy.
For instance, O'Brien said, the forecast of 272,000 job losses in 2012 "does not imply the state will lose that many jobs from our current employment level upon enactment of [the proposed House budget]."
"Rather, that figure implies Texas will have 272 thousand jobs less than a baseline scenario where state expenditures remained constant relative to 2010-11 levels and available revenue matched these spending levels," O'Brien told House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie.
"Since available revenue for the 2012-13 biennium is predicted to fall well below that amount, in large part due to the national economic recession, many of these job losses can be attributed to the steep downturn of the Texas economy during the past several years."
North Texas economist Terry Clower said deep cuts in state services could affect the economy but would be unlikely to reverse the state's recovery. "My expectation is that it will certainly slow the pace of the recovery, but I do not think it will stop the recovery, nor would this action by itself cause us to go back into a recession," said Clower, director of the Center of Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas in Denton.
Clower called the board's forecast a "much bigger number than I've heard before. I don't question the veracity of the number, but I don't know what underlies that number, how they got to it."
Budget-writers in the House and Senate are struggling to write a two-year spending plan in the face of a projected shortfall as high as $26 billion.
Preliminary budgets unveiled in both chambers in early January proposed education cuts in excess of $9 billion, but members of the Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to ease the reduction.
In that budget plan -- written by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano -- nearly $6 billion in education funding would be restored, and the overall reduction would be about $4 billion instead of $9 billion-plus.
House budget-writers have also committed to restoring $2 billion, which would bring the education cuts in their plan to $7.8 billion, instead of $9.8 billion.
Education advocates said that even with the changes, the cuts will hurt school districts. "Clearly the Senate's version is looking better, but the level of cuts is still unacceptable," said Lonnie Hollingsworth of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.
3. Va. saw steeper job losses in 2010 than 1st gauged
Virginia saw a steeper decline in jobs in 2010 than first estimated, but still performed better than the nation, the Virginia Employment Commission said.
The state's nonfarm employment declined by 15,000 jobs, or 0.4 percent, in 2010 after annual revisions. It was originally estimated that Virginia lost 5,200 jobs, or 0.1 percent, for the year. In contrast, the U.S. experienced nonfarm job losses of 0.8 percent in 2010.
Numbers for 2010 were improved from the previous year, when Virginia saw a decline of 3.2 percent, the largest annual percentage decline since 1944.
The state agency does a once-a-year revision of its data to give a more accurate picture of Virginia's job situation as more complete information comes in from Unemployment Insurance tax records.
Virginia's annual unemployment rate averaged 6.9 percent in 2010, up slightly from the 2009 average rate of 6.8 percent. The agency said Virginia had the eighth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, while North Dakota had the lowest with 3.9 percent. The national average rate for 2010 was 9.6 percent, up from 9.3 percent in 2009.
Virginia's job losses in 2010 were in manufacturing, construction, information, trade and transportation, leisure and hospitality, and finance.
Meanwhile, Virginia added jobs last year in professional and business services, private education and health services, government, and mining. Most of the job gains were in professional and business services, which added 7,700 jobs, or 1.2 percent.
The northern Virginia, Winchester and Harrisonburg metropolitan areas all added jobs in 2010, while the Danville metropolitan area saw the largest percent decrease in jobs with a 2 percent drop. The Hampton Roads area and Richmond also experienced employment declines.
4. Conn. added 5,400 jobs in Feb.
BY DAVID KRECHEVSKY REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
Connecticut added 5,400 jobs in February, and has gained nearly 29,000 jobs over the previous 12 months, the state said Thursday.
The latest data from the state Department of Labor shows that total nonfarm employment in the state totaled a seasonally adjusted 1,623,200 last month, an increase of 28,900 from February 2010. The state's unemployment rate remained at 9.0 percent, down from 9.2 percent in February 2010 but just slightly above last month's national rate of 8.9 percent.
While Connecticut's unemployment rate has remained at or around 9 percent for the past year, other economic indicators have shown improvement in that time," Salvatore DiPillo, the department's labor statistics supervisor, said in a news release. "Since the beginning of 2010, initial claims for unemployment insurance are down 9 percent; private sector employees, on average, are working longer hours, and if these trends hold up, we've recovered nearly 25 percent of the jobs we lost during the course of the recession."
February's gain rebounded from job losses in January, in spite of severe weather conditions, DiPillo noted.
The professional and business services sector added the most jobs in February, 3,100, while the construction sector added 2,100 and educational and health services added 1,000. The manufacturing sector, meanwhile, lost 1,100 jobs.
The Waterbury labor market area saw its unemployment rate drop to 12.6 percent in February from 12.8 percent a month earlier, but the decline was not enough to keep the market from once again have the state's worst rate. The seven-town region has had the state's worst unemployment rate for all but one month over the past 10 years.
The Torrington labor market, meanwhile, saw its jobless rate increase a bit, to 10.0 percent in February from 9.9 percent a month earlier. Danbury had the state's lowest unemployment rate in February, at 8.1 percent.
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