Quonset Testimony to House Finance on behalf of Ocean State Action

Tom Sgouros

11 June 2001

House Finance Committee, Hon. Anthony Pires, Chair
Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Frank Caprio, Chair

Honorable Members:

Thank you for allowing me to speak here tonight.

Ocean State Action is a coalition of a variety of labor, environmental, and citizen action organizations. The sense of our organization is that we do support the development of the industrial park at Quonset Point, in a manner that is environmentally friendly, at a scale that will not destroy Narragansett Bay, and that will provide substantial numbers of ongoing --- not construction --- jobs.

However, we have serious concerns about two things. First, it seems to us quite premature to go ahead and seek an environmental impact study for a proposal that does not exist, or at least which is not public. An EIS is supposed to measure the environmental impact of a specific set of actions. What actions will this EIS use? Why? There is a substantial risk of spending several million dollars and having to spend a few more once details are changed to suit some specific proposal.

Any confidence displayed by the administration that this will not be true can only be taken as evidence that they are not disclosing details of some specific proposal.

Our second serious concern is about the conduct of economic development activities around here. All we ever hear about is attempts to lure businesses from elsewhere: ads in Forbes, billboards in Boston, tax cuts for industries we don't have yet, and EIS's for ports no one is supposedly proposing to build.

Where is the support for businesses that already exist in this state? After all, they and their employees are the ones that elected our government. Growing businesses that are already here is at least as important to increasing the number of jobs in the state as chasing after the big strike --- and probably more effective.

Elizabeth Webbing and the Worcester Company were just about the state's last two big textile mills. They've both closed under this administration. What did the state do to help? The Worcester Company closed, not because they weren't profitable, but because they weren't profitable enough to service their high-interest debt from English lenders. When the state was offering low-cost credit and cheap leases to bio-tech companies without a product to sell, where were they for the 400 employee owners of the Worcester company? Now that we're offering a $5 million gift to some as-yet-unidentified port operator, where were we for the 280 employees of Elizabeth Webbing? Who else will we miss?

Fifteen years ago, the state of Michigan pioneered a capital access program to ease access to credit for businesses. Since then, twenty other states have adopted a similar program. Not us. New York actively helps businesses plan for succession when a business owner dies or retires. Not us. New York also helps organize employee ownership buyouts when no buyers can be found for extant businesses. Not us. The point is that there are a huge variety of things we could be doing in the name of economic development besides chasing out-of-state ``angels'' --- if our state was led with a little imagination and energy.

There is no reason to think that developing a port at Quonset is the only path to prosperity for our state. In fact, there are ample reasons to believe that it may not be a path to prosperity at all. After all, here we are not just ignoring existing jobs, but proposing to destroy them, in favor of jobs that do not yet exist and may never exist.

In these Quonset debates, we hear a lot about stevedore wages. Well, new hires at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey make just $13/hour, and that's the pay scale that we'll have here unless the port manages to repeal the laws of supply and demand. If we're going to be the low-cost alternative to Boston or New York, we're not going to be paying high wages.

OSA acknowledge that it is sometimes appropriate to seek environmental permitting in advance of a project. I can point to any number of abandoned industrial buildings in Providence or Pawtucket where this should be done. However, for a project of this scale, with potential impacts of this magnitude, on a resource as important to our state as Narragansett Bay, it is utterly inappropriate. Pushing for permits in advance of the project is nothing more than a transparent attempt to short-circuit debate when a real proposal does, in fact, appear.

This is not democracy in action, and I hope the members of these committees will recognize that and vote this proposal down.

Many thanks.

Respectfully,

Tom Sgouros,
Board Member,
Ocean State Action