[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We are honored now to be joined by Curtis Bashaw, who's Founder and Managing partner of Cape Resorts, a former candidate for the United States Senate in the great state of New Jersey, who's staying involved and engaged in public issues that matter.

Curtis, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve, thanks for having me on.

- You got it.

Let me also disclose that Cape Resorts has become one of the newest underwriters of our public policy programming.

And speaking of public policy, Curtis, you made a decision to stay engaged, involved.

You've been writing op-ed pieces in major national and regional publications, a whole range of websites.

What are the most pressing issues from your perspective, now that you're not a candidate, but you're still an active business professional who cares about the state of New Jersey, please?

- Well, thanks for that.

Yeah, I think it's affordability, affordability, affordability for our state.

You know, as a candidate, I heard from everybody I talked to, it didn't matter if they were democratic or Republican or Independent, if they were young or older, everybody in our state is worried about whether their kids and grandkids can stay here and afford to build a life here.

You know, we're a multi-generational state.

People love the state, the loyalty, I heard it last year, this year, back at my business running Congress Hall in our lovely collection of hotels in Cape May.

It's the same thing.

As a business person, we struggle with affordability and we hear it from our guests, our neighbors, our employees, our team members.

And so affordability to me is the number one issue in our state for its future.

- By the way, to clarify, all of your different properties, if I'm wrong, you'll correct me.

There's over 1300 employees.

- We do, yeah.

We peaked out about 1300 every summer.

We have about 800 year round employees, so we swell seasonally, but we are, you know, making a payroll every two weeks and have an enterprise that welcomes guests from all over the country and internationally, but mostly from the great state of New Jersey to our hotels and resorts and restaurants.

- Absolutely.

You know, I'm gonna talk about red tape and regulations that you are deeply concerned of, but first, can we talk about energy cost, utility rates, the increases in electricity rates?

What is your number one concern about that, A?

And B, how does that affect your business and your employees?

- Well, it affects all consumers in our state.

Rates went up a ton, but it also affects businesses, which then again affects consumers even more.

And you know, my biggest concern about it is we don't have a long-term solution.

And, you know, some of the policy decisions that were, I think, too narrowly focused on one set of energy solutions precludes us from having access to other energy opportunities.

I think we need to be a little bit more diverse in how we approach the solutions here.

We need to use innovative technologies, but we sure as heck have to protect the Jersey shore.

So I think it became a partisan issue, a national policy issue that wasn't handled in a way that was good for the stakeholders in our state, both our business owners, our small business owners, as well as the people that live here and have houses.

- Break down and help us understand, those of us who are not engaged in the level of business activity you are, what you mean by government regulations and red tape, excuse me, for small business, what the heck are we talking about, Curtis?

- Well, you're talking about everything.

There seems to be a bias in the heavily regulated states, which New Jersey is one, that everyone's guilty until proven innocent.

And so we go overboard to try to protect all of us from bad actors.

You know, most small business owners are good, solid, hardworking people that are trying to make a living.

They're the most community engaged in main street activities and schools and charities and nonprofits, as well as the engine of the employment base in our state.

And so when you have to get a permit for every single thing, when you're being charged fees out the wazoo for each and every inspection, a fire inspection, this inspection, we've gone overboard in a way that we need to streamline.

We are the most heavily regulated state, the least business friendly state in the country, or at least in the top five.

And people know that.

And I worry for our long-term viability when I talk to young people who find it easier to open a business in Florida or even now Pennsylvania, that they have the ability to move locations.

There's so many more startups and young businesses that are virtual and are handled in different ways than the bricks and mortar.

- That's right.

Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you 'cause the irony is our business evolved and we are not brick and mortar right now.

We are this.

And so you're saying being able to move easily has made the business environment, I don't wanna make your case for you, Curtis, but it made the business environment and the challenges of it that much more impactful.

Is that a fair assessment?

- A bigger segment of our business community is mobile and they can choose to do their business from other places.

But then you look at how many municipalities we have with Main Streets.

We are still a small business state, as many wonderful larger corporations that we have.

But the small businesses that have mom and pop shops that are brick and mortar, they can't move.

I can't take Congress Hall and move it down to Florida and go there and run a hotel.

You know, Congress Hall is here in Cape May.

And so, we need to make sure that we are incentivizing people to stay here, to reinvest here, to build their future here, because we've had out migration at every level of our state.

And it's concerning.

- Let me ask you this.

When we were talking a few months back, Curtis, we were brainstorming about what public policy issues we should examine with the resources, with the grant that we got from you and your colleagues and we talked about many of them already, but one of them that came up and I just wanna gimme a minute or so on it, affordable housing.

Talk about that, that's a huge, not just public policy issue, it's a quality of life issue, please, Curtis.

- It is, and it's a economic driver as well.

You know, we employ a lot of people.

We are often recruiting people for jobs, management jobs, middle management jobs.

And when they look at the housing costs in New Jersey, they make sometimes choices to go other places.

You know, housing affordability is not, it's bigger than affordable housing.

Affordable housing is a term used to describe low and moderate income housing that is tied to adjusted gross income.

But beyond that, we need workforce housing.

We need housing in our communities for our EMTs, our teachers, our firemen, our police people.

We need housing for middle managers.

We also, in our resort destinations, and the Jersey Shore is of course, the huge one.

We need seasonal housing.

And so we need to look beyond a one size fits all housing solution that, you know, we have had the Mount Laurel decision.

We've now have a Fair Housing Act that tries to regulate that.

And, you know, a well-intentioned mission has become, in many times, creating unintended consequences.

So when each town is restricted to their own solutions, you can get bad development.

You can even have towns using eminent domain to take a farm away to build housing.

And so I believe that we need to look at that afresh in urban areas.

We need to use density as our friend in our rural areas.

I think that we should be able to look at regional approaches.

Cape May County has 16 municipalities.

We get along and I believe if we were allowed to beta test, sort of using the housing requirements across municipal boundaries, we would get better developments.

We would rebuild and revitalize communities, and we have to work together on this.

It's very important, in my view, for us to look at a state in a proactive way to solve this problem because it's keeping people from staying here.

Our students are leaving, our graduates are leaving, our people on pensions are taking their New Jersey pensions to other state.

And we gotta roll up our sleeves on this one.

- Curtis Bashaw, you may know him from his very public campaign for the United States Senate, but now as the longtime Founder and Managing Partner at Cape Resorts, engaged and involved in public policy issues and running a pretty big operation with 1300 employees.

Curtis, I wanna thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it, wish you and your team all the best.

- Thanks, Steve, take care.

- I'm Steve Adubato, that's Curtis Bashaw.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Newark Board of Education.

Seton Hall University.

EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

And by Johnson & Johnson.

Promotional support provided by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

And by NJ.Com.

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