[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're now joined by Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer at the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

The website will be up.

Good to see you, Tim.

- Good to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me on.

- We're having you on, and right before Thanksgiving 2023, you took a little trip to East Asia, is that right?

- Yeah, the Governor and the First Lady led a huge delegation to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

We had a great trip.

- Purpose of the trip, A, and B, what does New Jersey get out of it?

- Broadly, you know, economic development and business development, drumming up business for the state.

We had a really, really productive trip.

We came back with, you know, brief cases full of business cards and lots of different leads.

And also, you know, reintroducing New Jersey to those three places.

Those are places New Jersey has longstanding business and cultural ties, and reintroducing New Jersey, and telling the story of the momentum we have going on, you know, under Governor Murphy's leadership.

- And just to, to be clear, I believe Choose New Jersey underwrites that trip, is that correct?

- Yeah, Choose is the key player there.

Wes Matthews and his team are great partners and we had a great trip.

- And speaking of underwriting, the Economic Development Authority is an underwriter of our programming.

Tim, lemme try this.

I'm curious about this.

When it comes to economic development in New Jersey, The issue of affordability.

We've had so many business leaders on from the Business and Industry Association, from the Chamber of Commerce, from the Commerce Industry Association.

Affordability for businesses in New Jersey.

A, do you appreciate and empathize with those who say that in business and B, be specific about what help the EDA and the state is offering in that regard?

- I'd say, you know, broadly speaking, yeah, affordability is a huge issue, not just for businesses, but for families here in New Jersey.

It's why you've seen Governor Murphy and legislature be so focused on it with things like the anchor property tax rebate and trying to drive property taxes, get those under control and make those more affordable and so broadly, you know, I think, yeah, of course that's an issue.

But the issues that we hear most about when we're trying to recruit businesses, whether in East Asia or, you know, in Pennsylvania or New Jersey or New York trying to come here or stay here, it's about talent, it's about location, it's about values, and, you know, making sure that people, they can find the workforce that they need.

And so, you know, where people are choosing to live matters a lot so that our population's continuing to grow, that we're still continuing to welcome people from other countries to live in New Jersey is a really important part of that dynamic.

- What is the Aspire program?

- So Aspire is a really important tool that Governor Murphy signed into law in the early 2021 to support, broadly speaking, real estate development.

A lot of housing, a lot of mixed use, a lot of lab space and commercial space to support the innovation economy.

And it's a gap financing tool that helps make the math work for developers to include things like affordability, affordable housing in residential projects, or to make sure that we have the right, you know, that the investment makes sense for the developers.

- You know, again, we'll put up the website for the EDA, the Economic Development Authority, because one of the other programs I'm curious about.

We talked about it before, the New Jersey Innovation Evergreen Fund.

A, what is it?

How much money is in it?

And who the heck is eligible?

- So the Innovation Evergreen Fund is a game changer we think.

You know, Governor Murphy announced this idea a few years ago, and it's now up and running, and we'd actually just made its first investment in October.

So it's about investing in early stage companies that are either in New Jersey and wanna do their growing here or are from outside New Jersey and wanna come and bring their headquarters here and do their growing.

So early stage companies, primarily in things like technology, life sciences, clean energy, kind of high growth industries where we see an opportunity for huge job creation.

And these are equity investments from the state.

- What does that mean?

- We're gonna own a piece of the company.

We're gonna invest alongside private sector venture capitalists, and, you know, if we help create the next Tesla or the next Facebook or the next whatever, you know, the state taxpayers will participate in those returns as well, in addition to getting the job creation benefits.

- Shift gears, I know I've touched base on this issue before with you, Tim, but I wanna bring it up again because it feels like it's more important than ever before and it's accessible, affordable childcare, Reimagine Childcare, the graphic will come up.

It's been five years that we've been involved in this public awareness effort.

And I often struggle because we're not in the business of advocacy, but we are in the business of public awareness.

Where's the line?

Not sure.

Here's the question.

Explain to folks, the direct, very clear relationship between a quality, affordable, accessible childcare for families and economic strength, economic development, the viability of the business community to have employees who work.

What's the connection, A, and B, why the heck isn't there more attention paid to it?

- Yeah, I wish there was more attention paid to it.

You know, Governor Murphy and First Lady Tammy Murphy have been banging the drum on this for as long as I can remember.

But it's still an issue that, you know, needs, I think clarifying.

Yeah, I think childcare gets often misunderstood or mischaracterized as something other than a core economic infrastructure.

- It's daycare.

It's daycare, which often people use that phrase to minimize it, but go ahead.

- Yeah.

First of all, my kids have been in the childcare system and you know, God bless early childhood educators who did a great... - We've had four gone through, but go ahead.

- Yeah, it's an amazing group of people who do, you know, tremendous work.

It's also, it's economic infrastructure.

If your workforce doesn't have a place for their kids to go and be safe and well taken care of and educated, they're not gonna go.

They can't go to work.

And we saw that during the pandemic.

We saw that, you know, we see that even back in sort of in normal times, if there's not a place for kids to go, parents don't feel safe or comfortable entering the workforce.

You know, women, men, it's disproportionately women.

But that's true for everybody.

And so it's economic infrastructure.

The childcare system isn't working if it's not safe and affordable and reliable.

It's like, it's as if the electricity's not running or the subway's not, or the trains aren't running, you can't get people to and from work and the economy just doesn't function without it.

- Go on our website, steveadubato.org, look at previous programs under the umbrella Reimagine Childcare.

Again, I'm gonna switch gears again.

So Orsted, I believe, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, Tim, the largest wind energy producer I think in the world.

- Yep.

That's it.

- Pretty big, right?

- One of the big players.

Yep.

- New Jersey bet on Orsted.

There's an effort to stabilize the situation and bring them, get them some resources through I don't know whether it's a bail, I don't know what the heck it was, but the bottom line is after the governor makes that move, Orsted's a big part of the wind energy program, the governor's larger clean energy program.

They're like, we're outta here.

It doesn't make sense economically, the supply chain is screwed up.

Inflation's what it is.

We're out.

Are you kidding me?

A, were you shocked?

B, now what as it relates to wind energy?

- Yeah, I think if you saw the governor's statement on Halloween, which is when this news broke, I think you saw two, so two sentiments at the same time.

One, pretty significant frustration.

You know, the governor chooses his words pretty carefully, and those words were pretty direct about being frustrated with the decision that Orsted made.

And that's certainly a frustration that I share.

That being said, wind energy is about a lot more than one company.

Orsted's certainly a big player.

But we have other projects that are proceeding.

The BPU right now is evaluating bids for the next round of offshore wind projects.

You've seen projects moving forward in New York.

And so broadly speaking, you know, the future remains bright for offshore wind, but this is a setback.

- Hold on, Tim.

Oh, all right.

I appreciate that.

But you don't believe it's dead because Orsted says the economics don't work.

If it doesn't work for them, why would it work for another wind energy company?

- So these are very project specific.

So projects that work that were sort of crafted and put together, either before the pandemic, which is the case for Ocean Wind 1, or sort of early pandemic, Ocean Wind 2, before interest rates went up two or three times before inflation, you know, hit, they're just priced wrong.

And you've seen that up and down the East coast where you've seen projects happen to either reboot or get canceled and come back and live to see another day.

You know, Orsted made the decision they made, which is disappointing and frustrating, but broadly speaking, there is a bright future for new products that are conceived, sort of post pandemic, post interest rate inflation, et cetera.

- Let's make sure we keep talking about it in the future, okay?

- Absolutely.

- Tim Sullivan, Chief Executive Officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Thanks Tim.

- Great to be with you, Steve.

Talk to you soon.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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

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