it's michelle coming back we have to have her back on the show so we can hear what's going on in the state of new jersey so bring us up to date while what's happened in the last year or so we have a new administration of course governor murphy and the dynamics of quite interesting in trenton we just went through the budget season and you know the budget season is a time when everybody kind of holds on because you never know what to expect you know you start with one type of budget proposal and then as the legislature and the governor get into negotiations especially in the eleventh hour to avoid  shutdown the dynamics get pretty wild and you never know what's going to be thrown in at the end that could be a surprise so i talk a little bit about what happened in budget and you know you know it has little to business community so first of all we can't look at the budget and what came out of the budget in a silo because we have a whole stream of policy and employer mandates and things that have happened over the last six months that unfortunately continue to put a cost of doing business a higher burden on businesses you know we had the know that's that's in effect for business across the state the pay equity bill passed now while i'm a firm advocate for pay equity i mean i'm a woman i get it yeah but the penalty provisions in it were the strongest in the nation and some of the reporting requirements in it cause companies to have to go back and you know redo their back office in order to support the types reporting requirements same with paid sick leave even companies that had sick leave before you have to report in a certain way so know every time you have to change your back office system that is an increase in doing business right we had some energy bills early in the year that were subsidies for nukes and a green energy bill that while these are important things it's billions of dollars of increased cost and energy so that's what was on the heels of when we came into the budget season so in the budget season we heard from the very beginning that we were going to be getting a tax increase of some sort now jeannie this is new jersey we are already  increase taxes on corporations corporate business tax increase which is what senator sweeney and the legislature was proposing and governor murphy was proposing a tax on millionaires well we know it's had some millionaire says a tax on small business because many new jersey companies that are s corporate l l c or partnerships flow their income from their companies through their personal return right neither of those is a good case for new jersey business c b c heads are big companies were  vulnerable already for big companies locating you know in other places millionaire's tax is we don't want to be losing our escorts and honestly we should be proud to make a millionaires and state new jersey state we should enjoy reaping the return of the tax on those millionaires not making it a higher burden for those million or so that they might not have to leave leave also exactly so what do we end up with in the eleventh hour we ended up with a smattering of both and a little more ok you know there was a there was an increase in the corporate business tax for four years they call it a surcharge as opposed to a tax because it will sunset after four years two and a half years in the i'm sorry two percent in the first two years which are two to half percent in the first two years and one and a half percent in the last two years still an impact business that got mitigated from where it was it was up to four and a half percent wow so we got the amount down but still an impact that build the corporate business tax bill is very very complex when you talk about corporate corporate tax because there's these provisions in there about repatriation we're not even going to go to what it means that it has thank god has a little bit it has a very very significant impact on the bottom line for new jersey corporations not good language we got it mitigated from something worse before but we're going to live with that for a few years we also got an increase on millionaires but at five million and above also again mitigating that's good however i would still suggest i be very concerned about out migration why why would someone who has the ability clearly if they have the money to to take up residence outside the state like we invite them to do it you know right right so so the budget battle was was a little tough in the end you know it did lands where we were trying to see it not land which is on the back of business now this four year period when when we testified and we explain please don't continue to raise taxes on the back of business because we're vulnerable today in the state of new jersey we were told we hear you we hear you but we need a few years to take care of our structural deficits and state new jersey we need to do some planning this is what the legislature said in response to your testimony so now it's incumbent upon us to go back to those legislators and ensure that starting today right now we start addressing comprehensive tax reform in the state of new jersey and we get it done in the next couple years so let me just as a question about the four years like you  say can they go to the third year and then go oh now we want to make sure that this continues another four years or do they have to stay with it for years because i know that's a tough question but if you guys weren't advocating to keep them on track you know i don't i mean the things that thing right and i think the things are no no no and of course they can absolutely go and they can go and extend it they can increase it they can decrease it every budget year they have the ability to how do you guys keep up how do you even though you say it's confusing to get in the first place right now you are an attorney anyway but well i wanted other experts well i want i'm not a tax attorney and nor would i ever purport to understand you know tax especially corporate tax we are very fortunate be i a we have a group of tax house all weekend before fourth of july working on the language to ensure that whatever the final bill was they understood the ramifications to new jersey businesses because the language before had unintended consequences and i mean honestly like i mean it really is important that everybody knows how much you guys do because if you weren't doing it i've been watching you do this for how many years have you been the c e o before yours in october which i can't believe i do think you've been on here for to me telling everybody and it's so great we love having you  we i have great respect for the vision that governor murphy has for the state of new jersey who doesn't want free education from pre k to community college yet to i'm an advocate of workforce of course i want that right we can afford it right  now you know the things that he that he wants to see we agree with the ultimate vision but the pathway to get there has to be a slow responsible one and it can't be that we tax our way we can't tax our way out of our structural deficits in the state of new jersey and we need to go take the retiree health benefit plan from a plan into a gold just to uphold ok and if we restructure the pension to go into a four a one k as opposed to defined benefit that's what's happening across the country with corporate america right right every size business right those types of plans don't exist anymore because they're ill affordable and to require and make new jersey taxpayers continue to shoulder that type of responsibility and burden by way of taxes to afford programs that aren't found anywhere else really isn't fair not just to our businesses but to all of our tax payers in the state of new jersey right absolutely let's talk about you were talking a little bit about the workforce development and i also want to talk about the millennial out migration and some positive stuff about our to run into the end eighteen already right so we had a summit in twenty seventeen which was all about the issues surrounding millennial out migration that's certainly not a positive why did we hit on millennial out migration because we've been studying out migration patterns now for the last three years and we found that the number one out migration group leaving the state in new jersey are eighteen to thirty four year olds this is been a pattern over the last ten years why are we concerned about that there  future workforce right and we're concerned about also because we're number one in the nation in property tax for that property tax we afford a wonderful k twelve education program maybe the best in the nation we're very proud of our k twelve education it comes at a cost of about twenty thousand dollars per pupil per year on average times thirteen years of crack into our twelve at up that that's what a lot of money that's a huge investment that you're asking from new jersey property owners and taxpayers sorry for that now asset that we invested those thirteen years and at that amount of money to leave the state of new jersey hello yeah isn't how to write about come back is that we put a lot of work into bringing you up in here and don't don't you love it and we and we and we do that because they're our future workforce right but then we lose that return on investment if they leave the state of new jersey and especially for the qualifications that they have right they could take somewhere else exactly so we got into actually that's what we do a b i a right we don't just we don't we don't whine we're solution driven we bring people together and we problem solve so we created a post secondary education taskforce which has involved over one hundred people from every sector you can think of so we have state government involved we have k twelve education community college career and technical education public and private for year our nonprofits and millennial and of course our members sitting around and saying what are we going to do about ensuring that we have a track to belittle and affordability and post secondary education and state new jersey number one to get our kids attracted to our own universities to stay here for their college experience make it affordable but also traditional workforce development in that we need to take a look back on the role of skill building in traditional skill building for the traits that are the types of jobs that are middle level income jobs that afford a wage that allows you to live work and raise family in new jersey ok we're going to give us an example absolutely we've forty four thousand vacant jobs in the state of new jersey today and middle level skilled these are like technical jobs that you don't need a four year degree for you need some type of a certification a piece of paper that says i know how to build fix or operate that which it then you can get a job tomorrow and these are well paying jobs right so that's the career and technical education pathway that we've steered students away from for the last decade or two i'm guilty of this as a you know as it my generation of my children coming up i demanded so my kids i commanded that you must go to four year in order to be something in life well we believe in lifelong learning and continuing to enrich ourselves right but you can learn and earn along the way sure and people can also find out what they really like in their life as far as passion goes for their work and maybe they don't know they're so young well absolutely and right there and we know how many kids look at the drop out rate in college it's sad those kids drop out with debt because it's so expensive they lose their confidence and they lose a couple of years in the workforce yeah and now you've got kids in their mid twenties rebuilding themselves and starting a new whereas if we would have in their late teens encourage them to just start swimming slow exactly exactly and earn and learn along the way you know the path and then enough to be able to stay here and enjoy exactly the beautiful state exactly so what they do is they going in they were forced into the education system and we've got our investment out there and then they're making decisions to go to a cheaper state to live and then we go back to where one and oftentimes if they leave for higher ed or they or they they leave for opportunity don't they don't  require the legislature or state policy it's really more about how do we bring academia and the workforce together in order to create the the in to man jobs of today and tomorrow night what about the state and the legislature are they behind this as well just oh absolutely  not and not that they have like you know said hey be a love you rip you know this is where we have extreme commonality with the legislature and the governor absolutely i mean there are some bills pending to increase capacity in career and technical education that's a big that's a big issue yeah there are bills that have to do with you know how we articulate education more toward skill building for in demand jobs as opposed to just what's the traditional k twelve education look like right so those are good examples of where we're all kind of marching to the same tune and i think it's great stuff tell us about more about members too i want to talk about your women's summit and then also just learned about with one of the members saying out there to you yeah while the members have a lot to say these days you know i'll just stay for one moment about the members who who reached out on the budget and who we heard from and who are concerned and a couple of examples just right in this region and in the princeton the greater mercer county area two great examples manufacturing company now you would think a manufacturing company who is well invested because they're there they're a fix their properties affixed to the real estate and it's pretty expensive to lift up a manufacturing company and move for a well you know this manufacturing company there accountant told them that if you pick up and go over to pennsylvania you'll have return on investment for the cost of the move three to five years this company plans on being around for three to five years like dropping out it's a very very threatening  good policy we need to these are the stories we told during the budget process trying to avoid a corporate business tax increase or a millionaire's tax and one other example is a fourth generation professional services firm again greater mercer county area fourth generation  said reform is on the way we're going we're going to hold him to that and we hope we have a seat at the table to talk about what that reform looks like are there any kind of incentives right now or are they still talking about the reform to get to heaven in front of or some things are all there is anyone that's that could say the same drawing other companies from outside the state oh absolutely working at all yeah well you know the governor just announced last week that we have a large pharmaceutical company moving to new jersey so in the midst of all this we have a big company coming up to north jersey  i want to make sure i pronounce it correctly but creating eight hundred new jobs what would make this well we have great assets in the state of new jersey and number one that assets is a highly skilled workforce so when i talked about workforce a few minutes ago and what we're losing  do in the trenches like as a reviewer of the property tax owners business owners here are mostly bad stories to be honest with you and i don't know you know because that's what your job is to live but i'm not i am but you know what i like to take that i make lemonade out of story and i'm happy to hear about that again you want to talk a little bit about the women some of this because let's talk about some positive because i don't like when i'm feeling jaded you know that's not good and that's when i say to my team come on let's get some positive going so  something really positive we do it and j p i a a is helped to advance discussion around women in the c suite in the boardroom women's leadership is really important an important for a lot of reasons diversity period in the c suite in the boardroom everybody knows how important that is diversity of opinion around the table leads to good results and companies more and more see that and you know shareholders of stock companies see that you know we now have shareholders driving diversity in the boardroom from the outside  very important very important so how we do that is we have our women business leaders council which is a group of phenomenal women in this region who get together about once a quarter to talk about you know what type of skill building do we need to continue to make ourselves the best we can be and what visibility then we need to those skills to get us in the c suite and the boardroom and then once a year we host our summit which is our big event this year it's on september fourteenth we're hosting it up at the airport marriott in newark beautiful venue and nice and accessible for everybody north and you know central south to get to we expect last year we had over three hundred three hundred fifty we're expecting a blow out crowd this year because the momentum of this is our fourth just builds from year to year bobby brown is our keynote we're very excited to have this jersey girl kind of tell her a very exciting inspiring we've got a lot of positive feedback for her coming she's excited to join us as a jersey girl and then we have these great panels where we'll hear from female c e o s women from the boardroom women in executive level positions it could be anything from how are you persuasive in negotiation to what are the most effective communication skills all true skill building to how do i get myself out there you know how do i get that visibility i've got the skills but nobody knows i have what's the right way for me to approach getting myself on the radar right because that's really important so what about if someone wanted to sign up what are they do they have to be leadership women are do they have to be executives can managers come what level and do they have to be a member of n j b i and how do they go about registering so all of the above as well as men are invited back and i love with a mention about because i think they're smart and i feel the support so i love the story of we do have men come and the program is built even though it's the women business leaders summit the program is built around all skills and attributes that men need as well of course and the best is you know one of our own men who is on my staff who does our videography last year he said he was so happy to be there because he got like three nuggets out of it that he put into play the following week sure of his own his own skill building his own behavior et know hey we want everybody to be a member right but nonmembers of course are welcome but members the quest is less you know for them to come we want men we want women of every level because the idea here at this event is here from the top so that you can be informed on how you get of you know and there's that you could be inspired and learn from and we all and those of us who are fortunate enough to be in the c suite this is our chance and our obligation to reach back and bring you know the next generation of you  loop you know it's funny i was actually at one of your recent events for the women's summit committee planning meeting or so on and i and i wanted everybody to know that like you said it's quality it's quantity over quality but was quality over quantity i wanted to put in supposed yes because it was only forty five women but literally i made relationship connections with at least ten people just in forty five minutes and there's that was a couple weeks ago and i'm still in so i just wanted to ask if there's anything else you'd like to sell is that also what about you what's your future looking like the next year it was so we're you know we're very busy at n j b i a we have a lot of new exciting initiatives underway i'll share with you that this year for the first time in our one hundred  five years of existence we've been able to bring a new product to our members and it's a health benefits aleutian program our members every year when we surveyed tell them tell us that the number one business issue they have is the cost of health care and ensuring that they can provide a competitive and cost effective product for themselves and their employees so finally we were able to join a multiple employer welfare arrangement plan cool meihua is what this does is it allows our members to come into a pool of other companies as a consumer exactly group and you know in insurance the bigger the pool the lower the risk scores and the lower the rates exactly exactly and so we are now a part of is and this product is i was going to also ask you like all of what you're doing when it comes down to the changes in the budget reform and everything else how do these employers stay up with it as well and make sure that within this tiny manner they're able compliance questions with all the new was that are out there we've done a series of programs which were sold out on these changes on these mandates in terms of what do do you you around earned sick leave and changes in pay equity i mean these are really big issues that require everyone's attention hones company we have three legal hotlines the where you get thirty minutes of free free free legal consultation every month yeah ok one is h r one is on corporate contract and dispute issues and others on general corporate issues well people need to take advantage of that yeah we're looking to create a multiple employer for a one k products for our members and i again how many small companies want to offer that product to their employees but can't afford to exactly so we're what we're doing is we're mitigating the increased cost of doing business that's created over here by bringing cost saving benefits to our members it's really important and it's it's real money incredible number itself and i know the people in there so there's a welcoming to talk and everybody like you said has a positive attitude looking out for your members absolutely so we have about a minute left anything else you want to say no i you know i just want to say look i i like to start positive  positive and i'm a realist in between new jersey is awesome you know i get i'm a jersey girl through and through where do you have a state that has the assets that we have that very well talented pool of candidates yes one hundred forty miles of shoreline that is a tourist destination at lenox city coming back our transportation system albeit in need of repair still ranks among the best in the nation in terms of your ability to get through and to somewhere or you know the n in the west philadelphia new york we've got access to everywhere maryland absolutely i mean we're smack dab between d c and boston and smack dab between philly and new york it doesn't get any better than that and it's been it's beautiful state we need to bask in our assets and that's why companies are attracted to come here but we have to be sure that we balance it out on the other side by being responsible with what we require and commands of those companies when they get here thanks for overseeing all of that we know that we can trust you to pull it off so