Leaders Pledge to Create Jobs in Boston

Posted on February 10, 2010

With the total number of jobs in Boston diminishing, Massachusetts leaders have banded together to think of ways the state can generate new jobs.

Unemployment in Boston has risen dramatically, creating the need for new and innovative ways to spur on job creation.

According to NECN.com, state Senate President Therese Murray is taking aim at state authorities and public agencies involved in economic development and trade and tourism, pushing to weed the poor ones out or consolidate them into better focused agencies.

“We need to bring some reality back. We started looking at it last March,” Murray said in an interview at her State House office Monday, “and found out there are 31 different agencies, ‘quasi’s,’ and authorities that have economic development in their mission.”

Governor Deval L. Patrick is also working on jobs creation and has some of his own ideas for merging and consolidating jobs-promoting agencies, a plan to give businesses a break on unemployment insurance rates, and a proposal for a tax break for small businesses that create new jobs. To stop a looming 8 per work unemployment tax hike, Patrick is endorsing House and Senate plans to borrow 1 million from the federal government.

Patrick is also proposing a ,500 tax credit per new worker hired for small businesses — those with fewer than 30 employees — that hire someone for at least one year, up to a maximum of million, or 20,000 new jobs. “It’s a measure to encourage and to give some credit for adding net new jobs, because we need the jobs,” the governor said during a visit to a business in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. “We need them now.”

And if you’re an entrepreneur looking to start a business, there are many state authorities that can help, including the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp. the Community Development Finance Corp., the Economic Stabilization Fund, plus executive-branch state agencies like the Office of Business Development, Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and Office of Minority & Women Business Assistance. Not to mention the public-private Massachusetts Alliance for Economic Development.