First, congratulations on being elected to serve as Connecticut’s Secretary of the State.
I listened to you on the campaign trail and I know you have ideas for the office. I’m asking you to start small.
Connecticut is widely considered to be unfriendly to business. Objective data indicates this has nothing to do with tax rates but you know that from your time in the legislature.
I accept the assertion that Connecticut is unfriendly to business.
Your office is on the frontlines of Connecticut’s business problem.
Here’s an example of what I’m writing about. I represent a client. Connecticut’s economy could use a million more people as industrious as my client.
He’s opening a hair salon in Vernon. He came to see me and we formed a LLC. We paid the expedited filing fee at the Secretary of the State’s office. Somehow the expedited filing ended up being mixed with the routine filings. It came back to me with a note on it.
The note informed me that because I had paid for expedited filing and the filing was not expedited that my money would be refunded. Instead of mailing me a refund check for $50 I was mailed a form.
The form, mind you, was not that complicated but I had to fill it out and mail it in with a copy of the cashed check (which I have to wait for).
In the private sector a refund check would have issued and that would have been that.
Please Ms. Merrill, in most cases your office will be the first office that business people deal with in our state. Use your tenure to improve the pace at which business is done in the state.
I have some more thoughts that I’ll post later this week on how you can do that.