Apr. 13—Chris DiPentima said he didn't mean to give his audience "motion sickness with the ups and downs" of the Connecticut economy while speaking at Connecticut Business Day, which the Connecticut Business and Industry Association held at The Bushnell in Hartford on Tuesday.

The CBIA president and chief executive officer struck a note between the optimistic picture painted by Gov. Ned Lamont, who joined the event remotely, and the negative focus of Republican legislators, who later joined the CBIA for a press conference on unemployment fund debt.

Lamont said the top headwind keeping him up at night is the country's 8.5% year-over-year inflation, and that while revenue from dividends, capital gains and the sales tax is strong, that could go in another direction because the state has "a fairly volatile revenue stream."

But the governor — who joined via videoconference because he was isolating after testing positive for COVID-19 on Thursday — highlighted the state's $3.1 billion Rainy Day Fund and budget surpluses, historic payments toward pension fund debt, expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, and growth in manufacturing.

"A lot of people are always looking at spending the Rainy Day Fund and things, and I'm really pleased that has not happened," Lamont said.

Bob Stefanowski, his Republican challenger for governor, attended the event.

Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner David Lehman said high-propensity business starts — meaning new businesses likely to have employees — are about 1,000 per month now, whereas that figure was between 700 and 800 before the pandemic.

DiPentima said Lamont and Lehman pointed out "some really good things happening in the state," and that "right now the state is like a CEO of a company that for the last 10 years has not made a lot of money and had not been able to invest in its business, but now has quite a bit of money." That means a lot of people are recommending how money should be spent, with different priorities.

But he also noted that Connecticut has 117,000 job openings and the state's workforce has shrunk by 82,000 jobs since before the pandemic, which is 14% of the nationwide contraction even though Connecticut has only 1% of the population.

The decrease of 82,000 jobs is what the Connecticut Department of Labor showed as the yearly average for 2021, CT Insider reported. According to the department's most recent jobs report, for February, the state is still short 56,300 of the positions lost in March and April of 2020.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Connecticut's unemployment rate was 4.9% in February, tied with New York for 43rd. Nationally, the unemployment rate was 3.8%, and new applications for unemployment benefits are now at their lowest level since 1968.

DiPentima also noted that Connecticut was 36th in gross domestic product growth for 2021 but 12th for the fourth quarter, so "maybe that's a sign of good things to come, but we need to continue to recover better than we have been."

CBIA wants to see Connecticut recognize more out-of-state professional licenses, expand the research and development tax credit, and restore the pass-through entity tax credit to the 93% level. DiPentima thinks the current budget being negotiated has great individual tax relief but is "missing the mark for the business community."

CBIA is also calling on the state to use federal COVID-19 relief funds to pay back the remainder of the $888 million Connecticut borrowed from the federal government to cover unemployment benefits after the unemployment trust fund ran out of money. Employers are responsible for the $463 million balance, while the rest has been repaid.

This is an area where the business group is at odds with the Lamont Administration.

Lehman said his position is that the "best bang for the buck" is for funding to go toward pension debt rather than unemployment insurance. He said pensions "have been a big burden of the state for a long time, and I think we need to get out of that albatross," and that the assumed rate of return on pension debt is about 6.9%.

"The governor is working for government. He's not working for the people of Connecticut," House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, said at a press conference later. It was similar to a press conference this time last year, though now — like with the Connecticut Business Day event — with the backdrop of an election year.

Candelora said the debt was created not by businesses but "by the decisions the government made to keep people safe," and now businesses are left with the bill.

e.moser@theday.com