Now hear this: Sherrill wants more engagement with business community

Gov. Mikie Sherrill, speaking to a group of top-level business leaders Friday morning, wasn’t afraid to address the elephant in the room: The feeling that Trenton does not like the business community.

It’s not just the regulations (there are too many). Or the business taxes (they are too high). Or the incredible sense of a disjointed organization (fill in your own examples here). It’s a sense that there isn’t even a desire to get together and talk, she said.

That changes now, the newly inaugurated governor said.

Sherrill, the keynote speaker at the Public Policy Forum presented by the N.J. Business & Industry Association, said she not only wants to partner with the business community, but that she wants to hear what they have to say — she wants to correct the silence of the past.

“Maybe Trenton (didn’t) always have the engagement with business that we need to make sure that we’re understanding the benefits that you bring to so many people — the jobs, the opportunities, and how, if you are a public servant, that getting small businesses up and running as quickly as possible is really serving the public quite well, because that’s jobs and opportunities across our state,” she said.

Sherrill even pulled in a line about that famous Trenton sign: Trenton Makes the World Takes.

Sherrill said she is determined to ensure her administration is advocating for who makes that sign a reality: The business community, she said.

Sherrill acknowledged the challenges: How the state ranks near the bottom in business friendlessness and unemployment. She said it’s unacceptable.

“That is not where you want us to be,” she said. “We want to open the door for opportunity here in our state, and that’s where all of you come in.”

Sherrill then literally asked for more engagement from the business community.

“We need all of you here to continually engage with the members of this government so that we can help chart that path forward,” she said. “We do our best work, not when we sit in Trenton behind closed doors and come up with great ideas, (but) when we’re out across New Jersey, speaking to each and every one of you and hearing, ‘Is this policy working? Is this getting us what we thought it would?’”

Her executive orders, she said, are not set in stone.

If they’re not working the way they are designed to, she said she wants to hear how they can be fixed.

Sherrill said her commitment to the business community is that she will keep them at arm’s length. She will take meetings. She will hear ideas.

“I can promise you that we’re always going to hear you out, and we’re always going to act in the way that we think is going to get the best results for everyone,” she said.

New Jersey, she said, has too many positives, rattling off all the things you would expect — location, educated workforce, global connections — and the ability to be nimble and adjust to a challenge.

It starts, she said, with the business community.

“That’s why I’m so excited to be in this room today,” she said. “I’m looking across this room, and this is the future of our state.

“You are the people who are going to make sure our kids succeed.

“You are the ones that are going to drive innovation.

“You are the ones that are going to help map out how we are going to handle AI and the disruptions there.”

It’s just what the business community wanted to hear.