Rep. Martinez Lobbies For Hispanic-Owned Businesses
WASHINGTON, March 06–Hispanic small-business owners have become one of the fastest growing contributors to Connecticut’s economic development, and State Rep. John S. Martinez, D-New Haven, made a special trip to Washington this week to try to make certain it stays that way.
Martinez, the deputy majority leader of the Connecticut House, met Wednesday with other Hispanic elected leaders and administrative officials as part of an annual conference sponsored by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to promote federal legislative priorities, policies and programs that would continue to stimulate Hispanic business’s access to capital.
The nation’s Hispanic population in 2000 was 32.8 million, 12 percent of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 9 percent of Connecticut’s population, or 320,323 people, are Hispanic.
The Census Bureau’s most recent available figures show there are 1.2 million Hispanic business owners nationally, and 6,600 Hispanic-owned small businesses in the state, including 287 in Waterbury, which has the state’s fourth-largest Hispanic population.
“The question is: What are the plans of the [Bush] administration in dealing with the economic development of the Hispanic community picture?” Martinez said. “The issue is access to capital and opportunities to minorities, and in this case we are talking about Hispanics.”
The chamber has called upon the Bush administration to sustain and expand existing federal programs that provide federal funds and tax credits to employers and small-business owners who hire employees to help strengthen the economy in depressed areas.
The Hispanic chamber also recommended that Hispanic small-business enterprises in low-income communities be able to obtain more venture capital funds from the Small Business Administration, and that more money go into the SBA for its venture capital arm, the Small Business Investment Co., which targets Hispanic businesses.
In an effort to proactively address this question, Martinez and other conference participants plan to lobby their states’ congressional delegations today in support of the chamber’s policy recommendations.
Martinez agreed with U.S. Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass. that in order to maintain that important part of the economy and help it grow, there needs to be more business education and training as part of entrepreneurship curriculums in elementary and secondary schools and colleges.
“The strength of our country doesn’t just come out of the muzzle of an M-16 or out of the belly of a B-52. It comes out of the ability to educate our children,” said Kerry, who was invited to deliver a legislative briefing at the chamber conference. Kerry is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship.
Business education, Martinez said, should also focus on Hispanics who already own small businesses.
“People may already have the skills, but they don’t know where the resources are,” he said. “Part of technical assistance is connecting people to people who can provide them with help on how to access these resources. That is a real positive movement that’s occurring right now in the state of Connecticut.”
Martinez cited the Inner City Business Strategy Initiative in Waterbury, saying that in light of Sept. 11, the program should expand beyond its four-part training program and add a fifth part that would address crisis training for small-business owners.
“Quite frankly, I think Sept. 11 taught us that we should be doing a better job, particularly in this area, as is [being done] around homeland security,” Martinez said. “Crisis intervention, handling and management have got to be one of the goals we need to achieve.”
Not all businesses experienced setbacks since Sept. 11. Joel Rosario, vice president of the Greater Waterbury Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, claims many of Waterbury’s Hispanic small businesses are prospering from the aftermath of the attacks.
“I don’t know if I can fully contribute this to 9-11, but there has been a dramatic increase of New Yorkers moving to Waterbury. Some of them are starting small businesses, but some are just moving here,” said Rosario, who did not attend the conference.
Published in The Waterbury Republican-American, in Waterbury, Connecticut.
