Where's Marty?

Just sat in on a 3:30 pm conference call sponsored by the Governor’s Office of External Affairs. Brand new Finance Director Ana Matosantos was there, as was Labor Department Director Vicky Bradshaw. Matosantos spoke quickly, throwing out a lot of numbers but precious little substance while Bradshaw came off more as a 1940’s pitchman, at one point telling one association leader to tell his constituents to “get in the game.”

Unless you had an actual question, the Office of External Affairs notice said we had to be in “listen-only mode” (isn’t that exactly the sort of language you’d expect from an office labeled “External Affairs”?)

Anyway, while just about all the questions were from business leaders worried about some particular subsidy, tax credit or set-aside, most were small-business related, and that posed a huge problem because despite being advertised as part of the conference call, state Small Business Advocate Marty Keller was nowhere to be found.

It got so bad that after one woman asked a rambling question about how the proposed budget would affect some arcane small business set-aside, Bradshaw simply said, “We’ll have Marty get a hold of you.”

-Anthony Pignataro