Bret Keisling celebrates a new Massachusetts law sponsored by Sen. Julian Cyr and Rep. Carmine Gentile, and signed by Gov. Charlie Baker, which provides permanent funding including staff and other resources for the Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership.
Bret also celebrates a bill introduced in Pennsylvania by Reps. Greg Rothman and Sara Innamorato which would create an Office for Employee Ownership and provide informational, technical, and financial assistance to new and existing employee-owned companies in PA, as well as provide incentives and support for those considering EO.
Special shout outs to Jack Moriarty of Ownership America and Kevin McPhillips of PaCEO for their work in supporting, with others, these important steps.
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Mini-cast 209 Transcript
[00:00:00] Bret Keisling: Welcome to the ESOP Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Bret Keisling, and as it says on my business cards, I'm a passionate advocate for employee ownership. There are exciting legislative developments for employee ownership in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker just signed into law an act to enable the Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership as part of a much broader spending and appropriations bill.
[00:00:36] Notably, the Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership will now be permanently housed in the Massachusetts Office for Business Development. Included is funding for a full-time executive director who will spearhead the office's efforts. The Massachusetts Center, like most of our state centers, we'll focus on outreach and education and serve as a resource hub for those looking to consider transitioning to employee ownership.
[00:01:01] Permanent funding for this critical position is absolutely huge! Massachusetts joins Colorado and California, among other states, in providing state resources to grow employee ownership. The bill was sponsored in the Massachusetts Senate by Julian Cyr and in the Massachusetts House by representative Carmine Gentile.
[00:01:21] Ownership America's founder and executive director, Jack Moriarty, worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help bring this law about. You can learn all about Ownership America and Jack in our archives. He appeared in Episodes 176 and 177, which you can find at www.EsOpPodcast.com.
[00:01:42] Two weeks before Massachusetts enacted this important EO legislation, Pennsylvania began the process with the introduction of a bill in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives introduced by state representatives Greg Rothman and Sara Innamorato. This bill would also create a Pennsylvania office for employee ownership within the executive branch and provide significant incentives and assistance for those who are considering employee ownership.
[00:02:09] Representative Rothman appeared on the podcast several years ago, in Episode 88, titled Across the Aisle, a Bipartisan Approach to Employee Ownership. In that episode, he talked about his hopes to promote employee ownership with representative Innamorato in Pennsylvania. Not long after that episode aired, COVID hit and put a temporary pause on their plans. But it's worth noting in light of the podcast episode title, "a bipartisan approach," that Representative Rothman is a Republican conservative and representative Innamorato is a Democrat. It just reinforces the bi-partisan appeal and strength of employee ownership.
[00:02:45] Now the Pennsylvania bill won't pass in this legislative session, so it will have to be re-introduced. But the good news for employee ownership is that representative Innamorato won her reelection campaign and Greg. Rothman just won election to the Pennsylvania State Senate, meaning we have strong EO advocates in each of the Pennsylvania houses.
[00:03:07] Congrats and appreciation go to the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership and its executive director, Kevin McPhillips, for their tireless work in the development and introduction of this bill. And yes, as a matter of fact, Kevin McPhillips has also been a previous guest on the podcast talking about the Pennsylvania CEO, which you can find on Episode 96 at www.EsOpPodcast.com.
[00:03:30] Kevin wrote a blog post for the NCEO about a press conference that was held to announce the Pennsylvania legislation. The blog post also includes a video. We'll have a link to the post in our show notes, as well as a link to a blog post at Ownership America that gives more details about Massachusetts' new law.
[00:03:48] In both blog posts, for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, the authors of the posts identified other people who worked so hard for these successes to occur.
[00:03:57] There are so many exciting things going on across the country and world to support and grow employee ownership. Massachusetts has taken a major step and Pennsylvania will hopefully follow up with its own law before too long.
[00:04:09] With that we'll wrap up today's episode of the Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. This is Bret Keisling. Be well.
[00:04:16] Bitsy McCann: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at EO Podcast Network. This podcast has been produced by Bret Keisling for the EO Podcast Network, original music composed by Max Keisling, branding and marketing by BitsyPlus Design, and I'm Bitsy McCann.
Standard Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and don't represent those of my own firms or the organizations to which I belong. Nothing in the podcast should be construed as guidance or advice of any kind in any field and the fact that I mentioned an organizational website or an advocate or a company on a podcast does not reflect an endorsement, but if you've heard your name or your group's name mentioned on this podcast, I'd love to have you come on and talk about it yourself.
A note on the transcript: This transcript was produced by Descript, an automated transcription service. While it has been reviewed by The EsOp Podcast, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the transcription. Please refer to the original audio when citing sources.