October 27, 2009 Mass. Gov. meets with business leaders to discuss growth strategy Play video

(NECN: Peter Howe, Boston) - It was with enormous hopes that Massachusetts Governor Deval L. Patrick convened a brain trust of business and government leaders, billed as an economic summit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

"I want to seize this moment to work with you to make sure that every region of our commonwealth, every segment of our population, and every neighborhood in every community has the best chance possible at recovery,'' Patrick said as he kicked off the event Tuesday morning.

But by day's end, summiteers hadn't exactly found a silver bullet, but were offering positive-sounding talk about "a commitment to collaboration" and other efforts to continue "working together" to improve the economy.

One hard idea was a new state run lending fund, what Patrick called "in the context of access to capital ... a growth capital fund for small businesses.'' Unclear: How much taxpayer money? And what would it do, really, that agencies like the Small Business Administration and quasi-public state agencies that lend to businesses like the Mass. Development Finance Agency aren't. Also, many spoke of the need to do something -- again, unclear exactly what yet -- about high health-insurance and electricity costs. And summit participants agreed on the value of trying to get more federal information technology stimulus money. "In the context of the competition for federal funds,'' Patrick said, "we particularly talked about education and health IT opportunities

Patrick added, "We still have a lot of unemployment, and the crisis is still very much with us in individual lives in homes and businesses.''

Jon Hurst runs the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, a 2,000-member group of store owners who employ hundreds of thousands of people in the state. Asked how much substance he thought the day had provided, Hurst said, "I was very gratified. I didn't know what to expect. You know, sometimes when you come into something like this, sometimes it can get a little bit academic.'' But Hurst said he was encouraged to hear substantial talk about letting small businesses form health insurance buyers' cooperatives to negotiate lower prices, something he said Massachusetts law now forbids but many other New England states allow. "Small-business health insurance is number one. Nothing actually comes close,'' Hurst said.

Howe: Just as the old saying goes that Rome wasn't built in a day, neither are the Massachusetts and national economies going to get fixed in a day. So if you thought this economic summit at the Boston Fed would produce the breakthrough solution for Massachusetts' 9.3 percent unemployment, of course you're going to be disappointed. But it does look like this day at least offered some steps in the right direction.