A Mixed Record for Romney on Mass. Economy

As a 25-year-old, it's fair to say that I've only recently started paying attention to US politics. 2007 and 2008 were the big years, because of the Gubernatorial and Presidential elections. It was only then and after that I began to really look into what was going on politically. Likewise, prior to Governor Deval Patrick, I rarely paid any attention to the Governor's office, occupied then by Mitt Romney. If I did, it was because someone was informing me of one of his initiatives or programs that I didn't really care about.


So when the Boston Globe decided to run an article on what exactly Romney did as Governor of Massachusetts, I became interested. I basically missed out back when he was actually here. There were a couple of surprising and ironic behaviors the Globe mentioned:

"Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded research group, said the magnitude of the deficit required cuts in local aid, which he called a fair, if not dynamic, strategy deployed by most governors in times of crisis.
'In broad strokes, he did pretty much what every other governor has done — he raised revenues and cut spending,” Widmer said. “It’s probably the right thing to do, to have a balanced approach.'

...Widmer said Romney undertook few initiatives that could have fundamentally altered the economic equation, such as policies aimed at lowering electricity costs, which are among the highest in the nation.

Widmer pointed to William Weld, another Republican governor who took office during a recession and overhauled the state’s worker’s compensation system. It took a decade for the changes to take full effect, but worker’s compensation costs for businesses plunged by two-thirds and helped make the state more competitive.
Romney did not have the patience for tackling issues that might only pay off in the long term, Widmer said." 

"...Others chafed at Romney’s frequent out-of-state trips as he tested the waters for his first presidential run. 

Despite his pledge to be the state’s top salesman, he tried to woo Republican Party conservatives by bashing the state’s liberal politics and emphasizing its generous unemployment benefits — raising a red flag to companies interested in relocating here. 

'I was very shocked to hear our governor on the road basically saying Massachusetts is a terrible place to do business,' said David Begelfer, CEO of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties."

The full article can be found here:
http://articles.boston.com/2012-09-05/politics/33593523_1_unemployment-rate-mitt-romney-massachusetts-governor

Also, a very cool graph is omitted from the website version, so here is a scan of it:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v42/Wariat/scan.jpg