I attended the Hartford Builders Association 2005 economic forum last Thursday. The two main speakers, Donald Klepper-Smith, Chief Economist and Director of Research for DataCore Partners LLC and Barry Rosa of Prudential Realty, both seemed quite optimistic about the local economy into 2006. They tempered some of their comments with a realistic leveling-off of the extraordinary housing growth of 2004, but the general outlook was very much of the "glass half full" nature.
Mr. Klepper-Smith's firm, DataCore Partners are the vendor of choice for fiscal impact studies in Connecticut. His analysis and comments were very well thought through and presented.