BY JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — Gov. Donald Carcieri and Keith W. Stokes, his new executive director of economic development, faced an understanding audience at the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce annual dinner last night. That helped, as they projected no immediate change in the state’s economic forecast.

An appearance before a group like the local Chamber at Twin River was helpful to his administration, Carcieri said, because it allows him to gauge the local impact of the state’s economic downturn.
“It’s a good group and they always get a big crowd that represents a lot of small businesses here,” he said.
The Chamber members usually can tell him exactly what is happening in their region in terms of business growth or business concerns, Carcieri said.
“I’ll ask how is business, is there any uptick yet, and they will respond ‘not yet’ and it is very difficult,” Carcieri said.
Small businesses are under pressure to hold the line and cut back, and that translates into a message for state officials that “they expect their government to do the same,” Carcieri said.
And with the economy still stalled, Carcieri said he and Stokes had come to offer details on their plans to help businesses in ways that are possible right now and may help stimulate improvements in the long run.
 One of those proposals is reducing the fee the state charges businesses to incorporate each year from $500 to $250.
“That’ represents roughly $10 million to $11 million that they all will see,” the governor said.
“When you are not making any money but still have to pay that $500, to a small business that is a real concern,” Carcieri said.
Helping small business is important, Carcieri said, because small businesses help create many of the jobs needed to put Rhode Islanders back to work.
With 73,000 Rhode Islanders now out of work and many more concerned about their jobs, job growth remains a top priority for the state Carcieri said.
His administration is proposing a tax credit of $2,000 for new jobs created by businesses with between 500 to 100 employees to help generate new jobs in the state, he noted.
The state must also avoid raising taxes as the economic downturn continues so that businesses will be willing to come and locate their operations in the state. That is the focus of the efforts he is taking to balance the state budget without raising taxes, something businesses should also support, he said.
“They have a right to expect that their government will do something to figure this out,” Carcieri said.
The governor told the Chamber members that he understands their responses that “we’re getting by, but it’s difficult,” and will try to improve that outlook before his term ends.
The state is facing a loss of nearly $550 million in revenue for its budget and must come up with ways to address that shortfall without raising taxes, he said.
“I’m just here to say thank you for what you’re doing every day because you are employing a lot of Rhode Islanders and we need you to grow and prosper,” Carcieri said.
 Stokes, a past executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, was appointed to the post of executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation in January and is already in the process of beginning a restructuring of the commission’s governing body.
 In his past work on economic development issues, Stokes told the Chamber members he found a uniform and systematic approach to economic development to be lacking in Rhode Island.
 What is needed to make the governing board more effective is a new structure for its operations, he said.
“We have an opportunity to reform the structure of that board and make it very similar to the Chamber’s structure, similar to the Chamber’s Board,” he said.
 That design has an economic development professional working with a commission made up of members of the business community, he said.
 To continue the reforms in economic development, the state will have to create a tax policy that is “real, sustainable and equitable,” Stokes said. “When you are talking about business growth, taxes matter,” Stokes said. “You have to maintain a uniform and equitable tax structure,” he said.
 Stokes said the state will also have to continue to invest in public education as a way to improve job opportunities for Rhode Islanders and change the current statistic that 60 percent of the Rhode Islanders who work hold no more than a high school education.
 The question to be answered, he said, is whether Rhode Islanders will be prepared and qualified to take the new jobs the state plans to create with its new economic development policies.
 Stokes said the state must also conduct a full inventory of its business and land resources and make that data available for future economic development and also continue to improve the state’s transportation system through projects such as the expansion of T.F. Green Airport in Warwick and the development of Providence’s Jewelry District into a new business incubator.
 “Over the course of the next year, there is nothing we can’t do as business people but move forward,” Stokes said.