Ben Franklin Technology Partners: Budget cuts would “unravel” local startup support

Ben Franklin Technology Partners is keeping a close eye on the state budget.

For the past five weeks, Pennsylvania has been operating without a budget as state legislators wrestle between a 16 percent income tax increase and cuts in state spending, among other points of contention between the Democratically-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate.

As a result, state employees are no longer being paid, and expired unemployment benefits are not receiving an extension (though a tiny no-frills emergency budget may pass soon).

Caught up in the hurricane of the state budget debate is BFTP, a state-funded early stage investment group that could see its budget slashed by up to 60 percent. The organization is now asking its constituents to help push their state legislator to keep the group’s funding levels intact.

Otherwise, a cut to the funding to BFTP could have a dramatic impact on the city and the region.

And if you’re a reader of Technically Philly, that probably means you.

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Friday Q&A: New Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce head Rob Wonderling

Rob Wonderling is losing his office in the Harrisburg State Capitol complex.

On Aug. 1, the two-term Republican state senator from Delaware County will report to the Avenue of the Arts as the new president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, as the private, 5,000-member organization announced last month.

By taking the helm of the region’s largest business advocacy organization, he says he’s eager to rebolden the region’s new business community.

“We’ve really lost the language of entrepreneurship [in the region],” Wonderling, 47, says. “Risk taking and capital and job creation are almost scurrilous terms in some political quarters. I feel very passionately that for a free democratic society, we need all of that.”

He has startups on the brain — even if startups aren’t exactly in his past.

Before winning his district in 2002, wunderkid Wonderling served as deputy secretary of transportation to then-Gov. Tom Ridge. He spent the previous decade working for Bentley Systems, an Exton-based software firm whom we’ve profiled and Allentown-based Air Products and Chemicals.

Those gigs are more representative of his gadget trigger. See, Wonderling is something of a tech head, having professed that his Blackberry made him a better legislator.

“If you want to be an effective public servant, you really need to master emerging communication tools and techniques that mirror the way constituents are getting their information,” Wonderling, who was among the first Pennsylvania lawmakers to use a handheld wireless device as a legislative tool, told me last summer. “We’re a more mobile culture. I need to be, too.”

Wonderling’s ascension as the Chamber chief after former Gov. Mark Schweiker — who is taking an executive gig with Center City-based business services company PRWT — ended a six-year term was not without criticism.

There was some speculation after Schweiker announced his impending resignation that the Chamber might hire a female or minority chairman for the first time in its 208-year history, as the Business Journal reported, but still the Wonderling choice seemed to surprise few.

The young legislator could even be positioning himself for a possible gubernatorial run in 2014, as suggested by conservative columnist and Pottstown Mercury city editor Tony Phyrillas, who noted Wonderling signed just a three-year contract. Already there are a host of political ramifications from Wonderling’s departure.

But in an exclusive interview with Technically Philly, Wonderling stays off politics and instead tells us how he’ll use, promote and cultivate technology at the Chamber and throughout the region. He also uses the word “scurrlous” unprompted.

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