Thanks for inviting me today.

I was born and raised in Ridgefield when it was a small, working-class town. My dad was a laborer; my mom cleaned houses. I was first in my family to go off to college, in Boston, then into business. But I came back to my Connecticut hometown.

My town was growing, and I wanted a say in its future. I was elected to Planning and Zoning, then Board of Selectmen, then to the top spot. I've been elected Democratic first selectman five times in a heavily Republican town.

That's partly because my approach is collaboration. Not only with the other party, but also with other municipalities. I've been involved in many state and regional issues.

Why am I here? Simple: I want to stand up for our cities and towns against the dysfunctional state government in Hartford.

A quick story: a while back, I read in the press that the state was awarding Ridgefield a $200,000 grant to add some frills to our ballfield. We never asked for the money. I can't get the support I need for schools and economic development to save jobs, but the state was issuing bonds—borrowing money—for an unnecessary recreational project in this economy. I told them, "No thanks."

This is typical of what my fellow mayors and first selectmen face every day. We work where the rubber meets the road. Our hometowns are about schools, and businesses, and jobs and quality of life. Our state government is about political games and finger pointing. They refuse to live up to their responsibilities. They are killing our hometowns, and that has to stop.

I have a vision of a Connecticut where the state serves our cities and towns, not the other way around.

How do we get there? My three priorities are economic development—that is, jobs—education and transportation.

But they are not three separate priorities. They're completely interwoven. For example, take economic development. Companies want to locate where there is an educated, skilled workforce. That's education. They want their employees to be able to get to and from work easily so they can be productive. That's transportation. All interwoven. That's how we create jobs.

That's not how our state works. Instead of working together, our agencies are in old-fashioned 1960s-style silos. They don't work together. They fight. On a major state highway project near my home, one state department actually fined another department hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's so typical.

I see a new kind of collaboration. At the state level, I would require departments and agencies to work together on integrated teams. Do you know Connecticut doesn't have a cabinet? If I ran the state, it would.

I would also make it easy for cities and towns to work together. Today the state forces them to compete. I would work to promote regional collaboration across party lines, saving money and getting more done.

Most of all, I would take action. As a chief elected official, I have to be a person of action. I can't dawdle and play political games. I'm proud of what I've done in my town and region and across the state. Ridgefield is regularly chosen as Connecticut's number one town.

The state studies things to death. They create studies, then study the studies, like they've been doing with the Danbury rail line.

And they create plans. We have mountains of them, most recently a 500-page economic strategic plan. It has a 50-page wish list of programs and projects—but no ideas for getting them done or paying for them. We don't need a plan. We need a plan of action!

When I travel across the state, most people tell me no one else is talking about the issues this way. No one is talking about standing up for our cities and towns. Someone even said to me, "Rudy, you're never going to make it." Why? "Because you're making too much sense." But I know I can win, because I know people are tired of political games and lack of leadership.

Connecticut is blessed with natural beauty, great educational institutions, an ideal location and hardworking people. We are a state with a great history and great promise. But the state of Connecticut can't work when our leaders are in a state of denial—which, as Mark Twain said, ain't just a river in Egypt.

I am standing up for our cities and towns so we can keep and create jobs—so Connecticut is a place where families prosper, where companies want to do business and where young people want to build their future. That's why I'm asking you to stand up for me.