We asked some big wheels what they see in 2007

We enlisted the help of seven Boston leaders and executives to help us figure out the big business issues in 2007. Participating in the roundtable were Marianne Ajemian, a real estate partner at Boston law firm Nutter, McClennen & Fish LLP and incoming national president of Commercial Real Estate Women; Lynn E. Browne, executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Ranch Kimball, outgoing state secretary of economic development; Paul F. Levy, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Ralph C. Martin II , Bingham McCutchen LLP partner and the former Suffolk County district attorney ; James E. Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority; and Henri Termeer, chief executive of Cambridge biotechnology company Genzyme Corp.

Q. What changes do you think Deval Patrick's inauguration as governor will mean for the state?

Levy: For the first time in many, many years, you will have a governor who truly believes in the role of government to govern and is interested in building up the infrastructure of state agencies with highly qualified people. For over a decade, you have not had governors interested in doing that. I'm looking forward to a renaissance of high-quality motivated people throughout state government.

Martin: There's a psychic, and then there's probably a quantitative piece to this. He has a great potential to recast Massachusetts' image not only nationally but globally. For years, people have been talking about how we as a state and a region compete with Charlotte and New York. The truth is, we compete with the world. I think he will be a very outward facing governor, an emissary on behalf of Massachusetts. He understands industry, how important the biotech and science community are, the academic community, and the teaching hospitals.

Rooney: Symbolically, I think there's a huge shift. I don't think the Romney administration was very much into the convention-meetings-tourism-hospitality industry. You in fact had Mitt Romney coming into office saying he didn't think this was even a business we should be in, that we should not have built the [Boston Convention & Exhibition Center] and should shut down the Hynes. On the night of his election, Deval Patrick had his victory party at the Hynes Convention Center.

Q. Do we need equal time for Governor Romney's top economic aide?

Kimball: We've rapidly changed our reputation in the last four years to being a state where you can actually get things done. One of the key issues we face is when firms that get started in Massachusetts expand, do they keep their jobs here or do they go elsewhere. With high tech, it used to be 75 percent were going to other states. Now, the most recent number we have, it's 60 percent are here in Massachusetts. Every world-scale, bio-pharma plant that's been proposed in the last year has come to Massachusetts to at least look at building here.

Q. How worried are you about a real estate collapse this coming year?

Browne: The housing sector is a serious, major drag on the economy. My best guess for 2007 is that we'll have slow growth -- no recession -- but considerably slower growth because of that drag. The housing situation, it is a national issue. Things have been worse in housing than many people thought. You're seeing a significant pickup in [mortgage] foreclosure initiations. It's picking up, and there are communities where it's concentrated; specifically, immigrant communities, Latino communities.

Q. Have we hit bottom?

Ajemian: We're close to it. In terms of overall values, they may continue to go down slightly. I'm more concerned about new housing starts, because that reflects optimism, prospects for the future.

Kimball: In the last year, we added 1.36 jobs per housing start. North Carolina added 0.77 jobs per housing start -- which is very typical of the rest of the country.

Levy: I'm still curious why it happens. Most other markets respond when there's a heavy demand and not enough supply. What is it that keeps that from happening in this one?

Kimball: There are only a few communities in the state that believe housing growth is economically beneficial: Cambridge, Quincy, Lowell. Maybe Worcester. Almost every other community thinks of it as ruinous financially. When I go out and talk about housing, it is one of the least popular things I can do.

Q. Will the new Massachusetts mandatory health insurance law succeed?

Levy: The concept is a good one, which is to get as many people as possible into the insurance system so that they get preventative care and the like. We will have fewer people showing up at our emergency room who can't pay.

There are many many details to work out. It won't go smoothly, but it will go in the right direction. It can't go smoothly only because the whole thing is an experiment. What I've been urging people to do is be patient and give space to try things out.

Q. Should we be concerned about the state's stagnant population growth and labor pool?

Termeer: We hire about 1,000 to 1,500 people yearly, and there's a turnover rate that's increasing. There has been tremendous success in biotech research, medical research, and you see that in people finding many new job opportunities to pursue. We're starting to bid up the price of labor. It's tolerable the way it is, but it is something to watch.

Browne: There's a lot of reliance on students from abroad, and it's not as easy as it used to be for them to stay and live in the country. It's harder to get that green card.

Q. Anything else you are worried -- or excited -- about for 2007?

Levy: I have a concern that people will forget the efficiencies that have come from the deregulation or the reregulation of the electric utility industry in the Commonwealth. I see an inclination to go back to the old central-planning days of electric-power production, that there could be some backsliding, with people looking back to the "good old regulated days," not understanding that they were not good. My hope is that we will reassert our faith in this market.

Kimball: Our hospitals and our academic centers need to get a more diverse funding base. Our academic centers, universities, and hospitals have been overly reliant on federal competitive grants. We're way below the national average in corporate research funding; we're way down in foundation money. That worries me over the next decade if we're overly addicted to one source of funding.

Browne: Our focus should be more regional and cooperative. Our [Boston] metropolitan area really includes southern Maine and southern New Hampshire and Providence. We'd have a lot more clout, particularly in the Senate, when we think of all six states.

Termeer: I feel an extreme sense of positive feeling about Massachusetts' ability to compete. We have so much to build on in this state. How can we maximize, optimize the resources we have? We will be really lost if we try to reinvent Massachusetts. We don't need to do that. We need to understand what we have, optimize it, and take action.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.