Thursday, February 02, 2006

Minnesota Chamber Update From Board Member Bob Randall, Viracon

Bob Randall is a Sales Manager at Viracon and a member of the Minnesota Chamber Board of Directors.  These updates are from his perspective, please feel free to go to www.mnchamber.com for official policy statements from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

The Minnesota Chamber is staking its entire effort this year on passing the Motor Vehicle Sales Tax (MVST) constitutional amendment after having failed to get more transportation funding for the past four years. Failing to pass the MVST Amendment would certainly set us back in the eyes of the legislature and governor's office as they would say, "the public has spoken...they did not want any more money to go for transportation...this even when the proposal involved only a shift in existing revenues...in essence the proposal involves more funding and NO
TAX INCREASES."

We tabled Eminent Domain until our next meeting in April... members are split between the strict property rights point of view and the pro-growth faction that like having eminent domain as an economic development option. I personally favor limited usage, but not a strict interpretation precluding it from an economic standpoint 100%. Hopefully by April we will have some ideas on how to craft a policy "in the middle".

We decided Energy would be our next big policy effort. The Chamber
staff will spend most of their research resources on this issue this
year as we try to come out with a proactive policy supporting more power
generation to keep rates competitive...if we do nothing,
proposals unfriendly to business will likely put us on the defensive down the road.

Workforce development will be a future issue we deal with as well . We are struggling to
get our arms around this monster! Some want to tackle the issue
"soup to nuts" (education through worker training and recruitment) while
some of us would like more time to define what it is we need. The MN Chamber staff
will work on coming up with some way to measure/research the issue and
present the options to us before we move ahead.

The MN Chamber will be leaping into the debate regarding election reform
as we advocate: 1) staggered terms for the MN Senate 2) moving up the
primaries to June (as a way to minimize the caucuses and encourage more
"mainstream" candidates) 3) having a biennial legislature...having them
meet every other year rather than every year so as to discourage the
idea of having our legislators be full time politicians and 4)drawing
district lines by commission to help de-politicize the process.

We will also be addressing the governor's immigration reform proposal as
it has a provision that is not business-friendly...namely the feature
that opens up a witch hunt for companies that "knowingly hire illegal
immigrants". The issue seems to be more of a Federal problem, rather
than a state problem. We don't have a policy yet, but clearly this is
not fair to businesses that try to comply with Federal Employment law,
which limits the questions and verification we can do to verify citizenship. Having the state put more responsibility on business to verify citizenship while the Federal Gov't ties our hands makes no
sense in my opinion , so I am sure we will have something by April on this issue.

We sharpened up our education, healthcare, environmental, labor/mgmt,
civil justice and privacy policies as well. More on that if you want an
update on anything specific.


2 comments:

Dave Effertz said...

Interesting ideas. Thanks for the update, Bob!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Dave. The ideas are actually coming from our member businesses around the state. The MN Chamber staff conducted an extensive survey along with approximately 30 meetings across the state with hundreds of businesses in January (including one in Owatonna). In a competitive world, it is imperative that we maintain a business friendly environment in Minnesota. In addition, business can often help bring new and innovative ideas to government and the overall public policy arena. The MN Chamber looks to Owatonna and the Owatonna Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism as a key partner as we are fortunate to have one of the strongest Chambers in the state.