Week Eighteen - May 22, 2009

This electronic publication, known as The Advocate, is brought to you each Friday by your Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with our friends at Devine Millimet & Branch, and ActiveEdge. Please use this piece to review what has happened in Concord this past week, read about our Chamber's lobbying efforts relating to those activities, and preview what we are doing on behalf of our Chamber members in the coming week.

This Week’s Update

While many of us are out heating up the grill, enjoying a first outing on the water, or simply relaxing on a back deck and remembering past heroes this Memorial Day weekend, state legislators and officials will be sitting in stuffy hearing rooms pounding out comprises and decisions on the state’s upcoming budget. This past week saw some serious negotiations taking place, as well…

WARN Legislation Amended and Passed By House Labor Committee

This past Tuesday, the House Labor Committee voted by a margin of 13-2 to recommend the passage of an amended version of SB 40, known simply as The WARN bill. Your Chamber has been leading the effort to make changes to this onerous bill, which we feel would detrimentally impact many businesses with 75-100 employees and hurt our efforts to recruit such businesses to New Hampshire in the future.

The committee’s amendment makes some very, very small changes. It increases the employee threshold from 75 to 80 employees. It also makes a very minor change in the parent company liability section, providing that the parent has liability for the actions of a subsidiary if the parent had prior knowledge of the layoffs. Although we are encouraged that these changes help move the bill in the right direction, they certainly do not yet make this what we would consider a good bill for businesses in New Hampshire. The measure will be voted on by the full House on June 3rd.

We are encouraged that, if the committee was willing to move the threshold for companies held liable under this bill from those with 75+ employees to those with 80+ employees, there might yet be a slim opportunity to get that threshold even higher.

Unemployment Trust Fund Amendment

Also on Tuesday, the House Labor Committee held a hearing on an amendment to SB 129, which was intended to address the impending exhaustion of the unemployment trust fund. As we reported last week, the amendment contained a number of changes in the current law, including the establishment of an additional surcharge and the creation of a higher payment for chronic negative-rated employers. The bill also proposes two other significant changes: 1) increase over three years the wage base used to determine how much an employer owes in taxes to the unemployment fund, from its current base of $8K per employee to $14K, and 2) raise the required balance in the fund before positive-rated employers can receive a discount on their tax (currently, employers can start to receive discounts once the balance is at $225 million or higher; the new proposal says the balance would have to be at least $275 million or higher).

Chamber President Chris Williams testified on behalf of the Chamber, and told the Committee that the Chamber recognizes the “dire situation” the trust fund is in. Williams suggested that, in return for the legislature’s desire to increase the wage base used for determining an employer’s contribution to the fund, as described above, the Committee should cut the proposed trigger increases at which positive-rated employers could enjoy a discount against this tax in half, so that employers can start receiving a discount once the balance is at $250 million rather than the proposed $275 million.

As it turned out, that was the one change that the Committee made in the proposal, which had been submitted originally by DES. So, the Chamber’s voice was heard on this very difficult bill.

This bill will now be voted upon by the full House on June 3, before going to the Senate.

Senate Budget Deliberations Begin

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee took up its review of the 2010/2011 state budget. The news at the outset was grim. Committee Chair Senator Lou D’Allesandro announced that the projected shortfall for the biennium is $400 million. And, although Senator D’Allesandro did not delve into the issue any deeper, the equally grim reality is that some of the funds which the Governor and legislature are going to be counting on to balance the budget are far from certain. For instance, the State is planning on utilizing tens of millions of dollars from the Joint Underwriters Association Medical Malpractice Fund. The rumors around Concord are that the State’s use of that money is likely to be challenged in court by entities that paid into the fund.

Today (Friday), the committee is reviewing the difficult DHHS portion of the budget. Tomorrow, the committee will meet in an unusual Saturday session to complete its budget review so that the committee can be prepared to start its final voting on what to recommend to the full Senate as early as Tuesday.

Our main goal in these budget discussions is to ensure that the State does not increase existing business taxes or, even worse, create new business taxes. Although (thankfully) those ideas have not been floating around the State House, we remain vigilant because of the severity of the revenue problem that apparently exists. As always, the three common new-revenue options are sales tax, income tax and gaming. Sales and income tax proposals are sure to fail. Don’t rule out gaming, but that is also not a sure thing. So, as always, the easy place to look for more revenue is through increases in business taxes. We think that the legislature understands what a remarkably bad idea it would be to increase business taxes in this economy. We will be there to keep reminding them of that.

State-Sponsored Gaming: Your feedback requested!

As described in the previous paragraph, the issue of legalized gaming is sure to receive closer attention in the coming weeks than it has ever before received. This is due largely to the condition of the current state revenue picture, and the predictions for a deficit in the coming biennium. Considering the fact that the state’s biggest champion of legalized gaming, Senator Lou D’Allesandr, is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the issue of legalized gaming is all but guaranteed to dominate center stage in the next few weeks.

Your Chamber sent out a special request yesterday, asking each Chamber member to weigh in on this issue by completing an easy, 4-question online survey. If you have not yet completed that survey, please do so now by clicking here.

Happy Memorial Day !

As we begin Memorial Day weekend, we salute all of those who gave “the last full measure of devotion” for our country. We also honor all of our veterans, and especially the men and women who are defending our country today and the families who are waiting for their speedy return.

Acknowledgements

This weekly update is made possible by the generous support of Devine Millimet & Branch, one of the state’s top law firms and our Chamber’s contracted representative in Concord. If your business has a legislative or local issue that needs strategic consulting and attention, they are a valuable resource that can help navigate you through both local and state processes.

This weekly update is designed and maintained by our friends at ActiveEdge, and we thank them for their help in delivering this piece to your inbox every Friday!

If you have questions about this update, or comments to share with us about other issues in Concord, please email Chris Williams at cwilliams@nashuachamber.com. We want to be sure we're representing you to the best of our ability, so do not hesitate to reach out to us!

J. Christopher Williams
President & CEO
Greater Nashua Chamber of Commerce
151 Main St.
Nashua, NH 03060
Phone: 603.881.8333
Fax: 603.881.7323