Week Twenty-One - June 12, 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

REMINDER: If you haven’t yet signed up to attend our breakfast event with Governor Lynch next Thursday, June 18, please do so! Businesses are being impacted this session like never before, and this is your opportunity to engage directly with our Governor about all of these issues and more. The breakfast is June 18, 7:30-9:00am, at The Crowne Plaza. Register by visiting www.nashuachamber.com or calling 603.881.8333 and asking for MaryEllen Marcouillier.

It has been a long and, ironically, somewhat uneventful week. The only real action in Concord this week was the House and Senate budget (HB 1) committee of conference that has been meeting, and mostly agreeing on those items in the proposed budget that are not controversial. However, next week should see some high-noon drama. The revenue issues, i.e. gambling, refinancing capital gains, estate tax, will start to get hammered out. This budget committee of conference will keep meeting and discussing (we expect late into the nights), and eventually will vote on the budget to be presented to the full House and Senate committee of conference the week after.

There are a number of bills the Chamber is following and actively lobbying that are now going to committees of conference. For background information as you read this bulletin, a committee of conference takes place when both the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, and neither side is willing to simply adopt the other’s version of the bill without some negotiations. The Committee of Conference has four members of the House and three members of the Senate, all of whom come from the respective House or Senate committees that worked on the legislation in question. The committee of conference is charged to resolve the issues between the language passed by the two bodies and arrive at one bill to which both bodies can agree. If agreement cannot be reached, the legislation dies. Additionally, the conference committee has to have a unanimous vote for the legislation to move forward.

Committee Bills

The following is just a sampling of bills that are going to a committee of conference:

HB 1 - the budget (this bill includes everything the State hopes to spend in the coming two years).

HB 2 - The budget trailer bill (the trailer bill comprises all the ways the State expects to pay for the spending in HB 1; i.e. gambling/taxes/user fees).

SB 40 - This bill requires advanced notice in cases of certain plant closings and mass layoffs. The Chamber will try once again, in the committee of conference, to get the threshold employees that a business has to employ in order to be covered by the NH WARN Act as close to the Federal threshold as possible, which is 100. The House-approved threshold is 80, while the Senate-approved threshold is 75. Neither of these thresholds are acceptable to us, as they both place onerous burdens on small businesses throughout Greater Nashua. Given all of the other hammers coming down on the business community this session (increased unemployment taxes, the proposed BET suspension, a potential mortgage refinance tax, a new Interest & Dividends tax on LLC’s), we continue to be perplexed at the Legislature’s insistence that small businesses be additionally burdened by Senate Bill 40.

SB 182 - This bill establishes a committee to study all business tax credits and the revenues attributable to business tax credits and their effectiveness.

SB 203 - This bill clarifies the liability of railroad operators operating alongside recreational trails.

HB 96 - This bill allows certain replacement structures to qualify for the community revitalization tax relief incentive, set forth in RSA 79:E. Currently, the tax relief incentive only applies to rehabilitation projects in downtowns. The amendment put on by the Senate adds replacement structures. The Chamber supports all efforts to revitalize our downtowns. We expect a good compromise amendment will come out of the committee of conference.

HB 1: The Budget

To date only HB 1, the budget, committee of conference have met. The HB 1 committee has gone line by line over the budget and agreed to much. It is believed they will not take up the real issues until the beginning of next week. Those issues include:

Mortgage Refinance Tax

The governor is proposing a significant expansion of the real estate transfer tax to include certain mortgage transactions. Initial reports indicate that the proposal will impose the real estate transfer tax on all refinancing of mortgages, whether residential or commercial mortgages. This new tax will impose a new cost on borrowers seeking to restructure their obligations in this recession. The details of the proposal will be revealed to the Conference Committee on the budget on Monday, June 15th.

Stay tuned as next week should be steamy! Again, if you haven’t yet registered to attend our breakfast with Governor Lynch this next Thursday as he presents his State Of the State Address, please do so! Register on our website at www.nashuachamber.com or call 603.881.8333 and ask for MaryEllen Marcouillier.

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