*Special Bulletin*
Week Twenty-Two - June 17, 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

As we enter into the final weeks of the legislative session, decisions that typically take weeks or months for the Legislature to decide are now being settled within days, and even hours. Given this fever pitch, and the dizzying speed at which things are now moving, we felt it appropriate to give you a special mid-week report on a few of the major issues dominating the discussions.

Please note that the Chamber is hosting Governor John Lynch tomorrow morning, 7:30-9:00am, for his annual presentation of his State Of the State Address. Given everything happening in Concord, you do not want to miss this opportunity to engage directly with him on these issues! Register today, by visiting www.nashuachamber.com

SB 40:

Yesterday marked the final battle over Senate Bill 40, an attempt by certain legislators to pass a state version of the federal WARN Act. For those who have followed this issue in our weekly bulletins and in the press, you are already well aware that your Chamber of Commerce has led the fight to make critical changes to this bill that will allow it to balance the needs of employers while still benefiting employees in our state.

This fight has not been easy, and as often happens in politics, your Chamber won some and lost some on this bill. On the positive side, we were able to make significant improvements to the language of the bill determining employer liability. This particular issue had big impacts for employers, both in terms of personal liability and in terms of parent company liability. Your Chamber spent many hours pressing our case for improvements to the bill on this issue, and while we didn’t entirely get what we would have liked, we were happy to see the final version of the bill significantly improved over its original version, regarding the issue of liability.

On the losing side of the bill, we were deeply disappointed to see the final version of the bill apply to companies with only 75 or more employees. Despite the best efforts of Senate Republican Leader Peter Bragdon from Milford, and despite Senator Bette Lasky’s assistance outside the committee room, the legislators on the conference committee voted to approve this bill and to apply to it to small businesses with only 75 or more employees.

It didn’t happen without some theatrics. Senate Republican Leader Peter Bragdon of Milford had to step off the committee before it voted, due to the fact that his support of our concerns with this bill would not allow him to vote along with his Senate colleagues on the committee from the Democratic party. He was replaced by Senate Democratic Leader Maggie Hassan, rather than by one of his fellow Republican senators (Senate protocol, in such circumstances, would normally call for Senator Bragdon to be replaced by someone from his own party rather than by someone of the opposite party). After Senator Bragdon was replaced, the bill was then promptly approved by the revised committee membership.

If you help manage a company with 75 or more employees, or if you’re close to that threshold, you’ll want to quickly educate yourself on how this bill will impact you once it becomes law, which is virtually guaranteed at this point. The Governor has already indicated his willingness to sign the bill, despite our objections that it will negatively impact small businesses not equipped to follow the mandates set forth in this legislation.

State Budget:

It’s only Wednesday, and already the week has seen a whole host of new tax ideas unveil themselves, courtesy of the State Department of Revenue Administration. This past Monday, the Commissioner of Revenue was asked to present some new ideas for raising new taxes in New Hampshire, and he introduced some whoppers.

Among these new ideas, the vast majority of them relate directly to new ideas for taxing businesses. These include:

• One-year suspension of the BET credit against the BPT (we see this as the first step towards a total repeal of the credit)
• Increasing the BET tax rate from .75 percent to 1 percent
• Lowering the thresholds for reporting BET
• Further restricting New Hampshire’s net operating loss provisions (we’re already the most restrictive in the country)
• Taxing investment distributions from LLCs as dividends under New Hampshire interest and dividends tax
• Taxing real estate refinancing

All of these ideas will have huge impacts on businesses both small and large, across all sectors. Keep in mind, none of these ideas have actually received a public hearing, which means we have not had an opportunity to formally weigh in to register our dismay over many of these ideas.

Gaming:

Right in the mix of all of this, of course, the drama surrounding the question of legalized gaming continues to play out.

Supporters of the Hudson Casino project at the Green Meadows Golf Course continue to aggressively press their case for being included in the gaming proposals, but the idea of gaming itself being approved in the end is still a real crapshoot (pun intended).

You may recall that your Chamber recently conducted a survey, asking each of our members if we should publicly get involved in the gaming question. That survey was completed two weeks ago, and many of you have asked about the results. Those results are as follows:

• 72% of those responding to the survey felt that the Chamber should publicly endorse some form of state-sponsored gaming
• Of that 72%, one-third felt the Chamber should only do so as an alternative to certain business tax increases
• Those business tax increases in the survey that our members felt were unacceptable, are:
  
  • any increases to the Business Profits Tax
  • any increases to the Business Enterprise Tax
  • creation of a Capital Gains Tax
  • reinstatement of an Inheritance Tax
  • elimination of the BET credit against the BPT

Please note that the Chamber’s Board of Directors continues to very closely monitor the developments surrounding this issue, and the Executive Committee for the Chamber is receiving real-time updates from the Chamber President. More about the Chamber’s position will be elaborated upon in our regular weekly bulletin this Friday, but rest assured that the Chamber is heavily engaged in discussions behind the scenes in Concord.

Stay tuned over the next few days…the fireworks are beginning!

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