Week Nine - March 05, 2010

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

The legislature was on break this week. Even still, the week saw some very interesting developments.


Senate Ways and Means Committee Recommends Passage Of NOL Bill

Your Chamber of Commerce had a significant victory this past Wednesday, when the Senate Ways and Means Committee recommended on a 6-1 vote to pass SB 383, a bill which would increase from $1M to $10M the limits on the Net Operating Loss that can be carried forward in New Hampshire. This bill was requested by the Chamber and is our top strategic priority for 2010..

The prime sponsor of this bill is Nashua’s own Senator Bette Lasky and the co-sponsors include local Senator Peggy Gilmour and Representative Jane Clemons. Our hat goes off to Senator Gilmour, who is a member of the Ways and Means Committee, for her tremendous work in the Committee to see that this bill moved through as successfully as it did!

The vote came at the conclusion of some last-minute advocacy efforts by Chamber President Chris Williams and State Advocacy Committee Chair David Heath, who traveled to Concord on Tuesday for some final discussions at the State House. Those efforts paid off. The only vote against the bill came from Senator Lou D’Allesandro of Manchester, who expressed his concern about the impact that the bill would have on future state revenues. Committee Chair Senator Bob Odell, however, pointed out that this bill certainly presents no revenue issues in the short-term, and that the bill is an important job creation and retention measure.

Even if we get the cap increased to $10M, we will be the only state in the country with a cap anywhere near that low. Let’s get this bill passed and put people back to work!

The bill will be voted on by the full Senate next week, after which it will go to the House for what we expect to be a very tough fight.

The Reasonable Compensation Saga Continues

The business community had another victory this week when the Senate Ways and Means Committee unanimously recommended the passage of SB 497, Senator D’Allesandro’s and Rep. David Campbell’s bill on Reasonable Compensation. The Chamber strongly supports this bill and is the lead business organization involved with legislators and DRA officials in working meetings behind the scenes.

The Department of Revenue had originally given estimates to the Senate Committee that indicated passage of the bill might cost the state upwards of $50M in reduced tax revenues over the next two years. But those DRA revenue estimates have come under a lot of fire. They were called into question by the members of the working group that Senator D’Allesandro organized precisely to probe the Department’s analysis. We were very gratified that Senator D’Allesandro asked our own Chamber Advocacy Committee Chair David Heath to be a member of that group.

SB 497 has a lot of bipartisan support. Republican Senator Jeb Bradley, who sponsored a similar type of bill, has had only good things to say about SB 497, and all the members of the Ways and Means Committee from both parties voted for the bill, so it looks like this bill will pass the Senate when it comes up for a vote on Wednesday.

New Twist In The Gambling Debate

Speaking of revenue, the Senate Finance Committee this week began its consideration of SB 489, Senator D’Allesandro’s bill to expand legalized gaming. While the parameters of that bill have long been public and the battle lines have been drawn for some months, there was a significant new twist introduced this week. On Thursday, during the public hearing on the bill, Senator Kathy Sgambati of Alton introduced a proposed amendment that would require first $50M of money raised from the enactment of the gaming bill to be used by the State to reinstate cuts that have been made in the Health & Human Services budget over the last several months or are likely to happen in the near future. Senator Gilmour is a co-sponsor of that amendment.

As word of this amendment got around on Wednesday, it attracted a lot of attention among health care providers who have been struggling with the current economic situation. The result was that there were a lot of faces in the State House on Thursday for the hearing on SB 489 who had not previously been involved in the gaming debates. A number of provider groups, such as the New Hampshire Healthcare Association (representing the private nursing homes), the Brain Injury Association of New Hampshire, and the Private Provider Network (which provides services to the developmentally disabled) came out in favor of the Sgambati amendment. So it seems that, with a few strokes of the pen, so to speak, the supporters of the gaming bill gained a large number of reinforcements.

Contention Over State Control of Hospital Rates

One of the most controversial hearings of the week took place on Tuesday, when the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on SB 505, Senator Hassan’s bill to establish State control over how much hospitals can charge. The Chamber registered its opposition to that bill. The Department of Insurance is taking the position that this bill is necessary in order to re-establish a market situation. Not surprisingly, among the organizations opposing the bill was the New Hampshire Hospital Association, which said in its testimony that SB 505 would simply add new costs and new layers of state bureaucracy to the health care system.

No one seems certain how this one is going to play out in the Senate. With so much controversy surrounding the bill, especially in an election year, the early betting is that this one is going to end up as a study committee that will take a closer look at the idea.

Senate Public Affairs Committee Approves Extension of Pole Tax Exemption

Another bill supported by the Chamber got the green light on Wednesday from the Senate Public Affairs Committee. The Committee voted by a 4-1 margin to recommend the passage of SB 492, a bill to keep in place the existing exemption against the communications services tax for telecommunications poles and conduits. The concern expressed by the telecom providers was that the elimination of the exemption would simply enable cities and towns to levy what would amount to a new tax on telecom property (a tax which undoubtedly would end up being passed on to the consumers). Opponents of the bill were not able provide assurances to the Committee that the citizens would not end up paying more money if the exemption were ended. This hardly seems like the right time to think about introducing new taxes into the mix. The full Senate will vote on this next Wednesday.

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