Week Eleven - March 19, 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

We’re approaching the mid-point of this year’s legislative session, at which time all of the House bills need to cross over to the Senate and vice versa. This is an important juncture, because it whittles down the hundreds of bills introduced at the beginning of the session down to a more manageable several hundred. Only those bills with significant support get through this choke point, which means it’s a good opportunity to test the political winds with regard to certain issues and determine which ones might eventually succeed when the session ends in late May or early June.

With that in mind, let’s see where some of the more critical issues stand at this half-way point!

House Rejects Attempt to Repeal LLC Tax

The latest round of the LLC tax saga occurred on Wednesday, and that round went against New Hampshire businesses when the House voted by a 40 vote margin to send HB 1661 to interim study. The bill would have repealed the LLC tax, which the Governor has stated he now supports. While those who voted to send this bill to study can technically say they didn’t vote against repealing the LLC tax, the effect of the vote is that this bill is now dead for this session.

The House Ways and Means Committee that reviewed this bill earlier in the session had split on the bill, with 11 of them voting to send it to a study and 7 of them saying the tax should be repealed. The majority of the Committee argued that it was necessary to study the fairness of the LLC tax and that they needed time to review other related bills that are working their way through the process. The rest of the Committee urged passage of the bill, in order to (in their words) “retain and stimulate businesses in New Hampshire and allow our small businesses to move us out of our current economic difficulty.”

This claim by those in the majority that any repeal of the LLC tax needs to be “carefully studied and analyzed” rather than outright approved is quite ironic, given the fact that the passage of this same tax late last session was done with absolutely no careful study or analysis. Where were these same legislators then, who now claim that due diligence must be given to this issue??

Despite the House’s action on this bill, the issue is far from dead. In fact, the House action on this bill redoubles the importance of another bill - SB 497, Senator D’Allesandro’s Senate bill that addresses the LLC tax and at the same time overhauls the issue of Reasonable Compensation – the other big elephant that’s attached to this whole mess. The Chamber supports SB 497 as the best available source of potential relief for small businesses on both the LLC tax and Reasonable Compensation. That bill is still in the Senate Finance Committee and it will be voted out of the Senate (favorably, it is assumed) next week.

Revenue Issues Take Center Stage

One of the interesting developments in Concord over the past several weeks has been the fact that draconian cuts in many Health and Human Services programs are being considered and even recommended. The cuts being explored are the most significant that anyone can remember in recent history. The programs on the chopping block deliver care to extremely needy and ill people, so this is making a lot of legislators extremely uncomfortable.

Two of the bills were heard this week. On Wednesday, the House Finance Committee recommended the passage of HB 1664, which makes cuts in DHHS budget areas such as developmental disabilities and acquired brain disorder. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee (after an emotional hearing, with lots of folks potentially affected by the bill in attendance) voted to kill SB 519, a similar type of bill.

Regardless of what ultimately happens on these bills, the impact has been undeniable: they have put the question of new revenues front and center.

Senate Finance Committee Approves Gaming Bill

All of this is being viewed as closely related to SB 489, the Senate’s bill to expand legalized gaming. On Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee voted to recommend the passage of that bill by a 4-2 margin. Most observers think that this bill is likely to pass the Senate when it gets to the floor next week. If that happens, then what will happen when the bill gets to the House is a very interesting question. Although the House has traditionally been seen as hostile to gaming bills, the HHS budget situation is going to pose a difficult dilemma for the House members. Given the proposed cuts in HHS services, House members are likely to be presented with a situation where they have a choice between gaming on the one hand and drastic HHS cuts on the other. There are simply no other significant revenue sources that are being seriously considered (don’t forget that the Governor has pledged to veto a sales tax or an income tax).

Many of you have asked us in recent weeks if the Chamber has a formal position on this bill, or if we are planning to take one. Some of you may have read today that the Hudson Chamber of Commerce announced its support for gaming yesterday, in a news release.

Please know that our Chamber has received a formal request from Senators Bette Lasky and Peggy Gilmour, as well as from Representative Jane Clemons, asking that our Chamber publicly support this bill. This request will be vetted by our State Advocacy Committee members at a meeting this Monday, and a recommendation will be given to our full Board of Directors to review in the next 8 weeks. An outcome to this request, while still moving steadily through our internal deliberative process, will therefore likely not be available until early May. The Chamber’s formal position, whatever it may be, will be made known comfortably before any final legislative action is actually taken in the legislature, since this issue is guaranteed to come down to the wire at the end of the legislative session.

RFID Hearing Scheduled

On Tuesday, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on HB 478, a bill regulating the use of “radio frequency identification devices.” RFIDs are used by all sorts of businesses for things like inventory and quality control. The bill was studied by a committee last year and the House Commerce Committee recommended a version of HB 478 that business groups were able to support. Unfortunately, that version was overturned on the House floor and the House passed a different version of HB 478 that goes farther in the scope of restrictions than perhaps any other state. The Chamber and other businesses and organizations will be looking for a return to the original version of the bill. This is no time for the government to be placing unreasonable regulations on New Hampshire businesses.

National Healthcare Reform

Switching gears for a second…many of you who follow national politics are aware that the U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote on national healthcare reform this Sunday. This issue is of tremendous significance and will certainly impact every business one way or another in the coming years, should it pass.

Your Chamber of Commerce has not taken a formal position on this topic, knowing that there is a lot of division amongst our own members regarding both the potential benefits and consequences of this reform. With that said, we have received many calls from various members and business people, asking how you can share your opinion with our local Congressmen.

Congressman Paul Hodes represents most of the communities in the Greater Nashua region. If you would like to contact his office, you can do so by calling his Nashua office (603-579-6913), or calling his Washington office (202-225-5206).

Chamber to Host Annual Crossover Legislative Reception

The Chamber each year has taken the opportunity of this halfway point in the legislative session to host a special reception that brings together Chamber members and area legislators for a relaxed evening of socializing, and catching up with each other relative to issues that are still alive and being considered. This reception allows the business community to share its opinions with our legislators regarding those issues, and also allows the legislators an opportunity to ask questions of our members and get feedback from us on how things are going in Concord.

We’re proud to have Public Service of New Hampshire and Law Warehouses sponsoring the reception this year, and thank them for their active support of our Chamber’s legislative activities.

This reception is open to all of you, and we hope you’ll join us!

The reception will take place next Thursday, March 25, at The Crowne Plaza Hotel, starting at 5:30pm. Please email Angela Velasquez at our office to rsvp: avelasquez@nashuachamber.com.

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