Your Political Voice
The Chamber’s Government Affairs Committee requests your input as we start to think about our legislative agenda for 2008 and track current legislation through the 2007 session.
Please take a few minutes to review the following questions, designed to inform the members about issues relevant to the health of your business and quality of life. After reviewing feel free to email any comments to our Government Affairs Committee at info@hainescity.com
Transportation/Growth:
Development and funding for water supply and water quality initiatives. To ensure adequate water resources are available for future use.
Make every land us change by referendum only, rather than by experts in planning & development.
Review fairness of State concurrency (growth management) requirements for development. Recent growth management regulations may have unfairly placed the majority of costs for concurrency requirements at the local level.
Redirect trasnportation funding to road projects of regional impact in Polk County.
Education:
Funding for Workforce Training – Continuing to provide grants and loans to retrain and improve workforce quality is extremely important to attracting and keeping quality businesses. Amendment to Class Size Reduction Act – Far-reaching legislation had unintended consequences such as not allowing team teaching and grouping classes for special instruction.
Amendment to Jessica Lunsford Act – This act was intended to protect children from sexual predators. It requires any vendor entering school grounds to be fingerprinted and have a background check. Unintentional consequences included not allowing a singing tour company to perform for students because background checks were not done.
Legal/Insurance:
Preservation of Workers Compensation Insurance reform – Supporting efforts to lower Workers Comp costs.
Opposition to additional health care mandates – Attempts have been made to add new mandates to small group plans, increasing cost of health care premiums.
Property Insurance reform – Support reform that protects from inequitable insurance increases resulting from regional disasters and other specific catastrophic events.
Property Tax Assessment with taxable value cap on commercial and industrial properties – This legislation would cap commercial and industrial properties at 3% annual increase in taxable value, similar to the maximum exemption on homestead property.
Raising Homestead Exemption to $50,000. Raising homestead exemption will remove thousands of residences from paying any property tax, which funds services required to maintain our quality of life. Taxes would increase for commercial, industrial and other categories to cover this loss of revenue.
Allow Businesses to decide if guns can be brought on to their private property and not legislate this issue.
Thank you for taking time to review. We know this is an extensive and varied list of legislative issues and appreciate your input as we develop a legislative agenda that truly represents the concerns of you, our chamber members.
