The Minnesota Chamber has five priorities for the 2010 state legislative session, set to begin Thursday.
Bill Blazar, senior vice president of public affairs and business development for the Minnesota Chamber, discussed these items with a group of local leaders at a recent Brown Bag Lunch program, sponsored by the International Falls Area Chamber of Commerce.
According to Blazar, the Chamber’s priorities boil down to five topics: environment and natural resources, nuclear energy, state fiscal policy, education and health care reform.
Blazar noted that key changes to three of these items — streamlining the environmental review and permitting process, repealing the nuclear ban and providing alternative teacher licensure — could be made without spending any money.
Blazar said that many members of the Legislature would be concerned with the budget and unallotment; and an election year for the House, Senate and governor will likely influence decisions.
The Chamber’s position is that certainty is needed in the environmental review and permitting process. Blazar noted that several businesses have looked to locate an operation in Minnesota, but have also looked elsewhere because of the ease of obtaining permits.
“We’re pretty enthusiastic about this proposal,” Blazar told the luncheon attendees, saying that this appeared the most attainable of the group’s focuses.
The Chamber also hopes that the Legislature will “lift the gag order on (additional) nuclear power plants,” he said. He said that this would open up more options, as Minnesota is one of a few states with such a restriction.
In relation to the state’s fiscal policy, Blazar said the Chamber recommends changing the way that the state sets its budget so that only the most important programs are funded. Noting that Minnesota now works with previous budgets to project future allocations, he suggested instead deciding funding based on current prioritization of projects.
Blazar also recommended that the state shop for, and thereby supply the public with, services at a lower cost per unit, and also reduce overhead expenses of government as ways to lower expenses.
He stated that increasing taxes would not solve the existing budget deficit of $1.2 billion, never mind what he said was a projected deficit of $5.5 billion by 2012-13. Using the example of health care, he said that some items tend to “crowd out” other programs when it comes to funding.
The Legislature tends to spend based on peak incomes, even though “we go up and down quite a bit,” Blazar said. He recommended spending closer to the average so that deficits did not accumulate.
He merged his discussions of budget and education by using the example of school districts looking for products and services based on a state-wide “price to beat,” where local companies could bid on the contract but would have to meet the price of the same item available statewide.
He said that the Chamber would like to see “more money focused on the primary responsibility,” which in the case of education would be teaching children.
Also on the topic of education, the Chamber push the Legislature to provide alternative means of teacher licensure. Blazar described the case of non-traditional teachers with experience in a particular field teaching a class on that subject, noting that these people sometimes make the most effective teachers.
On the issue of health care, Blazar said that the Chamber advocates continuing to implement the 2008 state health care reforms, advancing a policy for long-term care reform and continued monitoring of the federal health care debate.
Blazar noted an example of the discontinued funding of the state’s General Assistance Medical Care program this spring as a way for the state to rethink services and often find a cheaper way to provide the same medical care.
