by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
As the 2009 legislative session looms, the Florida Chamber of Commerce is making its rounds. Tuesday morning, the organization hosted a meet-and-greet at Mayo Clinic for area business owners and leaders and available State Legislators. The purpose of the gathering was to brief attendees on the issues the Chamber feels need to be addressed during the session and beyond.
The Chamber has identified six areas — drivers — it would like to focus on in 2009 and most of those areas have sub-areas. Those drivers include talent, innovation, infrastructure, business climate, governance and quality of life.
Brock Mikosky is the government affairs advocate for the Florida Chamber’s North Florida Region. He said the Florida Chamber is an organization that business owners and leaders should look to as the session approaches.
“We are the state’s most powerful and most effective advocate for businesses. At least, we’d like to think so,” he said, adding today’s business environment has become a meshing of lawmakers and business owners. “You would like to separate politics and business, but there is no way to do that these days.”
Mikosky says the Chamber believes the current economic situation can rectify itself if free enterprise and capitalism are allowed to play out.
“You can’t tax or policy your way out of a recession,” he said. “It has to happen through economic development.”
Nelson Bradshaw, Jacksonville area president of Compass Bank, agrees. He said the struggles of the residential mortgage business have created a trickle down effect that is now digging deeply into the pockets of area contractors and subcontractors.
“I think residential led us off to the recession and it’s what I think we need to come back,” said Bradshaw. “I see housing sales starting to come back this year. It’s key to leading us off the recession. That and consumer confidence. A vast majority of business owners are Republican by nature, but even they are hopeful about the new (presidential) administration.”
Local lobbyist Marty Fiorentino of the Fiorentino Group said forging a solid relationship between the Florida Chamber, the local section of that Chamber and state lawmakers is imperative to rebuilding the economy of Florida. Once the fifth most affordable state, Florida is now the 14th most expensive to live in.
“Nowhere is change more evident than in politics and the Florida Chamber recognizes that,” said Fiorentino. “We are constantly looking at ways to do business. The regional advocacy council was developed for that purpose. It makes us more effective regionally and and the Chamber gets to know the local leaders and legislators better.”
The following are the six drivers the Chamber will focus on in 2009 and its position on each:
Talent
• Workforce — supports retraining and expanding opportunities for Florida’s workforce and tailoring career education programs to the needs of Florida employers
• Higher education — views higher education as a vehicle for ensuring Florida’s transition into the new economy and will lead efforts to enhance educational governance, funding and opportunities for lifelong learning
• Pre-K-20 — supports continued strengthening of our Pre-K-20 system as a means of assuring an individual’s success and Florida’s future workforce
Innovation
• Investing in the new economy — supports investing in Florida’s transition into the innovation economy by working to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs for Floridians, increased research and development and expanding venture capital into Florida
• International trade — supports expansion of markets for Florida industries and increased opportunities for Florida businesses
• Targeted industries — supports Enterprise Florida’s focus and investment in our critical targeted industries
Infrastructure
• Energy solutions — supports a comprehensive energy policy that balances affordable, reliable and environmentally responsible energy while promoting energy, economic and national security
• Transportation — will work to identify additional resources to fund critical infrastructure needs and will oppose the redirection of money from the State Transportation Trust Fund for non-transportation purposes
• Ports — supports infrastructure enhancements to Florida’s seaports and airports to increase import and export capacity and increase value added services on shipments
• Water resources — supports long term solutions to our critical water resource needs
Business climate
• Property insurance — supports stabilizing the property insurance market and providing more affordable and available hurricane insurance to Florida’s business owners
• Health insurance — supports expanding the options for business owners to purchase affordable health care
• Property tax relief — supports halting extraordinary property tax increases and the continued shifting of the property tax burden onto to business property
• Taxpayer fairness — supports rebalancing property tax laws for valuing property and challenging unfair assessments on taxpayers
• Workers compensation — will fight to maintain the landmark workers compensation reforms and plaintiff attorney fee caps that have reduced workers compensation costs for Florida employers
• Private property rights — opposes government intrusion into the private property rights of Florida’s employers
• Lawsuit abuse reform — supports the Florida Justice Reform Institute’s agenda to reform Florida’s broken legal system
• Red tape — will fight to reduce permitting delays and other red tape burdens on employers
Governance
• Constitutional amendment reform — supports returning the initiative process to the citizens it was designed to serve and working to reduce the influence of special interests in our broken initiative process
Quality of life
• Attainable housing — will continue to fight for attainable housing solutions for our workforce and residential needs
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