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Home / Washington Business - July/August 2006 / Chair's Corner: Employers fared better than expected, but next year will tell |
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Chair's Corner: Employers fared better than expected, but next year will tell |
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Written On: July/August 2006 |
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Written By: by Creigh H. Agnew - Chair, Board of Directors |
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It is AWB’s mission each legislative session to advocate for balanced public policy that encourages economic growth, boosts productivity and creates jobs. This issue of Washington Business evaluates our collective successes and failures and highlights our future opportunities.
Going into the short, 60-day session the business community faced tough challenges: Maintaining the spirit and substance of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, restoring the gains in unemployment insurance reforms of 2003, and contending with costly health care proposals.
High school sophomores taking WASL tests this year blazed new ground to make our state more competitive. They became the first students required to pass the WASL to graduate. The Superintendent of Public Instruction, school administrators and the business community fought to preserve this meaningful measurement of competency. Meanwhile, some parents, students and teachers attempted to undo the program. Fortunately, a compromise was reached preserving the integrity of WASL testing, a win for our children’s future.
The cost of Washington’s unemployment system exceeds all other states. While restoring the 2003 unemployment insurance reform gains was a high priority for the business community, full restoration was politically impossible. Under AWB’s leadership, a compromise bill preserved the important tax structure and eligibility features of the 2003 legislation. In addition, the legislation provides a modest tax cut to employers, providing cost savings beyond the 2003 reform levels. But the business community was unable to maintain the important four-quarter averaging formula for calculating unemployment insurance benefits. Over time, that feature could raise costs to employers. With these changes, we hope that hostile and bitter UI fights are behind us and that a more conducive environment for thoughtful dialogue on UI now exists.
Fully one-third of the legislation introduced this session included costly health care proposals. Few aimed to reduce the burden that employers carry to provide health care insurance to our citizens.
Small businesses struggling to offer affordable health care benefits to their employees came close to a pro-business outcome, with AWB’s support. The state Senate passed a small business health care reform package, only to see the House gut it by a very small margin. Most business owners believe the compromise bill is more window dressing than a permanent solution.
Fortunately, some of the most costly health care measures failed. The so-called "fair share" legislation did not garner enough support for passage. This bill called for large employers to pay a fixed percentage of their payrolls to fund employee health care benefits. The measure’s backers and the governor publicly pledged to resume efforts on this issue next session. Efforts to artificially expand networks, without giving insurers or businesses means to control the costs of such expansions, failed in the last days of the session, but will also likely return next year.
This edition of Washington Business includes AWB’s Legislative Scorecard. At Weyerhaeuser, we use the scorecard as a tool to assess our own performance, to identify where we can improve, and to get a sense of how lawmakers view the business climate. Because we and other businesses receive a flood of requests from incumbents and challengers wanting support for upcoming elections, the scorecard provides an important measure of how elected officials view business community priorities. We often hear that lawmakers also refer to it because it gives them a gauge about how the business community regards their performance on important issues.
Take a look. You’ll see that the business community fared better than expected, but future challenges await. Let’s keep focused on the serious issues that keep our state from being as competitive as it needs to be. We must gain the support of our elected officials to help us compete, create jobs and provide needed revenue for state coffers.
On behalf of AWB’s board of directors and the Weyerhaeuser Company, I offer my congratulations and thanks to AWB and its staff, and to the Washington Roundtable, for representing our collective business interests so well during the 2006 Legislative session.
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