BRISTOL, Tenn. – Beefing up education, eliminating loopholes in worker’s compensation and finding cheaper ways for employers to offer health care benefits are at the top of local business leader’s wishlist for the 2008 Tennessee legislative season.
The list, compiled by the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, was presented to Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey and state Reps. Jason Mumpower and Jon Lundberg on Friday at the chamber office in Bristol Tennessee.
The legislators vowed to keep the list on their desks and the issues in the forefront of their plans when they rejoin the General Assembly in Nashville.
"Everything you have down here is something we’ll be able to make some progress on," Mumpower said of the list, which was broken into 10 issues.
Ramsey, Mumpower and Lundberg each addressed several of the issues before taking questions from the crowd of about 40 people.
The three legislators expressed their support for reallocating state lottery money used for education.
"We were very frugal when we started the lottery four years ago," Ramsey said.
"We didn’t want to get in the boat that Georgia and several other states got into that we over-promised to begin with. ...We did just the opposite on purpose. Now, we have a pot of money between $400 and $500 million."
The surplus may lead to easing of standards for students who rely on the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship to pay for higher education.
Ramsey said nearly 75 percent of students in state colleges and universities who qualify for the scholarship eventually fail to make the grades necessary to keep receiving the money once they’re enrolled in school.
"There’s a lot of talk among some members of the legislature that the requirements for receiving the scholarship are perhaps too high ... at the same time, we’re looking at the fact that we may need to adjust the GPA requirements, we have to be sure that a Tennessee diploma still means something," Mumpower said.
The chamber’s list also addressed workers compensation reform. Ramsey expressed confidence in proposed legislation that will protect employers in the wake of a pair of state Supreme Court decisions, which ruled employers are responsible for claims of employees hurt while working at home or at a company-sponsored fitness center.
In what he called, "a major change" for small businesses, Ramsey said he will support legislation that gives tax credits to employers with fewer than 25 people who offer health-care packages to their employees.
The lieutenant governor also said he is pushing for legislation to allow independent employees like Realtors and auctioneers to band together with others in their field when applying for insurance.
"The federal government keeps pushing it on the back burner, we’re gonna try to do it on the state level this year," he said. "It will allow people to pool their money together and obviously a group of 10,000 across the state is a lot better than you trying to buy it on your own."
In the same spirit of Friday’s meeting, Bristol Chamber members spent Wednesday in Richmond with Virginia lawmakers as part of the commonwealth’s Chamber Day at the Capital.
Several members of the state legislature and Gov. Tim Kaine addressed chamber members on important business issues facing the Virginia General Assembly.
BRENT CARNEY is a media general multimedia intern and can be reached at (276) 645-2568 or bcarney@bristolnews.com
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