The Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce hosted the 2023 Legislative Recap Tuesday morning, with a panel made up of local legislators.
Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Covington), Rep. Kim Moser (R-Taylor Mill) and Sen. Damon Thayer (R-Georgetown) were among the panel moderated by Tami Wilson, vice president of public affairs at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Wilson began the panel by discussing House Bill 551, the sports betting bill, and what tipped the scale when it came to getting sports betting over the finish line.
“Remember, it required 23 votes,” Thayer said. “Normally, it would only require 20, but because it has a tax rate in it, according to the constitution, in a 30-day session, you’ve got to have a super majority. We ended up passing it to 25 votes, it was an incredible thing.”
Thayer continued to express his beliefs in free will and how this bill will be great for the horse industry.
“It was truly one of the most exciting votes I’ve ever been apart of,” Thayer said.
As the panel moved to the next topic, Wilson stated that after the Chamber conducted a survey concerning Kentucky’s workforce shortage and what that means for small businesses. The results, she said, concluded that small businesses are very concerned about the workforce shortage and inflation.
“We need a healthy Kentucky and we need healthy citizens to have a robust workforce,” Moser said. “I think I can argue that every healthcare bill that we’ve passed is going to positively impact out workforce.”
Moser reminded the panel that House Bill 200 was specific to the healthcare workforce.
“We worked on so many healthcare bills and even criminal justice bills that will have an impact on the workforce,” Moser added. “We have some compact issues like teacher shortages, we’re looking at ways to include individuals that don’t necessarily have an educational degree, but have work experience, we’re looking at ways to expedite their way into the classroom for that real-world experience.”
McDaniel suggested starting with looking at the benefits cliff.
As Moser mentioned getting more individuals without higher education into real-world situations, Thayer jumped in to say trade jobs pay a lot of money.
“They are really good careers and we don’t have enough people willing to do them,” Thayer said. “A lot of our high schools are implementing trade programs, and a lot of these trades you can be 20 years old making six-figures two years after you graduate from high school.”
Thayer added that there were 50 bills that had something to do with workforce. He also mentioned the current workforce number that sits at 54% to what he assumes is a direct result of people never having gone back to work after the pandemic.
“The backbone of America, meaning these working people, have historically come from varying nations and have been immigrants,” McDaniel said. “We’re making a terrible mess of this, on-going, with failure to properly assimilate and bring a path for immigrants in this nation.”
To piggyback off of the workforce, inflation and small businesses, Wilson asked what measures passed this year that will be helpful towards small businesses moving forward?
“The state and local taxation that we did for limited liability corporations was a very big deal,” McDaniel said. “Also, the long term effort to reduce the individual income tax rate in this commonwealth, was cut down to 5%, next year it will go down to 4. We’ve also set in place good triggers to encourage fiscal responsibility moving forward while at the the same time if we continue this responsibility we’ll be able to individual income tax rate.”
He also added that the commonwealth needs to maintain competitive tax policies.
“Companies won’t solely come for tax policy, it is a large component, but their are plenty of other issues that relate to these companies,” McDaniel said. “Government does not exist to guarantee anyone’s success, we exist to set a requirement so that you will hand succeed to the maximum of your potential.”
So, that competitive tax policy, explained by McDaniel, becomes good education systems, good infrastructure, good living environments for the employees of the high quality employers.
Moser also commented on what’s been a hot topic of discussion, certificate of needs.
“There are many payment forms that come into the healthcare system,” Moser said. “Leveling the playing field to create a free-market system would be a huge undertaking. We also have around 21 different systems that fall under CON, and each of them has their own system of way of approvals.”
For example, long-term care is separate from addiction, which is separate from hospitals, etc.
“There are a lot of different moving parts,” Moser said. “We worked on ambulance transportation last year and as it turns out, Kentucky is one of four states in the nation who has CON for ambulance services.”
