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The Tempe Chamber of Commerce wants
small-business owners to be able to tap
into state-subsidized health care for
employees without the mandatory
six-month “bare” period required by
state law.
The chamber also wants businesses that
actively enforce a drug-free workplace
policy to be protected from liability
when an employee who is under the
influence is injured.
And while they’re at it, chamber
policy-planners have a couple of dozen
other matters they would like to discuss
with the Arizona Legislature, including
two issues of keen importance within the
Kyrene Corridor—school district
consolidation and minimum-wage for
developmentally disabled workers.
Each year the Tempe Chamber’s Government
Relations Committee drafts a list of
legislative positions that form the
backbone of the Chamber’s lobbying
effort at the state Legislature.
Many of the issues are standard Chamber
of Commerce fare: Recognizing the
positive economic impact of school
funding; asking the state for more money
to promote tourism; opposing expansion
of the state sales tax.
The Tempe Chamber’s 2007 Legislative
Positions paper has several more pointed
issues, however, notes Mark Thompson,
a former state representative and
current lobbyist who chairs the Tempe
Chamber’s Government Relations
Committee.
For example, the Tempe Chamber wants the
Legislature to do its job and stop
passing difficult issues to voters via
referendums, Thompson said.
There were a record 19 referendums and
initiatives on the November 2006 ballot,
and some of those issues could have been
handled by the state’s elected leaders,
he said.
The Tempe Chamber is on record in 2007
as supporting “efforts to increase
requirements for ballot referendums and
initiatives, including but not limited
to the elimination of paid petition
gatherers.”
“We think there should be more hurdles,”
said Thompson, the District 17
representative from 2003 to 2005.
“Basically, it comes down to the
Legislature should do its job as opposed
to referring issues to the voters…issues
that may be politically difficult.”
Thompson is a long-time health care
businessman who recently turned the
family business – Adult Care
Consultants/ ACC Homecare – over to his
wife, Connie, so he could begin a
lobbying firm called Arizona Advocacy
Group.
He said one of the Tempe Chamber’s top
issues in 2007 is to make it easier for
small businesses to contract for
employee health care insurance under
Healthcare Group of Arizona, an AHCCCS
(Arizona Health Care Cost Containment
System) provider.
Under current law, small businesses can
buy employee health care coverage at
discounted rates but only if they can
prove they have had no insurance program
in place for at least six months.
The Tempe Chamber and other Valley
chambers want the law amended to
eliminate or reduce the 6-month “bare”
period, Thompson said.
As a small business owner, he said he
knows first-hand the potential savings
of buying insurance through Health Care
Group of Arizona. He and his wife paid
$575 per month for health insurance
before they qualified to buy insurance
through Health Care Group of Arizona at
a price of only $270 per month, he said.
The Tempe Chamber also is stepping into
the swirling debate over raising
Arizona’s minimum wage with no
exceptions for developmentally disabled
workers. Arizonans approved Proposition
202 in November to raise Arizona’s
minimum wage to $6.75 but without the
exemption for developmentally disabled
workers that is included in the federal
minimum wage law.
As a result, several thousand Arizonans
who are developmentally disabled may
lose their jobs because their employers,
including The Centers for Habilitation
in the Kyrene Corridor, will not pay the
higher minimum wage to employees of
limited productivity.
Thompson points to Proposition 202 as
one of those “difficult” issues that was
dodged by the Legislature and referred
to voters by “outside interests.”
“The minimum wage act should have been
dealt with by the Legislature,” he said.
On the other hand, the Tempe Chamber
wants the state to go easy on issues the
Chamber deems matters of local control.
That includes the controversial mater of
whether the Kyrene and Tempe elementary
school districts should be consolidated
with the Tempe Union High School
District. |
