LEGISLATIVE PREVIEW
LEGISLATIVE PREVIEW
Feature
Feature
What do you foresee as a key issue impacting the Rochester area business community that can be addressed in the 2024 legislative session? An uncompetitive business climate is a challenge for our area and throughout this state. Minnesota’s nation leading 9.8% business tax rate, workforce shortages and heavy regulatory burdens are impacting employers throughout the area. Regulatory barriers squashed three notable expansions in Minnesota - we saw a loss of 350 new jobs and a loss of $1.2 billion in capital investments. In addition, new mandates like Earned Safe & Sick Time (ESST) and Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) hit employees and their employers with new payroll taxes. Instead of flexible, market-based options that would have worked for everyone, the legislature created one-size-fits-all expensive mandates that hurt workers and employers. Earned Sick and Safe Time (ESST) is so convoluted that neither employers nor the state know the full cost of the mandate. Paid Family Medical Leave (PFML) payroll tax rates have already increased even prior to its 2025 start date! What are your expectations for the 2024 legislative session? Are there trends that the business community should be aware of? I would like to see 2024 be a “fix-it session”. Common sense fixes to Paid Family Medical Leave, Earned Safe and Sick Time, reducing the business tax rate and eliminating the
What do you foresee as a key issue impacting the Rochester area business community that can be addressed in the 2024 legislative session? With the rushed through, with little or no real debate, the major bills that passed last session have extensive problems. Weather it’s workers, schools, parents, farmers, or businesses, the unifying theme is there needs to be fixing or correcting errors/issues in these new laws. It’s not just businesses, I hear from many union members that they want flexibility and options in the major new employment laws/regulations. What are your expectations for the 2024 legislative session? Are there trends that the business community should be aware of? Too many legislators think that if it’s good for the metro, or specific businesses or sectors, it’s good for all. Us in greater MN, especially those near the border with another state, known options and flexibility is key to staying in business, let alone success. What is your top focus for the 2024 legislative session? What I’ve been asking people to do, is write down the problematic things as they come across them, and email that to me, with their suggestions on what would actually work. I take those emails and maintain your actual verbiage when I talk to a revisor while generating bills and amendments to fix the newly passed laws.
Sen. Carla Nelson DISTRICT 24
Rep. Duane Quam DISTRICT 24A
punishing-misnamed- business property tax (whose dollars go straight to the state general fund) should top the list. In addition we must continue to develop career pathways like PTech, Bridges to Health Care, and Construction Career Pathways to train the 1.5M unemployed, working-age Minnesotans for good jobs and allow for generational wealth building. We must address the administration of regulatory burdens to ensure safety with timeliness and efficacy. In a nutshell, it is necessary to make these and other changes to retain, grow and attract new business to our state. The 40% growth in government spending enacted by the 2023 legislature has led to structural looming budget shortfalls in 2026 and beyond. We must look to reign in state spending in order to avoid a budget deficit. Clearly, tax hikes must be off the table. Furthermore, safety of our school students remains a top issue due to the 2023 law that limited school resource officers (SRO) ability to protect students. We still have a number of schools operating without an SRO. Fixing the looming budget deficit, providing relief for working Minnesotans and their employers, and empowering schools by reducing the heavy burden that unfunded mandates have caused will all be top priorities in 2024. What is your top focus for the 2024 legislative session? Having completed the two year fiscal budget in 2023, 2024 is a traditional bonding year. This should be a year to support critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, clean water, and taking care to prolong the life of our state’s current assets. As a member of the Capital Investment, Taxes, and Jobs committees, I will seek investments in local safety infrastructure projects: Highway 14 interchanges at County State Aid Highway 3 and 5; Dodge Center Northeast Improvement Zone road improvements; Stewartville road improvements; Olmsted County Material Recovery Facility; and the Rochester airport parking improvements. I will also keep an eye to enhancing safety, economic growth and accessibility. Minnesota based companies are expanding in other states at a higher rate than out-of-state companies are expanding in Minnesota. Since 2020, Minnesota has had a net investment deficit of 54 projects, 2,500 jobs and $6.6 billion in capital expenditures! 19,400 Minnesotans fled the state to live elsewhere in the US in 2021-2022, the highest number in at least three decades. Proposing tangible solutions that address these shortfalls and provide employees and employers alike, economic relief, and creating a more sustainable environment for Minnesotans will be a top priority for my colleagues and I in 2024. My hope is that this next session brings a renewed bipartisan effort to address these looming shortfalls and create sustainable, economic growth for all Minnesotans, not just a select few.
It is also key that we fix the future budget, to prevent the $2.6 B projected budget deficit in 2025. It’s best to do that now, instead of putting it off.
16 | ROCHESTER AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ADVANTAGE MAGAZINE — FEBRUARY 2024
FEBRUARY 2024 — ROCHESTER AREA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ADVANTAGE MAGAZINE | 17
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