Hi, I'm Jeff Rea, your host for Economic Outlook.
Welcome to our show, where each week we take a deep dove into the regional economy and the people, the companies, the communities and projects that are helping our region grow the zero in on the 2021 session of the General Assembly, working to cultivate a world class business environment and catalyze Indiana's economic recovery.
We're sitting down with Kevin Brinegar from the Indiana Chamber of Commerce for a closer look at this legislative session and key issues the business community focus on coming up on economic outlook.
He represents the interests of more than twenty five thousand member businesses that employ over four million Hoosiers.
They're the largest broad based business advocacy group in the state representing businesses of all sizes and types from every corner of Indiana.
Please join me in welcoming Kevin Brinegar, the president and CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
Just one other note before we get started here.
We're respecting social distancing and as such, have both our guests and our hosts joining us virtually today instead of in person.
So welcome, Kevin.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you.
Jeff had jumped the gun.
Good to see you and be with you and your viewers.
Yeah, well, you're no stranger.
We appreciate you being on before and always popular to sort of hear your insight on important business issues that are going on around Indiana.
So we're grateful for the chance to sit with you today.
We're in the midst of the Indiana General Assembly legislative session.
We know that business leaders across the state are paying really close attention to that.
So we're going to kind of focus on that a little bit today.
But first, kind of a quick tease at the beginning about the Indiana chamber.
But for those who are unfamiliar with what you do, tell us a little bit about Indiana Chamber and some of the things that you're involved in.
Sure.
I like to summarize.
What we do is everything revolves around a core mission of advocacy and member services.
We have a team of seven lobbyists that have our issue, experts in areas like tax environment, workforce development, health care, etc.
And we advocate for businesses across the state in all of the places where business and government touch at the state level and the federal level with our congressional delegation, both particularly at the State House and particularly when the legislature is in session.
Our team is over there every day advocating trying to push pro-business policies, make a better business climate and also stop the the bad legislation.
So it's like playing basketball.
You're constantly on offense and defense at the same time.
And we have members and all 92 counties, including St. Joe County and then north central Indiana area.
And we're kind of your insurance policy against for pushing for good legislation and protecting you against bad legislation.
Great, thanks, Kevin, appreciate the good work that you're doing and your team there at the state house and obviously a very plugged in and have been an important leader, I think, in a policy that's put Indiana in a in a great position to compete against other states.
So let's shift to legislation before we get into policy issues.
Maybe a couple questions.
More so.
So the Indiana General Assembly is changed really significantly this year because COVID it's not a normal session.
You've been through quite a few sessions in the past.
Talk a little bit about how how it's different now in the midst of a pandemic.
Well, when you say I've been through a few sessions, that's very kind Jeff Rea.
This is my 41st legislative session, either working as a legislative staffer or as an advocate for the business community at the chamber.
And this is a session like no other.
Just to give you particularly the logistics, the House of Representatives is conducting their sessions in the government center south in a large conference room spread out everybody has their own table, plexiglass, etc.
The Senate has chosen to conduct their business in the Senate chambers, but 30 of the senators are on the Senate floor spread out and then the other 20 are up in the gallery above the Senate Chambers spread out and they rigged up voting buttons and microphones up there.
So that's very different.
And then committee hearings in the House, you have the option of either going to another room nearby and testifying by a two way audio and video, or you can go into the back of these large committee rooms.
Committee members are all spread out.
There is a massive mandate inside the state capitol and in the government center south.
And then for the Senate, their committee hearings, they have the legislators, the senators in one room in the state house, and you go to another room to testify and it's very weird and unusual and unnerving that you're not testifying in front of a group of senators who were on the committee.
You're testifying to a laptop and talking back and forth and in fact, earlier this session, I testified to a Senate committee in the House Ways and Means Committee room, which is something I've never done.
Sure.
Great.
But obviously very different.
And to their credit, they're they're figuring out a way, way to do it.
And maybe one other question before we get to maybe more specific policy.
So I think the legislative process can be confusing to viewers.
Sometimes it sort of long and has to go through a lot of steps and so I think they'll see a news report that says this has happened or that's happened, but maybe it's early in the process.
So can you help the Schoolhouse Rock today?
Give us a little bit of a an outline of a process where we are when it ends some of that kind of stuff?
Sure.
There are really three phases to the legislative session.
There's the first phase, which we're just about to finish here in the next two weeks, which is bills being heard and dealt with in their house of orange bills get introduced in either the House or the Senate.
They get assigned to a committee related to that subject matter.
And the committee chair is all powerful and decides which bills of those assigned to his or her committee get receive a hearing and a vote.
And if the that that happens, they can be the bill can be amended in committee and voted on.
And if it receives a fair vote, goes to the floor of the House or the Senate where it is debated and could be amended, further voted on, sent to then the other House for consideration.
So right now we're dealing with the house is dealing with House bills only except for one or two bills that have already come over from the Senate.
And the Senate is dealing with Senate bills.
The deadline for bills to come out of committee in the House and Senate is next week, I think Tuesday in the House and maybe Wednesday in the Senate.
Then they will go through final debate and vote.
And early the week after, any bill that hasn't passed, the House of Origin will be dead.
And then in the next phase, the Senate will be dealing with House bills and the House will be dealing with Senate bills.
And then the third and final phase, which will take place from mid-April to about the end of April, is.
It's committee where in order for a bill to get to the governor's desk, it has to pass the House and the Senate in exactly the same form, not even a comma or a word different.
And so both houses have to pass the exact same form and frequently you have bills that passed the House in one form and get amended in the second and the Senate and then they have to work out the differences.
And that's done through a conference committee of two House members, two senators.
They have to work out the differences, agree to a conference committee report, then goes back to the House and Senate for them to vote on exactly the same version.
So the activity in the second House will take place from about March through mid-April, and then we'll have that final phase this year.
We already know we're going to have a special session, and that is to do redistricting because the Census Bureau usually by now, we already have the census data.
We need to do redistricting once every 10 years.
But the Census Bureau has told us that that data that we need on population in order to draw districts that all have the same amount of people in them are roughly the same amount for House districts.
And Senate districts won't be available until July.
So the General Assembly, at least for that one issue, will be back in session sometime in July or August.
Thank you, Kevin, that helps if you could put a catchy little jingle, Schoolhouse Rock, that would not even make it simpler.
All right.
Try to come up with some rhyme.
There you go.
And actually, it's complicated, but I think of as you as you're in it, it really isn't all that complicated.
And lots of candidates for the public to provide input and to appreciate that.
So let's go maybe to a little more specific to what you're doing.
So you mentioned as we as you were making your remarks earlier, that you play a little offense and a little defense.
So so and we teased in the opener the twenty five thousand member businesses from every corner of Indiana.
So so can you just talk a little bit about sort of how you come about the priorities that are going to be the office piece of this, the things that you're going to focus on?
Obviously, twenty five thousand businesses at all, different sizes, scale industry.
And how do you come about those priorities?
Well, we go about that where we describe it, that we're a membership organization, not only in terms of that's where a significant portion of our operating revenue comes from, but also we're a membership organization and that it's not myself and my lobbyists going out to the bar and saying, OK, we're going to be for this issue and against this one and neutral on this, our policy positions come from our members.
We have policy committees, about 15 of them.
And all these issues, tax, environment, workforce development, health care, and those committees are made up of employees, of member companies.
And so we draw on the expertize of our membership to determine what our policy positions are.
And that goes into a document that we call legislative business issues.
It's our general policy positions and they're adopted by our board of directors.
And then we take every bill that's introduced and run it through the filter of those policy positions.
Is this a bill we care about?
And if so, what's our position?
And we put that into a second document called Legislative Agenda, which is specific positions on specific bills.
And I'm looking over my shoulder.
I have a copy of it.
Here it is.
Now looks like this.
And you go through and it's all the bills we care about and we give it to the legislators so they have no excuse not to know where the chamber is on any given bill and many of them keep it in their desk drawers on the floor of the House and Senate and that.
And then we supplement that with our with our day to day lobbying.
And it has bills in here that that we are that we support and some of are priority bills.
And we also have the the bad ones that we call job killers.
And then we, you know, work with the committee chairmen, legislators to move the good bills and and stall out the bad bills.
Greatly appreciate it.
And I think oftentimes that boy, what a what a monumental Herculean task it is sometimes even to to review those over a thousand bill filed and to sort of sort through read all the fine print.
The details are a credit to you and your team for trying to bring some understanding to that.
So so let's let's get into some specific issues.
So if I was to ask you, Kevin, the 2021 session, what's the top priority of the business community?
It is enacting legislation that will protect businesses from frivolous lawsuits related to covid.
And fortunately, we've been successful in and working with the coalition, including local chambers of commerce around and around the state, including including your own.
And you've got the legislative leadership and the governor to prioritize this as well.
And that's evident by the fact that one of the key bills is Senate Bill 1, which indicates top priority for the Senate majority party in the House.
It's House Bill 10-02, and the only higher priority is House 10-01 and that's the budget bill, which is something they have to pass.
But this bill would provide protections for businesses, schools, hospitals, health care facilities from lawsuits.
In a situation where, you know, Jeff, I go into your place of business and two weeks later I can track the COVID virus.
And I claim that I got it there when in fact, we really don't know where I got it because of all the other places I've been in that two week period of time.
But, you know, I'm trying to get some money out of you, perhaps to a quick settlement.
This would give you immunity from those situations.
It does not give businesses who are bad actors who are not.
You have to follow established CDC guidelines in any state or local requirements and guidelines in order to receive that immunity so that any bad actors wouldn't be protected.
But that is indeed our number one priority.
And that bill is moving pretty quickly.
It's already passed the Senate.
It's out of committee in the House and in fact, is literally being debated and will be voted on this afternoon here when we're taping your program.
Great.
Thank you, Kevin, and thanks for helping clarify that.
I do think there is some misperception in the communities sometimes that that every business, no matter what they did, would be immune.
But it really was again, the bad actors could still have to pay a consequence, those that have tried to do the right thing.
I appreciate that you touched on budget.
And so obviously you seen a few of these budget cycles every two years.
The Indiana General Assembly has to do that.
It's the one primary requirement for them this session.
Can you do any insight on just, on this budget process?
How it coming together?
Obviously, there's uncertainty because of the pandemic, but what can you tell us about the development, the budget process?
Sure.
The General Assembly this session will work on a two year state budget.
We do a biennial budget.
That budget period will run from July 1st of this year through June 30th of twenty twenty three.
And it is a constitutional requirement that the General Assembly have adopted a budget in order for the executive branch to have spending authority.
The again, as we're as we're recording this program this afternoon, the House majority Republicans are unveiling their budget and voting it out of the Ways and Means Committee, and then it'll go to the full House next week for further debate possible amendment.
The governor has introduced a budget and that was the introduced bill there.
We know there's an amendment coming.
One of the things that it will include is is a priority of the Indiana Chamber as part of a group called the Alliance for Healthier Indiana, which is trying to cut down our smoking rate long term, which is now.
Fourth highest in the country, and this budget proposal will include a cigarette tax and tobacco tax increase not as high as we think is necessary to really impact behaviors.
And we're pushing this because of the impact on Hoosier businesses, which is estimated to be 6.2 Billion dollars a year, and higher health care costs lost productivity and absenteeism, and that's 6.2 billion dollars that is not available to go into wages, benefits, training or plan equipment modernization.
So that's that's one thing we know it's in there.
We also learned I got a briefing on this last night that this budget will take it has some one time money from the federal government.
And you've got to be careful how you use that because you can't just build that into the funding base because it won't be there the next year.
So they've got less ongoing revenue than was previously expected because of the impact of the pandemic.
But then you've got this one time money from the federal government that you need to use wisely.
And two of the areas that they're going to invest, a lot of that one time federal money is in areas that are priorities of ours and I believe priorities of yours.
Yep.
One is to greatly expand broadband into the rural areas so that we come closer to having everyone have access to affordable, reliable broadband.
And then the other is they're going to do some version of a new regional cities type program with focus on regionalism and projects for those I believe will be focused on those communities that didn't receive regional cities money the first time around.
So are and then, of course, they'll be increasing funding for K-12 education, higher education and making some other one time investments with the one time resources they have.
So a lot of important decisions coming up on budget priorities.
Kevin, any so obviously the pandemic is impacted businesses.
Everybody in so many ways is is this budget pretty normal?
Has it been affected by the pandemic?
Is there less money, more money, about the same money?
Any insight on on on that.
And this will ultimately be further impacted by further decision making by the April revenue forecast update that they'll do in mid-April.
That's kind of one last snapshot of what we think our revenues are going to be before we finalize this two year budget.
And that revenue forecast has to look out over that two year period, which is not an easy task, particularly given the times that we're in.
But certainly the revenue curve was bent downward by the pandemic.
We are expecting this fiscal year that we're in now to be not much more than what it was last year.
And so you have some growth in the two years that you're budgeting for, I think about two percent to two percent the first year, a little over three percent the second year.
But you're starting from a lower starting point because of the impact of the pandemic in 2020 and expected to be in 2021.
So it is tighter than than had things continued as they were tracking that really at this time last year right before the pandemic hit.
Kevin, we're sort of giving it our last five minutes here.
So we touched on broadband.
We talked a little bit of business liability issues.
We touched on the budget and some other other issues that are high on your agenda, that you're paying close attention to that that'd be good for our viewers to know more about.
Well, we think it's important to make sure that we administer the island test this spring.
There's been a lot of talk and we think it's real that there has been learning loss from the the fits and starts going to school, then going virtual back and forth in some various school districts.
And we feel like we need to know what the impact has been so that we can our schools can devise programs and initiatives to catch students back up.
So there are on the defensive side there.
There's some suggestions.
Oh, we know the results are going to be good.
So let's just not implement the test.
Well, let's at least do it for diagnostic purposes.
So that's one that's one item on us.
We're looking to push forward a state energy plan.
The Chamber Foundation produced a comprehensive energy study last fall that legislators are using and the 21st Century Energy Task Force is there's a bill to continue that for two years.
We need to know where we're going and what our options are and make some conscious decisions rather than just sort of wander into the future.
So that's that's important.
With respect to also education, we have a bill that would create an expectation, not a mandate, because it would be an opt out for students and their parents to fill out the federal assistance for free student aid or what's called FAFSA form, because we have the lowest completion rate of the fast of any state in the Midwest and one of the lowest in the country.
And there's a lot of free money out there that will be provided and and lower level, low interest rate loan money as well for post-secondary education.
And it's not just traditional four year college degrees.
You also need to fill out the FAFSA form to access the governor's next century.
Next level excuse me, job funds and industry certificates and other things.
And so we'd like for that to be an expectation that every student do that and get the guidance counselors to help them and then.
The other thing that comes to mind is what was that just popped out of my head?
Oh, Work Share.
We believe that the state should enact a worker program which is related to unemployment insurance right now.
Employers, if they're in an economic downturn, like we've gone through it recently and they need to reduce staff, their only option is to lay people off entirely.
At that point, the employee loses their benefits and lose the employer's retirement contributions and works for something the federal unemployment insurance program allows states to do that they can reduce the hours without laying people off entirely.
They receive partial unemployment.
They continue to receive all their benefits.
And since the CARES Act was passed in March up till now and continuing at least through April and probably through September, under the President Biden's plan, the federal government is paying one hundred percent of the work share benefits for states that have worked the legislation.
And there's a study that just came out yesterday from the Brookings Institution that estimates that by not being a work state, Indiana has left as much as one hundred million dollars on the table of federal money that would have been there to help shore up the stability of our unemployment insurance trust fund.
And because it's continuing, there's a roughly by September, it would be another one hundred million dollars.
Work Share will keep more people employed and less people unemployed.
The employers have the benefit of they don't lose their training investment in those individuals.
And then when things pick back up, they have to go find them.
So I know this is something that our local chamber friends around the state have supported as well.
There is a hearing on the bill next week in the Senate, and we're hoping the chairman will give the bill a vote as well.
But that's still up in the air.
But we're pushing really hard, in fact, to put a press release out on the Brookings findings earlier today.
Great, thanks, Kevin.
We've covered a ton of topics today, really great, but there's probably a thousand more, but unfortunately we're out of time.
Kevin Brinegar, he's the president CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today.
Jeff, it's always good to visit with you and the viewers up in north central Indiana.
And I really appreciate the opportunity.
And thanks very much.
Yeah, so that's it for our show today.
Thank you for watching on it or listening to our podcast.
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I'm Jeff Rea.
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