Last fall, my fellow House Republicans met in locations across our state to discuss the issues that you told us are important.
In January, we unveiled an agenda focused on job creation, government reform, improving education, and protecting state’s rights – all items our conservative constituents said are important to them.
This week, we took action on three of those four items.
The most important item was our economic development bill that was approved in committee this week and will be on the House floor next week.
This bill has one goal: to create jobs.
To do that, the legislation includes several tax and regulation changes businesses told us are necessary to help them create jobs.
The chief reform in the bill is the elimination of the corporate income tax. Eliminating that tax will entice more companies to locate here. Unfortunately, we don’t have the wiggle room in our state budget right now to eliminate it in one year, so it phases out over 10 years. We did accelerate that for any company that moves its headquarters here by including a provision that will immediately eliminate the corporate income tax for those companies.
We also approved a sweeping reform of the Employment Security Commission just three weeks after an audit that revealed widespread mismanagement.
The reforms approved Wednesday include creating a new Department of the Workforce in the governor’s cabinet, and moving several workforce and unemployment responsibilities from the ESC and the Department of Commerce to the new agency. The legislation also abolishes the board of the ESC and puts an executive director in charge.
The audit, released at the end of January, showed the ESC did not warn the General Assembly that the unemployment system was running out of money and that the agency did not properly investigate mismanagement – among many other findings. From 2000 until today, the Unemployment Trust Fund plummeted from an $835 million surplus to an $800 million deficit.
This is the second ESC reform bill to be approved by the House this year. The first was a series of procedural reforms that included restricting state payments to employees fired for gross misconduct or drug use and restricting claims by employers who cost the system more than they contribute.
Our actions this week are more examples of the Republican Caucus moving quickly to reform government once problems are discovered. The Republican majority has a 15-year track record of similar action, and I’m proud of our work this week.
Finally, we shed more sunlight on campaigns and elections by approving a major expansion of online campaign finance reporting. Now, all local officials must file their campaign disclosures online – so anybody can see exactly who is funding their campaigns and what they are spending money on. Currently, only state-level candidates are required to file online.
This bill is all about transparency and allowing the voters to see who is funding campaigns at all levels. With the technology available today, there is no reason that local candidates shouldn’t follow the same online reporting requirements that state officials follow.
As always, thank you for the privilege of serving you in Columbia. If I can ever be of assistance to you, or if you have ideas on issues you want me to share with the rest of the General Assembly, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 864-230-7044.
