Thanks to the many of its members who answered the call to testify and lobby their state lawmakers, NFIB walked away from the second session of the 28th Alaska Legislature with some big victories.

Gov. Sean Parnell has already signed one of those victories into law and, as of this writing, is not expected to veto any of the other pro-small-business legislation on his desk.

House Bill 284 by Rep. Wes Keller proposes an interstate compact to amend the United States Constitution with a Balanced Budget Amendment via the Constitution’s Article V process. NFIB has long been a proponent of a balanced federal budget. Rep. Keller is a past recipient of NFIB’s Guardian of Small Business recognition.

House Bill 32 by Reps. Mia Costello and Shelley Hughes changes businesses licensing from a required separate business license for every line of business to requiring one business license for all lines of business under one business name. This is important to many small Alaskan businesses that offer many services such as plowing driveways in the winter and landscaping in the summer or operating a store and repairing boat engines. NFIB brought this bill to Reps. Costello and Hughes’ attention, because they are strong and dependable supporters of small businesses. This was a Key Vote for NFIB.

House Bill 140 by Rep. Lora Reinbold requires transparency in the regulation process. Most significant to small businesses is the requirement that regulations must consider the cost of a private person to comply with the regulation. This legislation responds to a 2012 NFIB ballot question on the cost of regulation. This was a Key Vote for NFIB.

House Bill 141, a House Labor & Commerce Committee measure, limits workers’ compensation medical fees charged by out of state providers. Many out of state providers were charging higher than their regular fees to Alaskan patients. This legislation will have a direct and positive effect on NFIB members’ workers compensation insurance costs.

House Bill 316, another House Labor & Commerce Committee measure, will change the way workers’ compensation medical services are paid. This bill changes the payment methodology from the inflation-driving “usual, customary and reasonable (UCR)” system to the “resource based relative value system (RBRVS)” that is used in a majority of states. While it may take up to a year to build the Alaska-based system, this is a strong first step in addressing the cost of workers’ compensation in Alaska. Rep. Kurt Olson, chairman of the House Labor & Commerce Committee, is a past recipient of NFIB’s Guardian of Small Business recognition. This was a Key Vote for NFIB.

Senate Bill 110, by Sen. Fred Dyson, is clean-up legislation for a bill passed last year to help businesses recover their property being held as evidence. This bill allows the Office of Victim’s Advocate to request a judicial hearing if the property is not being returned.

Senate Bill 46, by Sen. John Coghill, was the omnibus crime bill for this session. The intent of the bill was to address recidivism by establishing proven programs that help convicted persons change the lifestyles that have gotten them into trouble and to provide programming to help those leaving prison reintegrate into society rather than reoffending.

NFIB fought the portion of the bill that would increase the felony threshold above $750. We believed that a $250 increase was a reasonable accommodation to inflation. Proposals to raise the felony threshold went as high as $2,500. An increase to $1,200 was amended into the bill. But with NFIB members’ hard work, the final threshold in the bill is $750. This was a critical win for NFIB members.

In addition to the above measures, NFIB was able to stop four legislative proposals that would have negatively affected our members:

House Bill 227, by Reps. Harriet Drummond and Geran Tarr, and Senate Bill 126 by Sen. Bill Wielechowski would have established mandatory sick leave. Another bill sponsored by Drummond and Tarr, HB 228, would have required special breast-feeding areas in addition to current federal law.

NFIB helped stop the Medicaid expansion proposed in House Bill 290 and Senate Bill 150. NFIB/Alaska members voted strongly against this idea in the 2013 member ballot. NFIB was asked by Governor Parnell to nominate an NFIB member to serve on his Medicaid Reform Advisory Group. He appointed NFIB Leadership Council member Kevin Turkington to that group.

NFIB stopped House Bill 294, by Rep.  Andrew Josephson, that would have increased workers’ compensation benefits without requiring any reform of the workers’ compensation program.

Finally, we were able to amend or block bills that included sections that would have exposed employers to litigation for types of discrimination, whether or not it was done knowingly.

Our successes were a result of strong testimony by NFIB members and a huge number of emails to legislators from our members. The National Federation of Independent Business is the largest small-business advocacy group in Alaska. The activities of our members reinforce that to legislators.

You can find out more about our members’ testimony and the changes made at the committee stages of various bills in the past legislative report links below.