Yesterday, NFIB members and friends in Shelby County received a comprehensive review of the 2016 session from three great friends of small business – Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, Sen. Brian Kelsey, and Rep. Mark White. The roundtable was sponsored by Delta Dental of Tennessee and Comfort Keepers.
Norris, Kelsey, and White – each a Guardian of Small Business award winner – spent much of the forum discussing regulatory overreach, healthcare reform, and education and workforce development.
Kelsey championed legislation that ensures post-construction stormwater regulations cannot exceed minimum federal standards. The group also agreed the Right to Earn a Living Act will shine a light and hopefully lead to reforms that roll back entry regulations of certain professions and occupations.
White, chairman of the House Education Administration & Planning Subcommittee, said education reforms have Tennessee heading in a better direction but much work is ahead. Kelsey, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, concurred, noting Tennessee has gone from 48th five years ago to 25th in certain 4th-grade level testing scores.
NFIB member Kenny Crenshaw with Herbi-systems asked the leaders what can be done to improve workforce readiness in West Tennessee.
“With ‘free’ everything – like telephone and healthcare – we can’t hire people (like we once could),” Crenshaw said, noting there are 18,000 unfilled jobs in Shelby County.
Norris said the state must continue to focus on improving job training and workforce innovation initiatives until some of the federal problems causing great challenges can be addressed.
The group talked at some length about healthcare reform, with Kelsey saying Insure Tennessee won’t fix our troubled healthcare system, but would hurt it further.
“Governor Bredesen figured this out better than any of us,” Kelsey said, noting Bredesen knew it was critical to “get able-bodied, childless adults into the workforce” and that dangling “federal dollars in front of you and then taking them away” was and is not a good long-term solution.
Norris noted in the recent state budget that Medicaid costs were 33 percent of this year’s budget, above what Bredesen called a “breaking point.”
