11/13/2008
CONTACT: Riley Johnson, 406-443-3797 or 406-439-1021 (cell)
or Tony Malandra, 415-664-9685
Results from member ballots to set 2009 legislative agenda
HELENA, Mont. -- Voting still continues for Montana's small business owners, those employers of more workers and generators of more jobs than big business, big labor, and big government.
Each year, the National Federation of Independent Business, America's leading small business association, polls its members on issues vital to their survival as entrepreneurs at both the state and federal levels. The federal ballots will be going out next month. But right now, NFIB/Montana members are mailing, faxing, e-mailing, and one-clicking their responses to four questions on their 2009 State Member Ballot:
- Should the Legislature allow health insurers to offer individual and small group plans that do not include all the health mandates currently required?
- Should the Legislature increase the current 3-percent workers' compensation administrative assessment to fund a statewide workplace safety program?
- Should the Legislature better define in law when an employee is in a work status to benefit from a workers' compensation claim?
- Should the Legislature eliminate the current 3 percent personal property (business equipment) tax on business?
Unique among most associations, NFIB centers its state and federal lobbying positions on what its members tell it -- through regular balloting -- are important to their survival and solvency. Small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger business. The three biggest distinctions separating them are personal income tax rates, which are more important to small business owners than corporate tax rates, because more than 80 percent of them are single filers; healthcare, because whereas almost every big business or corporation provides healthcare to their employees, less than half of small business can afford to do so; and regulatory costs. It costs small business owners 45 percent more per employee to comply with the same regulation as a big business.
Results from the NFIB/Montana 2009 Member Ballot will be publicized after a 5 percent return. For more information about the Member Ballot, please phone NFIB/Montana State Director Riley Johnson at (406) 439-1021.
