Shannon NickinsonPensacola’s business community made its pitch for the 2015 legislative session.
Now it will be time to let the chips fall where they may in Tallahassee.
At the recent Greater Pensacola Chamber of Commerce’s 2015 Legislative Luncheon, chairman of the board of directors Justin Beck said the group had three broad areas of interest as lawmakers get to work: improving the economic climate, workforce readiness and a healthy workforce.
What that means in practical terms came from three speakers, each making the case for changes they want to see from lawmakers.
Lance Cook, outside sales and marketing manager of Rubber & Specialities Inc., said two things would improve the climate for small businesses.
One would be making permanent a new sales tax exemption for manufacturing equipment enacted in April 2014 and set to sunset in 2017.
The measure made the application process for the exemption simpler than it was before, “but (it’s) not simple,” Cook said. He noted two businesses — Advanced Sawmill Machinery in Holt and TPR in Milton — who still found the application process challenging.
“But the exemption was worth it,” Cook said.
Secondly, Cook said eliminating the sales tax on commercial leases and rents should be a priority to help businesses grow.
State Rep. Mike Hill, R-Pensacola, said he would like to see manufacturing parts added to the exemption Cook referenced, and he would like to see it stay on the books until 2020.
Making it permanent may be too much to hope for at the moment, Hill said.
Martha Saunders, executive vice president of the University of West Florida, asked for the support of the legislative delegation for education.
“We believe education is the answer to almost every important question in our community,” Saunders says.
She highlighted the ways UWF supports regional and state economic goals through emphasizing STEM degrees, and partnerships that allowed the university to add doctorate degrees in physical therapy and nursing.
UWF will be seeking a partner to implement a similar doctoral level degree for physician assistants as well, Saunders said.
Though Saunders didn’t mention it, State Rep. Doug Broxson affirmed his commitment to trying to change the state performance-based funding metrics implemented by the Board of Governors.
Broxson said the formula puts schools like UWF, a regional university that draws non-traditional students and sees graduates get jobs in neighboring states, at a disadvantage compared to larger state schools in bigger metropolitan areas.
“(UWF) has a unique mission here” to educate non-traditional students for an affordable price, Broxson said. “To make us line up with major universities is not fair.
“I am committed to changing the (performance-based funding) formula.”
Baptist Health Care CEO Mark Faulkner brought the real meat to the table.
In a room full of movers and shakers, where the talk about jumpstarting the economic climate was all the rage, Faulkner put the hard truth out there.
“We are not a healthy community,” he said. “We lag behind other counties in almost every health indicator.”
In deaths from Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancer and a host of other issues, we lead other metropolitan areas in Florida.
We smoke too much, we are overweight, we are asthmatic, we have higher STD rates and teen births. We use the emergency room too frequently for things that aren’t emergencies, because too many of us don’t have access to primary health care.
“And those statistics are people whose lives are cut short and whose potential isn’t realized,” he said.
In the Pensacola area 1 in 5 of us lack health insurance, and of those, 75 percent have jobs, but don’t have access to health insurance through work.
When you want to know what holds us back as community, read those paragraphs again.
Florida had the chance for $50 billion to extend health-care coverage to those who need it, but didn’t take it, Faulkner said.
He asked his lawmakers to consider the A Healthy Florida Works coalition, which accepts $50 billion in Affordable Care Act money, but ties coverage to things like an applicant’s job status or participation in job training. Read more here.
The Pensacola Chamber has joined the coalition of business professionals supporting the measure. Faulkner said it would allow 43,000 people in the Pensacola metropolitan area to get the health insurance they need.
Healthy people miss less work. They cost their employers’ insurance plans less. They have better lives, contribute more to their community.
That’s some real food for thought for the folks in Tallahassee.
Shannon Nickinson is the editor of PensacolaToday.com, a news and commentary site in Pensacola. Follow her on Twitter @snickinson. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
