LET’S GET TO WORK
By: Trey Grayson President & CEO NKY Chamber of Commerce To Follow: @KYTrey; @NKYchamber
“MAKING KENTUCKY A RIGHT TO WORK STATE HAS LONG BEEN A PRIORITY OF OUR CHAMBER AND BUSINESS LEADERS ACROSS THE COMMONWEALTH.”
PAGE 4
HAPPY SPRING! The Kentucky General Assembly has recently concluded its 30-day session, and I wanted to offer an assessment of this year’s session. The session got off to a roaring start with a first week unlike any that we’ve ever seen. Five major bills were sent to the Governor for his signature. Among those bills were three NKY Chamber priorities, two of which I will discuss later in detail. As the session progressed, more Chamber priorities were adopted, making this the best session for jobs and economic development in Kentucky’s history. Making Kentucky a Right to Work state has long been a priority of our chamber and business leaders across the Commonwealth. Before passage of this law, Kentucky often was removed from consideration by economic development consultants before we could even get a chance to make the case about our ideal location, low energy costs or other attributes. That’s no longer true, as Kentucky is now one of 28 states in the country which are Right to Work. Special kudos to NKY Tri-ED’s Dan Tobergte, who has long championed the need to have this in our economic development toolkit, including testifying in front of some hostile legislative committee meetings in previous General Assembly sessions. Dan was singled out for his efforts during the signing ceremony of the bill. By repealing Kentucky’s prevailing wage laws, our legislators have removed a requirement that artificially inflated construction costs on state-funded projects by an estimated 15-20%. Think about the millions of dollars that were wasted on school construction projects to comply with this law as our region has grown over the past few decades.
In fact, my daughter complained the other day about her middle school lacking an auditorium. Eliminating middle school auditoriums is the kind of decision that school boards were often forced to make to keep the projects on budget. Already, we’ve seen savings in Northern Kentucky, as Fort Mitchell saved $75,000 on a road contract that it rebid after the prevailing wage law was repealed. We are likely to save millions of dollars in this region thanks to repeal. Boone County Schools Superintendent Randy Poe was a vocal advocate for repeal and testified during committee hearings this year. Two Northern Kentucky legislators, Representative Adam Koenig and Senator Chris McDaniel, carried the bill in their respective chambers. Finally, adopting an outcomesbased funding model for post-secondary education has long been a goal for Northern Kentucky University and its outgoing President Geoff Mearns. That will now be a reality. For too long, we have let politics govern the distribution of our post-secondary education funding. As Kentucky’s youngest university, NKU suffered the most under that type of a funding model and was chronically underfunded relative to its peers. Fortunately, we will now have a funding model that is both strategic and fair to our universities, our students and our taxpayers. If you want to learn more, I wrote an op-ed in February that appeared in the Enquirer, Courier-Journal and Herald Leader that you should be able to find online. Other Chamber priorities that were passed this session include: medical review panels to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, telecommunications modernization to increase investment in broadband and wireless, and increased pension transparency so we can better understand our pension shortfall.
NORTHERN KENTUCKY BUSINESS JOURNAL