Abundant, reasonably priced energy is a critically important component of a healthy business economy. Lack of this resource significantly hampers economic development efforts as well as efforts to retain existing employers.
 
The Chamber supports efforts to secure a ready supply of reasonably priced energy. This can be best accomplished by the following:

• Ensuring that energy policies are competitive with other counties and states.
• Encouraging greater use of Pennsylvania's natural resources.
• Promoting energy conservation efforts by all businesses and industries.
• Avoiding the placing of price controls on any energy sources.
• Supporting the exploration of domestic natural gas and oil supplies using appropriate environmental controls.
• Allowing the market to select the most appropriate energy technologies and avoiding governmental agencies selecting or forcing favored technologies.
• Providing incentives to research and make use of alternative energy sources.

Employers and employees continue to struggle with the rising costs of health care. Efforts to control costs must take into account the affect on quality and accessibility of health care delivery in Centre County. Balancing cost, quality and accessibility within the health care system remains a challenge for all stakeholders in the process, including government, insurers, providers, purchasers and consumers.
 
On behalf of purchasers and consumers of health care, the Chamber believes a private health care delivery system must be encouraged as a means to provide all County residents with appropriate access to cost-effective, quality health care. As in any business, competition among health insurance companies and health care providers impacts the cost of health care premiums. With real competition, employers and employees should have a greater choice of health plans, enabling them to select an appropriate health plan and provider. Further, appropriate planning and competition among providers should assure that residents have adequate access to health care facilities.
 
Pennsylvania should support, not restrict, alternative delivery models, including advances in technology that are designed to enhance cost-effective treatment and management of health care.
 
Employers should not allow other stakeholders to alter the health care delivery system or payment system without business input. Similarly, employers must find ways to assist employees to make the right decisions in seeking health care.

On behalf of its members, the Chamber supports the following concepts:

• Best practices for health insurers and providers that help eliminate excessive and unnecessary costs and insure the delivery of the highest quality of outcomes.
• A cost/benefit analysis of existing mandates (Any mandate in which the cost outweighs the benefit should be repealed).
• Utilization of the best available technology (such as electronic prescription systems) as a means to reduce the cost of treatment and improve clinical outcomes.
• Legal reforms based on fairness, common sense and personal responsibility that will allow for a stable and predictable insurance system for providers.

• Wellness programs designed to prevent costly medical treatments.
• New options in the marketplace that provide for ongoing and/or greater access to health care coverage, particularly for the smaller employers that are least likely to have the resources to provide employee health care benefits under the current system.
• Improvements to the Department of Health's licensure process for health care facilities that assure appropriate balance between cost, access and quality.
   

The Chamber opposes:
 

• Shifting a disproportionate share of the funding for the cost of health care to the business community by all stakeholders, especially government.
• State interference in the administration of ERISA and self-insured plans.
• The expansion of mandated benefits, unless sufficient evidence exists demonstrating that the benefits of the mandate clearly outweigh its costs.

• Would allow a union to be certified the moment it collected a majority of signed authorization cards, rather than through a federally-supervised private ballot election. Once a union collects 51 percent of a business's employees' signatures, that union would be recognized as the collective bargaining unit by the National Labor Relations Board without an election and possibly even before the employer is aware of the organizing effort.
• Would mandate binding arbitration if the newly-formed union and the employer are unable to reach agreement on all terms of the union contract within 120 days. This would result in wages, benefits, hours and other items being set by a government arbitrator.
• Would substantially increase penalties only for employers, but not for unions or others, who violate union organizing laws.
The Chamber believes that EFCA would inject a significant level of uncertainty into a business's ability to plan for the future and would even diminish the level of control it has over its own operations. For this and many other reasons, we view the "card check" bill as a bad idea for our business community, our economy and our country, especially so during the current severely challenging economic times.
• Lawsuit Abuse
  

  Pennsylvania remains unfriendly to businesses and medical professionals who risk having to defend frivolous lawsuits and receiving unreasonable court judgments. Our antiquated legal system is in need of reform. Providing business a fair, predictable and even-handed legal system would provide a "stimulus" to Pennsylvania's lagging economy.

  The high legal costs paid by Pennsylvania employers stunt the Commonwealth's economic growth and job creation. We need to inject fairness, common sense and personal responsibility into our courts by continuing to reform our antiquated legal system. Legal reform must include:
  • Repeal of joint and several liability.
  • Protection of innocent sellers.
  • Statute of repose in product liability.
  • Caps on non-economic damages.
  • Limiting recovery of punitive damages.
• State Business Taxes
  

  Few issues draw as much attention as state business taxes for businesses seeking to locate or expand operations. In 1991, when the Commonwealth levied the largest tax increase on businesses in Pennsylvania's history, Pennsylvania's ability to compete for jobs in a global marketplace was severely crippled. Arguably, Pennsylvania's business climate has never recovered.

  Despite some positive changes to the Commonwealth's business taxes over the last few years, the economic boom of the mid-to-late 1990s and increased international competition allowed most of Pennsylvania's competitors to reduce their business tax burdens significantly. As a result, the Commonwealth's business tax structure continues to have some of the highest rates in the nation and is more burdensome than most others. While the progress on business taxes in Pennsylvania was constructive, it did little to improve our overall competitiveness in the nation and around the world.

  The Chamber supports a thorough review and analysis of the current tax structure. The process for review should be well-balanced in its representation of the business community and designed to make changes to the tax structure that are based on the principles of competitiveness, predictability, fairness and simplicity.

  In the absence of such broad-based structural recommendations, the Chamber supports specific tax changes that encourage companies to locate and expand in Pennsylvania, including:

  • Elimination of the capital stock and franchise tax.
  • Reduction of the corporate net income (CNI) tax rate.
  • Elimination of the net operating loss cap.
  • Establishment of a full single sales factor for CNI apportionment purposes.
  • Administrative reforms that promote timely, efficient and independent tax dispute resolution.

  Similarly, the Chamber opposes tax policy options that hinder a company's ability to compete in today's global market. Specifically, the Chamber opposes:

  • Unreasonable restrictions on passive investment companies.
  • Increases in the tax burden on pass-through entities.
  • Mandatory Unitary Combined reporting.
  • Changes that exacerbate tax pyramiding in the imposition of sales and use or some other consumption tax.
  • Adoption of a new or expanded gross receipts or business receipts tax.
  • Broad, subjective Department of Revenue powers.
  Increases in the tax burden on targeted industries.
• Transportation Infrastructure
  

  Our highways, bridges, mass transit, and rail systems must promote safety and economic growth. Innovative funding sources must be secured to maintain, modernize and build new infrastructure./P>

  The Chamber recognizes that a modern, safe and efficient transportation infrastructure is necessary for the free flow of goods and commerce and the mobility of its citizens for business and recreational activities./P>

  The Chamber also supports the following concepts that are vital to the creation and maintenance of Pennsylvania's transportation infrastructure:

  • Funds generated from all liquid fuels taxes be placed in a dedicated revenue account – the Motor License Fund - and be used solely for highway-related transportation improvements.
  • Pennsylvania's mass transit system, which consists of roughly 70 different systems within the Commonwealth, is critical to business operations in Pennsylvania by providing bus and rail service to the workforce. The Chamber is open to considering secure funding streams for these systems. However, the first step should be to pursue greater efficiencies in those systems, including, but not limited to, the exploration of public/private partnerships and/or other privatization efforts.
  • Tolling of newly created highways as an additional funding mechanism to maintain roadways and bridges. However, the Chamber continues to oppose tolling existing I-80.
  • The continuation of the auto emissions testing program that is a vital component to the preservation of the federal highway dollars that Pennsylvania receives each year. The Chamber opposes any such measure to either expand the program beyond federal requirements.
  • Streamlining the PennDOT permit approval process to expedite infrastructure modernization which will result in short term job creation and the stimulation of economic development.
  • Increasing government and private funding for freight rail expansions.