LEGISLATIVE OUTLOOK.

• Author: Regan, Bryan

Leaders in some of the state's key industries sat down to discuss issues they'll be monitoring in the upcoming legislative session. Incentives and new tactics for addressing the dire shortage of employees are at the top of the list. Expanding training programs at high schools and community college could be part of the solution. Also, expect to see a continued push for expanding Medicaid, changes in the state's alcohol distribution system and more effective public-private partnerships.

North Carolina Beer&Wine Wholesalers Association, North Carolina Healthcare Association, State Employees Association of North Carolina and NC Bankers Association sponsored the discussion. It was moderated by Colin Campbell, editor of N.C. Tribune and Business North Carolina. It was edited for brevity and clarity.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR TOP ISSUES AND GOALS ENTERING THE 2023 LEGISLATIVE SESSION.

SALAMIDO: North Carolina is growing and attracting business. We have good balanced policies, but we have more jobs than we do people. So the question is how do we create and align our education and talent supply and workforce systems to not only train our young people for these jobs, but how do we address the adult learning community? Veterans and spouses of veterans? What do we do with "second chance" hiring? How do we address the folks who, through the pandemic, have reassessed their jobs? How do we get them trained and educated for the jobs of today and tomorrow?

We also want to preserve and protect the tax climate that we have and all those things that go into the cost of a job. We're watching the regulatory sides of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the new executive order the governor put out about trucks. There's great innovation. We think innovation does best when it has limited government regulation around it. We've got to do better in the state on finding solutions for small businesses to come together. Businesses want to take care of their people, and they want to provide health care. They want to be competitive. The state is continuing to diversify our transportation infrastructure as we're growing along with other infrastructure pieces like water, sewer and broadband, and computer hardware.

As we attract these larger businesses, what are we doing to make sure that those small businesses can thrive? We always have to take a look at the franchise tax, for lack of a better description, it's a statewide property tax, everybody pays before they sell one thing on their own. So we are continuing to look at making that competitive and eventually, get rid of it all together. We want to stay competitive on our personal income taxes. On the corporate income tax side, we're pretty competitive right now.

THE CHAMBER RECENTLY WROTE AN OP-ED ON POTENTIAL CHANGES TO FUNDING ROADS AND TRANSPORTATION BECAUSE OF CONCERNS OVER THE GAS TAX. WHAT'S THE SOLUTION THERE?

SALAMIDO: The more diversified, the better and the less reliant you are on one or two or three things. So we had some good success last year, allocating a percentage of (vehicle-related) sales tax receipts to transportation funding was a big win. I think looking at an access user fee is a good idea. But there are a lot of good options out there. How do we look at public private partnerships? There aren't enough resources for the government to do it all alone. So how do we structure those public-private partnerships differently?

So we had some good success last year, allocating a percentage of sales tax receipts to transportation funding was a big win.

WHAT'S HAPPENING OF NOTE IN YOUR WORK, STEVE?

LAWLER: We 're coming off a three-year, unprecedented event in health care. The pandemic showed the stress and pure volume of work within the field. So folks who had thought about retiring, they decided that it was just time to do so. Our top priority is making sure that we have a way to recruit and retain the best talent. That means creating a workforce environment that's safe and healthy. Right now health care organizations have the highest incidence of workplace violence, more than any other business minus the prison system.

When we have programs to recruit and retain the best kids coming out of school, there's a really high likelihood of them staying in state. So it takes working with local school systems to really elevate STEM programs that get kids interested in science and health care and working to provide scholarships for those kids.

Stabilizing our current health care ecosystem...