Economy, budget top issues for local business leaders

The budget, health care, property taxes and workers' compensation are among the issues local businesses would like to see addressed by the legislature.

"It's no secret that the state went on a pretty good spending spree when the economic projections were good," said Bill Owen of UMB, legislative chair of the American Bankers Association. "Now we've got ourselves in a position of decreasing revenues and increasing expenditures."

"From my standpoint," he added, "zero-based budgeting makes a lot of sense. Each cycle, let's go in and look at each item and ask if we still need to be funding this item."

Prioritizing needs is another factor, Owen said. "Ask what are the most important priorities. What do we have to fund? There's a lot of great things out there that could be done, but when you have finite resources, you have to prioritize your funding."

The ruinous cost of health care is another subject of intense interest.

"That's something we're hearing more and more about from businesses," said Brad Bodenhausen, senior vice president, Public Affairs and Communications of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce. The cost is pricing a lot of small businesses out of offering insurance, "and those small businesses that do offer it, with double-digit increases every year, are having a tougher time continuing to offer that benefit."

Richard Ollis, of Ollis & Company Insurors, said "being in the business I am in, I believe there needs to be some significant legal tort reform. And what I mean by that is businesses are just getting killed by these exorbitant jury awards and frivolous lawsuits brought against them."

Ollis is also interested in the candidates' positions on workers' compensation reform, as is Bodenhausen.

"Probably the main issue there is how you define a workplace accident, whether a workplace accident is a contributing factor in an injury or the contributing factor, and just that very simple one-word definition changes a lot in how the judges basically interpret that," Bodenhausen said.

Education is a concern for many, as it ultimately affects the quality of the work force, and the method of funding education is particularly in question. "I have strong feelings on local property tax versus sales tax, and I'd like to see the schools funded from other sources beside real property tax," said Kirk Heyle, of Heyle Realtors & Counseling Services LLC.