High priority current reports from the OMA about legislative, regulatory, judicial and political developments that affect Ohio manufacturers:

Budget Impasse Evokes Call for Tax Hike

With state leaders unable to agree on how to balance the budget, a group of human service and education advocates have launched a statewide radio campaign urging lawmakers to raise taxes now.  The radio spot asks state leaders to oppose budget cuts and support increased revenues to provide vital services for Ohio’s most vulnerable.  Take some time over the holiday weekend to communicate with your state lawmakers in opposition to tax hikes.  07/02/2009

Supreme Court Reverses Union Wage Requirements

The Ohio Supreme Court this week issued an opinion that will maximize the use of economic development funds.  The Ohio Supreme Court reversed a current state policy requiring the payment of prevailing (union-scale) wage rates for construction projects receiving public funding, including recipients of economic development grants, even when the project is not a government building, road or other “public improvement.”  In other words if your business receives public economic development funds, the Supreme Court has determined that you are not required to pay the prevailing wage rate for the project.

Just weeks earlier, the Court ruled that in cases where prevailing wage applies (public improvements), the wage applies only to onsite construction and does not apply to the production of parts used in the public improvement. 

OMA General Counsel Bricker & Eckler LLP has prepared a memo with the new decision.  OMA Connections Partner, Squire Sanders and Dempsey, also offers manufacturers a summary of this welcome development.  07/02/2009

EFCA Remains Labor’s Priority

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that AL Franken (D – Minnesota) may take his U.S. Senate seat, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, according to the blog, TPM, has said, "The seating of Senator Franken is ... a crucial step towards passing the Employee Free Choice Act." 

Meanwhile the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a major proponent of EFCA, doesn’t like the taste of its own medicine.  It has been reported by Daily News Online that the SEIU is challenging a rival union’s attempt to represent nearly 100,000 SEIU members.  SEIU officials don’t believe the petitions are an accurate representation of what its members want.  They want the federal government to throw out petitions signed by those members, which would block an organizing election.  07/02/2009

Minimum Wage Increase Effective July 24

OMA Legal Counsel, Bricker and Eckler LLP, reminds manufacturers that on July 24, 2009, the federal minimum wage will increase from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 per hour for nonexempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  This marks the final increase in a series of increases to the federal minimum wage under the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. 

Important Note:  Ohio employers must be mindful of how the Ohio minimum wage coordinates with the federal minimum wage requirements. If you are an Ohio employer with annual gross receipts in excess of $267,000, you must pay the current Ohio minimum wage of $7.30 per hour.  If you are an Ohio employer and your annual gross receipts are $267,000 or less, then Ohio law requires you to pay the federal minimum wage.  07/01/2009

Action on Cap-And-Trade Moves to U.S. Senate

The U. S. House of Representatives voted out a controversial plan to limit carbon emissions by a narrow vote of 219-212.  The Waxman-Markey bill would put in place a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. 

Recent analyses of the proposal put the annual cost at anywhere from $175 per household (Congressional Budget Office) to $1500 per household (Heritage Foundation).  Interestingly, the CBO analysis also estimates that energy costs will go up annually by $776 per household.  No group has found the proposal in its current form will have a meaningful effect on global carbon emissions or global temperatures.  Click here to see how the Ohio delegation voted. 07/02/2009

Strickland Signs BWC Budget Bill … with Four Vetoes

Governor Strickland vetoed four provisions within the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) budget bill, House Bill 15, sent to him by the General Assembly.   The budget authorizes expenditures of $328 million over the biennium that started July 1.

Two vetoed provisions were administratively prescriptive; Strickland vetoed the items as costly, redundant and potentially confusing to employers.  One vetoed provision set a statutory timeline for rate-making; Strickland rejected it as constraining management ability to set actuarially sound rates. 

The final veto targeted an amendment that would have mandated perpetual discounts for both the drug-free workplace and safety council programs.  Both programs have been found by independent actuaries to be unsound (thus, driving up base rates and making Ohio’s rate structure even more uncompetitive).

Legislative benefit mandates, whether for commercial insurers or a state monopoly enterprise, cause cost shifts, undermine management performance accountability and constrain innovation in product design.  The OMA opposes benefit mandates.

The governor also signed the Industrial Commission budget bill, House Bill 16.  That budget is for $124 million over the next two years. 07/01/2009

State Leaders Punt on Balancing State Budget

As the partisan positions seemed to intensify over the last weekend leading up to the end of the state’s fiscal year on June 30, state lawmakers failed to produce a balanced two-year budget.  Instead they sent the Governor a temporary seven-day budget to buy more time to consider whether they will agree with Governor Strickland’s gambling proposal, will raise taxes or can stomach further cuts. 

The Governor signed the interim budget, but issued a statement challenging the legislature to finish the job.  OMA advocacy staff has been on the ground closely following developments on the hundreds of unresolved issues contained in versions of the HB 1. 07/02/2009

More Food Safety Regulation?

Ohio lawmakers are fast-tracking legislation to place on the November ballot an amendment to the Ohio Constitution to create a new regulatory board to govern livestock and food safety practices.  It has been suggested that the measure is intended to head-off a radical ballot proposal pushed by the Humane Society of the United States (these are not the people who run local humane societies). 

The amendment creates the Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board and authorizes the board to establish standards governing traditional agricultural practices.  It may also govern existing regulatory authority for some food manufacturing practices, effectively superceding current law.  Affected members are encouraged to review the legislation  and share comment with OMA advocacy staff.  07/02/2009

Finally

A Speech to Read

If you haven’t seen, or heard, this speech, you’ll want to read it when you get a moment over our Independence Day holiday.  It was given by Jeff Immelt, GE CEO, to the Economic Club in Detroit on June 26. 

He lays out a vision for a U.S. economy that is driven by manufacturing:  “We must make a serious commitment to manufacturing and exports. This is a national imperative. We all know that the American consumer cannot lead our recovery. This economy must be driven by business investment and exports.  We should set a national goal to create high value added jobs and have manufacturing jobs be no less than 20 percent of total employment, about twice what it is today. And we should commit ourselves to compete and win with American exports.”

Enjoy our national holiday; thanks for what you are doing to make this vision a reality.  It can happen.  07/02/2009