Fitzsimon File

The Republican leadership of the General Assembly has been crowing in recent days about the latest rankings of “business-friendly” legislators by N.C. Free, a business advocacy group in Raleigh.

Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger issued a press release touting the rankings that named Republican Senator Tom Apodaca as the most business-friendly member of the Senate.  All 19 Republicans were in the top 20 in the rankings, joined by Democratic Senator David Hoyle, long an N.C. Free favorite.

It was the same story in the House, with Republicans holding the top 31 positions in the rankings. The political action committee of N.C. Free also endorsed many incumbents for re-election in 2008, and far more Republicans were endorsed than Democrats.

The group has been issuing rankings of business-friendliness for 21 years as part of its mission to provide detailed data about the General Assembly for the organization’s members. The rankings themselves are a bit of a mystery, since N.C. Free does not release the votes it uses to determine who is business friendly.

Executive Director John Davis recently explained in a radio interview that the ranking system has two parts, a survey of business lobbyists in the General Assembly, and the voting records of lawmakers on business legislation. The votes used in the ranking are also determined by business lobbyists. An N.C. Free staff member readily admits that the ranking is subjective.

In other words, the ranking would be more accurately described as business-lobbyist-friendly. Then there’s the definition of business-friendly in the first place. Judging from reports about previous rankings, most of the votes used to evaluate lawmakers are votes on taxes, regulation and mandates.

This past session, the General Assembly finally approved a version of mental health parity to stop insurance companies from discriminating against people with mental illness.

Many business lobbyists opposed the bill, but is it business friendly to deny workers the ability the see a mental health professional when it not only helps the employee, but makes them more productive?

The General Assembly approved new incentives for individual corporations this summer and in a special session this fall. Is that business friendly, to favor one company over another?

What about education funding, new initiatives for public schools, community colleges and the UNC system? Isn’t it business friendly to have a well educated and skilled workforce?

Businesses do well when the larger community does well. That means that child care, affordable housing and access to health care are business friendly in the long run.  Wonder if votes on those issues made the rankings.

This session lawmakers set up a high-risk insurance pool to make it possible for people with chronic illnesses to afford insurance. Is that business friendly?

The North Carolina Chamber complains about the state’s tax rates on corporations and wealthy individuals, but the revenue raised from taxes supports many of the programs that businesses rely on everyday, including the civil courts and the transportation system, from roads to rail to airports. Is raising money for those needs anti-business?

What about state investments that directly create jobs, like the Housing Trust Fund, Smart Start, and Medicaid, which not only provides health care to the most vulnerable people in the state, but also supports thousands of health care positions?

Is there any business regulation that N.C. Free supports or is every attempt to ensure the safety and well-being of workers unfriendly to business?  This session, lawmakers voted to require that farmers provide mattresses for the migrant workers they house. That’s a new regulation, so was it used against lawmakers who supported it.

So were the worker safety laws passed after 25 people died behind a locked fire door in chicken processing plant in Hamlet in 1992. Were the lawmakers who fought for those laws business friendly?

N.C. Free ought to release the criteria it uses to rank legislators. And politicians and members of the media ought to be a little more leery of throwing around the term business friendly when it appears that a collection of well-heeled corporate lobbyists get to define it.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.