Government Affairs

The Chamber’s Government Affairs committee maintains strong, positive relationships with the area’s elected officials. It monitors legislative developments, conducts programs to provide opportunities for members to express their views, and collaborates on issues of mutual concern with other chambers and organizations.

The Government Affairs committee works to ensure that public policy and legislation create a positive climate for business growth and capital investment in Canton/Stark County and to effectively convey the pro-growth business perspective to our elected and public officials on pending legislation and pertinent regulatory issues.

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GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS - 2011 Strategic Plan

David C. Kaminski, director of education and government affairs

Overview

The Chamber’s Government Affairs Committee maintains strong, positive relationships with the area’s elected officials. It monitors legislative developments, conducts programs to provide opportunities for members to express their views, and collaborates on issues of mutual concern with other chambers and organizations.

Goal

Work toward public policy and legislation that will create a positive climate for business growth and capital investment in Canton/Stark County.

Objectives

• Effectively convey pro-growth business perspectives to our elected and public officials on pending legislation and pertinent regulatory issues
• Encourage collaboration among units of local and state government for the betterment of the community and the business climate

Strategies

• Inform Chamber members of important legislation and recommend how to provide appropriate, effective input
• Maintain close and positive working relationships with the area’s elected and appointed government officials
• Conduct events that provide members an opportunity to meet area elected officials
• Work with Stark Development Board to encourage government collaboration in Stark County
• Work with the Metro Chambers of Ohio (Toledo, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati) and the Ohio Chamber to promote collaboration and reform in state government 
• Nurture 2010 initiative to help coordinate the government-affairs efforts of Chambers throughout Stark County

Redesigning Ohio: Transforming Government into a 21st Century Institution

The Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and seven other metropolitan chambers in the state, along with the Ohio Chamber, have produced a set of recommendations to transform the way Ohio state government does business, while making meaningful recommendations for tackling Ohio’s current fiscal crisis.

Canton Regional Chamber collaborates on “Budgeting for Outcomes” to resolve Ohio’s statewide budget crisis

How does Ohio’s government deal with an $8 billion budget deficit and avoid severe budget problems in the future? For about 18 months, the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and eight other large Chambers have worked on this question. They have developed a plan to reform government in Ohio and have presented it to the staff of Gov.-elect John Kasich and the leaders of the 2011-12 Ohio Legislature.

The ideas in the Chambers’ reform plan will not eliminate the $8 billion deficit but can begin reforms that will make government more efficient, less costly and more tuned to the needs of Ohio citizens in years to come.

“It is the start of a process that can make Ohio a better place to live and do business,” said Dennis P. Saunier, president and CEO of the Canton Regional Chamber. “In the crisis that Ohio government faces, this is the right time to rethink the way Ohio does its public business.”

Other organizations that helped create the state government reform plan are the Chambers in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Youngstown and Dayton, as well as the Ohio Chamber. Nationally known government reform expert David Osborne of Public Strategies Group in Minneapolis, and former state budget director Greg Browning worked for the Chambers on this project.

The core recommendation is the adoption of “Budgeting for Outcomes.” It causes government to focus on funding the outcomes that matter most to citizens and discontinuing the funding of programs of less value. High-priority outcomes could be a better business climate in Ohio, more Ohioans holding college degrees, a safer and more affordable prison system or health care that encouraged health rather than disease treatment. By Budgeting for Outcomes, state government would challenge its agencies to find ways to they could contribute to the most desired outcomes. This would be the path toward continued funding.

To help foster creative thinking, the Chambers recommend a number of steps that would relieve government managers from the bureaucratic rules that bind them, while at the same time challenging them to become as efficient as private business.

The Chambers also recommend a periodic review of the 122 tax expenditures in Ohio law. Tax expenditures are tax breaks designed to encourage some good outcome, usually in economic activity. But they need to be reviewed to determine whether they still do the job they were intended to do.

Reforming the costly and dangerous system of locking up so many Ohioans in overcrowded prisons, and reforming the way Ohio purchases health insurance are other  aspects of the Chambers’ reform proposal.

“We urge Chamber members to read the reform proposal on our website and talk to state legislators about these goals,” Saunier said.