KCC discusses KY’s winning strategy at rotary

Maysville Rotary welcomed guests Amy Cloud, Executive Director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, and Jon Dye, Manager of Grassroots Advocacy, to discuss the current stance on issues in the state as well as the five to 10 year plan for the future of the state.

Cloud began the presentation by explaining how the state chamber is connected with all local chambers and that idea of a well working relationship between the state and local communities is vitally important and helpful in the state.

“We like to encourage local chambers to be public policy chambers advocacy grassroots advocacy, a lot of people put those two words together with politics and we are always on a mission to educate folks in knowing that politics and public policy are not the same thing,” Cloud stated.

With this connection of state and local chambers and using the grassroots advocacy Cloud stated that the advocacy helps keep residents aware of what is going on at the state government level and information they should know about policy.

After the discussion of what the Grassroots Advocacy stands for the Manager of the advocacy Dye was welcomed to speak on some issues that are currently being talked about that people can be aware of along with a five to ten year strategy plan that the state chamber has produced.

Dye stated, “If you look at this the Kentucky winning strategy this is more of a five to ten year plan that we have at the Kentucky Chamber and it tackles things like tax reform, population, education and workforce, infrastructure, affordability, quality of life our signature of horse racing and bourbon um health outcome and development and more or less any issues that would affect your business, affect your bottom line.”

Dye talked about state income tax and how over time the goal is to eventually reach a zero state income tax and stated, “Even if it takes ten years or fifteen years to get to that zero state income tax we want to make sure we are doing it in a responsible way.”

There are current issues at hand in the state legislature that Dye stated the Grassroots Advocacy is supporting as well as some that it is not supporting.

A state house bill was passed last year that helped increase childcare and that employers can help employees with access to childcare throughout the state.

“We think that extending and even strengthening that employer and employee childcare assistance program House bill 499 is incredibly crucial some of those funds have gone to use in the past year,” Dye stated.

Having an affordable access to childcare and child education is vitally important to the Grassroots Advocacy Dye stated and supporting these issues helps move that forward.

House bill 179 is a second issue that Dye stated is important to the advocacy which essentially gives businesses and employers the option of paying a premium for insurance so that they can manage paid leave for employees through a process of getting the insurance directly rather than having a mandated straight six week paid leave that could become non-manageable.

“If you are looking at small employers who just simply don’t have the revenue to provide those kind of benefits this is a way for them to pay those premiums and provide those kind of benefits and also there is no mandates it does not mandate that employers buy this insurance it doesn’t mandate that employees have this insurance and it would actually be an internal policy business to business,” Dye stated.

Some of the issues at hand that the Grassroots Advocacy opposes stated Dye are data privacy and a mandate being discussed for work schedule.

The discussion of data privacy links to the idea of how data can be shared and sold to advertising and the mandate for work schedule Dye stated is about discussion where working schedules could possibly be pre-determined for employers.

KY Chamber of Commerce works with the Grassroots Advocacy to promote public policy to state residents and inform on what is taking place in both local and state legislatures.