Legislative Wrap Up

The Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce was pleased to be the VOICE of business during the NC General Assembly short session. The conclusion of the session in July saw many victories for business in the state and Western North Carolina.

A top priority of the Asheville Chamber has been the cultivation of a regional partnership to provide greater impact to the WNC business voice. This goal was achieved this year as the Asheville Chamber partnered with five other regional chambers to take over 50 business leaders to Jones Street. The regional chambers included were the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, Black Mountain/Swannanoa Chamber, Haywood County Chamber, Henderson County Chamber, Madison County Chamber, and Brevard/Transylvania Chamber. The trip was a great success and plans are already in the works for next year.

Throughout the course of the short session, the Asheville Chamber was especially pleased to work on and see success with the Eastern Band of Cherokee’s Gambling Compact. This piece of legislation is key to WNC economic development as it will be responsible for 400 new and needed jobs in the region.

The session also saw steps in the right direction with regulatory reform and the removal of duplications in state and federal regulations. Work was also done with education reform with improvements to the lateral entry process. The Chamber believes this will allow business leaders easier access to the classroom. The Chamber was also pleased to see the state budget include initiatives to strengthen the NC Community College System and our state’s workforce development efforts, such as investing $5 million for an NC Back-to-Work Program focused on providing short-term training to the long-term unemployed.

Finally, the Chamber was thankful for work to remove contingency fee audits. Many local government units use third-party auditors for personal property tax purposes and are increasingly engaging these auditors on a contingency fee basis. This is of particular concern to North Carolina businesses because these commission-based fees potentially incentivize the third-party auditor to arbitrarily inflate a taxpayer’s liability since a larger audit assessment results in a larger payment to the auditor. The Chamber thanks the Governor for signing in H462, which will work to stop these unfair contingency fee audits.

Work has already begun to begin preparing for the next years long session. Please stay tuned and keep a look out for the Chamber’s Legislative Priorities Survey. This tool is a great way to identify member’s top priorities for the next year.

Regulatory Reform

Taxes

Transportation

Education

Job Creation