Michigan Developments
Eric Rule,
Director of Governmental Affairs

MRA fights for retail vision clinics
Many retail vision clinics would be prohibited from operating as they currently do in Michigan as a result of language inserted in a package of bills sponsored by Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Zeeland), seeking changes to how various “professional services” are incorporated.

Currently, retail vision clinics are incorporated under the Business Corporation Act and employ licensed optometrists and opticians. The language in question would require these businesses to be owned by—and their boards of directors made up of—licensed optometrists. Such a change would place many businesses in peril.

Lawmakers in the House, believing the new language would not affect retail clinics, passed the bill package in February when it moved to the Senate. Since then, MRA has been educating lawmakers about the damaging impact of the language.

MRA also met with Sen. Alan Sanborn (R-Richmond), chair of the Senate Economic Development and Regulatory Reform Committee, which took up the bill in late February. Sanborn assured MRA that the language would be deleted from the Senate version of the bill package.

But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the Michigan Optometric Association is aimed at re-inserting the language on the Senate floor.

MRA will continue to inform and remind lawmakers about the anti-competitive nature of the move.

Tourism promotion gets boost
The tourism industry and related businesses got a much-needed boost when the Senate unanimously passed a package, sponsored by Sen. Jason Allen (R-Traverse City) and Sen. Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit), securing an additional $50 million for tourism in Michigan.

The funding should allow Travel Michigan to restore its marketing presence in all existing markets and move into new ones in time to promote the 2008 summer season. Additionally, of the $50 million, $15 million will go for business promotion in the state.

Out-of-state container issue progresses
The problem of redeeming deposits on out-of-state bottles and cans has been receiving the attention of a workgroup consisting of concerned groups and impacted businesses. Senator Ron Jelenik (R-Three Rivers) has tasked the workgroup with coming up with a workable solution within the next few months.

MRA is keeping a vigilant eye on the workgroup’s progress to ensure that retailers will be spared additional costs associated with retrofitting existing Reverse Vending Machines (RVMs) or buying more costly machines with advanced technology. The state’s Unclaimed Bottle Deposit Fund has been identified as the source for retail funding of these capital costs, since the state would reap the greatest benefit from a decrease in out-of-state container redemption.

Update from Washington
James Goldberg,
MRA Washington Counsel

H-2B visa fix caught in a standoff
Michigan retailers and others who need seasonal workers this summer are scrambling due to a congressional standoff over immigration.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and its allies have blocked voting on legislation to allow employers to rehire foreign seasonal nonagricultural workers until the lawmakers take up comprehensive immigration reform.

The result: bills sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of more than 180 legislators—bills intended to address the H-2B worker shortage—are stalled.

The current limit on H-2B visas is 66,000, divided equally between winter and summer workers. In 2005, returning workers were made exempt from the limit—then at 120,000—but that exemption expired on September 30, the end of the 2007 fiscal year.

The Stupak and Mikulski bills, supported by MRA and other members of the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Coalition, would make the rehired-workers exemption permanent.

While the Hispanic Caucus members do not oppose the Stupak and Mikulski bills, they do object to dealing with any aspect of the immigration situation outside of the framework of broad immigration reform, which includes some path to legalization to those who are in this country illegally.

House OKs mental health parity
The House has approved a mental health parity bill that would require health insurers to provide equal treatment and cost-sharing options for mental and physical conditions.

However, most business groups and some mental health advocacy groups favor a measure passed by the Senate last year. That measure was negotiated over several years with all stakeholders at the table.

The House bill goes further than the Senate version in terms of mandating how insurers cover mental health treatment and provides greater encouragement to the states to exceed the federal standard.

A House-Senate conference will meet to iron out the differences, but the White House has threatened a veto if the final bill looks more like the House measure.

Congress calls for eliminating deficit by 2012
A plan of the House and Senate, which have approved a nonbinding budget blueprint for the fiscal year beginning October 1, calls for eliminating the federal deficit by 2012. With the current year’s deficit at $400 billion, that’s a tall order.

Both chambers would extend for this year relief to middle-class taxpayers who would otherwise be faced with paying more taxes under the “alternative minimum tax” originally intended only for the wealthiest Americans.

Still to be worked out are congressional ideas on what to do with President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts, which are due to expire in 2010. The Democratic Congress wants to extend some of the cuts but probably will vote to let tax cuts on wealthier Americans expire.

Any such decision is only advisory, however, since the hard votes won’t come until after the makeup of the new Congress is determined by the November elections and a new president takes office in January.

While both the Senate budget bill and the Administration’s original spending request claim to end chronic budget deficits by 2012, they both leave out long-term war costs and firm decisions on tax policy.

Internet sales tax collection progress report
When the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Interstate Commerce Committee holds its spring meeting in Washington, the lawmakers will get a progress report on the Streamlined Sales Tax project. MRA and others view it as the precursor to federal legislation to authorize states to require Internet and other remote sellers to collect state sales taxes.

Twenty-two states have complied with the Streamlined Sales Tax agreement and more than 1,000 companies are collecting sales taxes for these states.

Meanwhile, the Sales Tax Fairness and Simplification Act has been introduced in Congress with bipartisan support. MRA and its allies are beginning to plan strategy for a new legislative push next January when the 110th Congress is sworn in.