Accomplishments

The NCLA is very proud of its successes and accomplishments since its establishment in 1992. A brief list of the NCLA’s accomplishments follows:

ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH

  • Serve as leading business group to help pass a bill to expedite the federal H2A visa certification process, allowing up to 4,000 temporary foreign agricultural workers into the state
  • Increase small business exemption from business personal property tax from $2,500 to $7,000 by 2012 and increasing with inflation thereafter
  • Direct millions of dollars from the state’s Limited Gaming Fund toward the Bioscience Research Grant Program
  • Defeat effort to empower county assessors to audit business’ property and books and adjust tax returns of businesses suspected of filing incorrect returns
  • Create monetary incentive for businesses that create new jobs
  • Expand Bioscience Discovery Education Grant Program to include biofuels
  • Exempt equipment and infrastructure used in clean rooms from sales and use taxes
  • Help pass a host of renewable energy initiatives to help make Colorado a leader in the booming industry
  • Launch the Bioscience Discovery Education Grant Program with $2 million for bioscience research and discovery
  • Achieve major Enterprise Zone reform
  • Defeat Amendment 24 in 2000
  • Pass major growth legislation package

ON TAX POLICY

  • Passage of a measure to allow dynamic modeling when considering tax policy changes
  • Creation of first legislatively-mandated interim committee to study the business personal property tax and how to reduce or eliminate it
  • Passage of $2,500 business personal property tax exemption
  • Helped reduce Colorado corporate income tax rate
  • Launch $100 million business personal property tax refund
  • Help form the Colorado Commission on Taxation
  • Create research and development sales tax credit

ON TRANSPORTATION

  • Pass 0.08% DUI bill to ensure $50 million in future federal funding
  • Pass$20 billion long-term funding package
  • Expedite construction of segment IV of E-470
  • Pass TRANS referendum for bonding of federal highway dollars
  • Authorize rural transportation authorities

ON EDUCATION

  • Serve as lead business organization supporting bill to allow schools to use up to 15% of their special education funding on identifying and helping previously undiagnosed students with special needs, especially in grades K-3
  • Support bill allowing schools to have more control in their hiring, budgeting and curricula setting, even allowing schools to opt out of collective bargaining agreements
  • Pass measure to allow CSU and Mesa State University to manage and invest their respective assets
  • Pass bill to incorporate financial literacy into high school math standards
  • Pass legislation to provide matching grants in support of federally-sponsored grants
  • Pass bill directing excess federal mineral lease revenues to fund higher education capital construction projects
  • Support P-20 Council to address challenges from pre-school through grad school
  • Secure increases in higher ed stipends Increase capital construction spending by $80 million for priority statewide projects
  • Approve College Opportunity Fund to fund students rather than institutions and allow schools to qualify for enterprise status
  • Secure equitable state funding for Northern Colorado school districts
  • Pass comprehensive education reform package in 2000

ON LABOR

  • Pass bill to prohibit employees in the state personnel system from striking
  • Amend bill making it an unfair labor practice to punish employees for discussing wages so that it does not confer broader rights to workers than the National Labor Relations Act
  • Kill measure to raise the ceiling on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases and remove physical impairment and disfigurement from the non-economic damages classification
  • Help veto bill that would have made it easier to bring a union into a business
  • Secure business-friendly amendments to workers’ compensation legislation to allow for more physician choice for employees and other potentially dangerous bills.
  • Defeat bill creating incentives for “whistleblowers” to report contracting fraud even if the claim is fraudulent.
  • Defeat bill prohibiting employers from requiring employees to attend or participate in anything that expresses the employers’ political or religious view
  • Defeat bill mandating employers grant time off for employees to attend school events
  • Defeat bill expanding the base period for calculating unemployment benefits
  • Defeat bill to allow employees to choose their own physician in workers’ comp injuries
  • Defeat bill to allow unemployed benefits to locked out employees
  • Pass measure to decrease the unemployment insurance solvency tax
  • Defeat measure requiring employers grant employees access to their personnel files
  • Secure a permanent 20% unemployment insurance tax credit for business
  • Defeat of continued efforts to undermine 1986 workers’ compensation reform

ON HEALTH CARE

  • Defeat effort to include the children of dependent children on health insurance policies
  • Defeat the “Wal-Mart Bill” requiring large businesses spend 11% of wages on health insurance or give the difference to the state
  • Defeat “Wal-Mart Bill 2” requiring applicants for Medicaid reveal their employers and requiring businesses to report how many of their employees are on Medicaid Defeat bill requiring the state to become a re-insurer (an effort that only benefits employers not already offering health benefits to employees)
  • Pass legislation to make association health plans and health savings accounts a reality in Colorado
  • Defeat of “Any Willing Provider” legislation
  • Defeat of a variety of proposed mandated benefits
  • Remove barriers to provider network adequacy
  • Create Rural Health Care Task Force

ON WATER

  • Create rotational crop management “fallowing” program, allowing farmers to lease rather than sell water rights
  • Secure funding for basin roundtables and their projects Implement basin roundtables
  • Defeat measure limiting or prohibiting transbasin diversions and mandating specified mitigation standards
  • Pass bill giving the state engineer power to approve diversion or replacement plans for three years for 1,500 well pumpers along the South Platte River

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