Two bills listed as priorities by your Chamber of Commerce have been approved by the House and the Senate and are headed to the Governor for signature: HB7 (Button) and HB5 (Ashby).
HB7 prevents employers from having dramatic, pandemic induced, increases in their unemployment insurance rates next year. Employers pay an unemployment insurance rate based largely on the amount of unemployment paid to their employees in the prior year. There is an exception for unemployment paid to an employee for which the employer cannot be blamed. These are called “uncharged” claims and a portion of these are used to calculate the rate for all employers. The pandemic induced shut down of businesses resulted in massive amounts of unemployment being paid for which no employer could be charged. The result, without the passage of HB7, would have been massive unemployment compensation insurance premium increases for employers.
HB5 creates a plan for making real broadband available to every household in Texas. Prior to HB5 we were living in one of only 6 states without a broadband plan. The pandemic made it clear that broadband is necessary for distance learning, for telemedicine and for remote access to employment. We learned that there are wide swaths of rural Texas without access to broadband. It also became clear that there are broadband deserts within metropolitan areas where access to broadband is unavailable or unaffordable. We also discovered that many school aged children have no access to the internet except for their cell phones.
The Chamber proactively lobbied our members of the legislature to fast track to passage both of these bills. While we won’t claim credit for the results, it does illustrate a part of how we represent the interests of our members and the business community in the state legislature.