The 2023 Nebraska Legislative Session is underway, and our Lincoln Chamber of Commerce (lcoc.com/advocacy) policy team is hard at work protecting and advocating for local business at the Capitol. This year’s 90-day session began on January 4 with newly elected officials in office, including a new governor and four recently elected or appointed senators for the Lincoln area.
Carried forward from recent legislative debates are challenges related to prison capacity, perennial state, and local tax and spending issues, tax competitiveness, and statewide economic development will remain high priorities throughout this session of the 108th Legislature. We also expect tax relief, regulatory relief, and extensions of popular tax credits to be high on our Economic Vitality agenda for 2023, in addition to support for policy proposals that enhance innovation and populate our talent pipeline.
These issues are key focus priorities for the Lincoln Chamber as we continue to engage in active discussions regarding the acceleration of workforce efforts, including a heightened focus on early childhood education, housing and community engagement. We will continue to work with many other chambers, economic development, and community groups from across the state on a broad range of issues as we collaborate and elevate our consensus-building efforts with state and our local elected officials.
The Chamber convened with a collaboration roundtable prior to the Legislative Session that brought together business leaders with city and state leaders. We were proud to initiate this effort with the mayor and several members of our legislative delegation. The community consensus in the initial meeting developed around making a strong push for funding to accelerate our Lincoln Convention Center and assist other local and regional venues, again working for state funding participation for the vital efforts to secure a secondary water source for Lincoln and continuing to push for policies to improve affordable and workforce housing prospects. Follow-up meetings have identified funding for the future East Beltway and county bridge funding as additional community consensus issues.
Overall, we expect the legislative body will remain committed to keeping state spending in check and pushing for continued tax competitiveness. ARPA funding, mega-site development, workforce development, innovation, transportation and many other additional topics that will continue to be the focus of efforts undertaken by our policy team, consisting of Bruce Bohrer and Todd Wiltgen.
Our chief objective at the Lincoln Chamber remains to advance Lincoln business interests and address matters that are essential to helping grow those businesses and our community. An incredible opportunity lies ahead, and we are confident it will be used to help further our mission at the Chamber. We value our collaborative relationship with our elected officials and look forward to working with them throughout the legislative session to ensure the ongoing economic vitality of our community.
Visit lcoc.com/advocacy to learn more about our work to advance pro-growth policies and view our key local, state and federal agendas for 2023. With important, long-term issues ahead, we are excited to work on issues that will continue to have a profound impact on our community and maintain the momentum of business in Lincoln.