On Monday, we formally kicked off the year with the state legislature, as we do each year, with our annual legislative symposium. This year's symposium brought together 22 of our legislators and dozens of our Chamber members. Our deepest thanks go to all the folks who took several hours on a Monday afternoon to participate in the event. The fact that so many members of the Nashua-area delegation were in attendance (including Speaker of the House Representative Shawn Jasper of Hudson) is just one more indicator of the great working relationship between the Chamber and our Nashua- area legislators. Businesses in this region can be proud of the unrivalled working relationship between their Chamber and their senators and representatives.
This year, we decided to take a bit of a new tack. For most businesses, of course, the common form of interaction with state government is not with the legislature, but rather with state licensing or regulatory agencies. So this year, instead of discussing specific bills, we focused on the interaction between executive branch agencies, the legislature, and the members of the public. We were honored to have with us three state department heads: Commissioner John Beardmore of the Department of Revenue Administration, Commissioner Jeff Rose of the Department of Resources and Economic Development, and Assistant Commissioner Kathryn Barger of the Department of Labor (whose name will undoubtedly be familiar to anyone who has stood in an elevator in New Hampshire).
To start the proceedings, we asked each of the Commissioners to tell us what they would do, if ruler for a day, to improve their department's delivery of services to the public. The common thread through all of the answers was the strong recognition of a need for increasingly robust use of technology. DRA, for instance, is currently working towards an upgrade of a data system that goes back to the 1990s. From the responses, it is fair to say that these three departments have a clear focus on customer service and on the utilization of the most modern technological approaches to allow information to go out and to come in with simplicity.
One of the things that we think was evident during the course of the symposium was the ease of the relationship between the Commissioners and the legislators who were present. This says to us that there is a level of trust and good will between these Commissioners and the legislators, which is no insignificant thing. For one thing, in the past there have been some agencies and department heads that have had rocky relationships with the legislature. For another thing, the legislature relies heavily on executive branch agencies not just to implement policies set by the general court, but also (and this is less well known) to provide data and information to the legislature during the course of the legislative session. Because most of the committees of the legislature have little or no staff support, the legislators have to lean heavily on executive branch departments for much of the information on which they base their votes. So we give kudos to DRA, DRED and DOL for earning that sort of respect.
The Chamber is always looking for ways to facilitate communication between Chamber members and the state government, so whether you are a legislator or a business person, please let us know if you have any ideas about how we can better perform that task.
