Columbia business leaders met with U.S. Rep. Mark Alford and talked housing, health, more
U.S. Rep. Mark Alford, R-Missouri District 3, wanted to learn about regulations impacting small business development. What he learned Tuesday from area business leaders was not specific regulations related to small business, but adjacent issues with business and workforce impacts.
Alford met with Eric Morrison, president of Sundvold Financial and chair of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors; Trent Rash, Missouri Symphony executive director and co-chair of the chamber's small business committee; Lara Pieper, owner of Bloom Bookkeeping and small business committee co-chair; Brad Eiffert, Boone County Lumber president; Mike Grellner, Plaza Commercial Realty vice president; Matt McCormick, Chamber president; and Jennifer Barth, Missouri Employers Mutual vice president.
Issues brought up centered on workforce development and retention, affordable housing, child care and health care. Discussion also touched on commodity tariffs, particularly related to building supplies as a driver of increased housing costs.
In Columbia, for every job there is less than one person available, which creates a labor shortage, despite other positive numbers relating to jobs, McCormick said. With workforce development comes workforce attraction, and so the chamber are working on ways to keep students here or bring people back to Columbia.
In some cases, it is less about federal regulations impacting business, but navigating the myriad of state laws, especially for remote workers, Barth said.
Regarding child care, people are choosing to stay home, instead of going into the workforce, because of child care facility capacity and costs.
"If our workforce doesn't have a place they can afford to put their kids, they are not going back to work. We are seeing a lot of that," McCormick said. Some early bills in the Missouri General Assembly are aiming to tackle this issue.
Accredited child care facilities for low-income families also are faced with a lot of burdensome regulations, such as financial auditing rules that are hard to keep up with, Pieper said.
Because of rising costs of providing private health care insurance for his employees, Eiffert has adopted a different model. His employees either rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplace or the subsidizing Eiffert provides for employees to be members Big Tree Medical, a cost-share health care provider. Since he doesn't provide insurance anymore, some employees have found better coverage in the ACA marketplace than they did when on their private plan, Eiffert said.
"We ditched traditional health care offerings because my employees couldn't afford to use it because they are high-deductible plans and cash up front intensive," he said.
Rash highlighted the Missouri Chamber Plan, which provides some health insurance benefits to organizations that are members. He also has to rely on fractional staffing, so there are fewer full-time employees and others who may may be half time or less.
When looking at the affordable housing conversation, such as with MU divisions, the engineer needs to be seen as important as custodial staff, Grellner said. Affordable housing issues come down to zoning regulations and available stock of housing, he added.
Infrastructure is another factor, McCormick said, and that promised money for improvements is protected. This includes for highway projects on Interstate 70 and to another extent U.S. Highway 63. Strong infrastructure has been a driver of attracting manufacturing jobs to Columbia along with its location, he said.
The one small business regulation that Alford could explore, McCormick said, is the revolving loan fund through federal Economic Development Administration. That provides gap-financing capital for people to start businesses or grow their business. Alsford said he could explore this funding source, since he serves on the U.S. House's small business committee.
More: Early in session, lawmakers set sights on addressing child care crisis in Missouri
Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Rep. Mark Alford meets with Columbia business leaders
