NFIB: Fix compensation issues before tackling gambling

Small-business owners lean toward favoring the gambling bill, but say there are bigger issues to tackle in the upcoming legislative session, said Bill Herrle, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business/Florida.

First, legislators when they begin the 60-day regular session next week need to focus on workers compensation, unemployment compensation, tort reform and tangible personal property tax relief, Herrle said.

Should the gaming issue pass, under the guise of creating tens of thousands of jobs, it will be viewed as a frivolity by the small-business community if these other hard issues are not addressed, Herrle said during a media conference Friday at the Florida Press Center in Tallahassee.

The other issues the NFIB/Florida considers bigger priorities -- according to a release from the NFIB/Florida -- are:

• Relieve the unnecessarily high workers comp rates small businesses are facing by supporting efforts to cap the amount doctors can charge for directly dispensing prescription drugs.
• Ease the load of continually rising unemployment tax rates by supporting efforts to reconfigure the state system and reduce unemployment compensation fraud.
• Reform harmful and ambiguous bad faith laws to stop trial lawyers from filing needless lawsuits and claims that inflict rising insurance premiums on business owners.
• Lower taxes for small-business owners by raising the tangible personal property tax exemption, which would eliminate the burdensome tax completely for the majority of small businesses.