Centralia’s Republican state Rep. Peter Abbarno and Sen. John Braun spoke to the Twin Cities business community Thursday, answering questions on unemployment, housing and the state’s new long-term care tax.
The event was the Centralia-Chehalis Chamber of Commerce’s first in-person business forum in over a year.
There, Bob Holland of Bob Holland Insurance posed the first question, pointing to the many “help wanted” signs posted across the county — what some have deemed indications of a labor shortage felt nationwide.
Holland asked how Washington would react to the number of states declining extra unemployment funds coming from the federal government. The additional $300 weekly benefits last through September, but more than a dozen states will cut off the policy earlier.
“There’s too many people who are just sitting out of the workforce and not entering the workforce because they can make good money from unemployment insurance,” Braun said, adding that he doubts Washington would decline the federal assistance. “Our governor is in lockstep with the national administration, and I can’t imagine a scenario where they would walk away from that.
“So businesses are going to be left to fend for themselves until September, which is tragic,” he said.
When asked for an update on how housing — a shortage of which is felt acutely in Lewis County — was impacted by the 2021 legislative session, Abbarno said this year brought a “historic investment in housing,” including funding toward the housing trust fund, and a shift toward allowing municipalities to access that money to build infrastructure.
“I’m hoping that the little momentum we had this year to start really pushing money down to the local level decision-making continues,” Abbarno said.
But he added that significant investment is only useful if funding can get out the door.
“It seems like there’s always, each year, an escalating amount of money going into housing, yet our housing inventory gets worse and worse,” he said, adding that Growth Management Act building requirements “disincentivize building.”
A final question posed to the lawmakers related to a long-term care benefits tax that will begin Jan. 1, 2022. The .58% payroll tax generates a maximum lifetime benefit of $36,500 — far too little, according to Braun.
Braun, the Senate Minority Leader, also critiqued the tax for not being available to many people who end up leaving the state, and only benefiting people who paid the tax for a certain number of years.
“So if you’re at the end of your career or the beginning of your career, you really drew the short straw,” he said, adding that he expects a “huge outcry” once the tax hits Washingtonians’ paychecks.
The tax is “probably worse than everyone thinks, actually,” said Alicia Bull, the chamber’s executive director.
In their general legislative update, the lawmakers also touched on other business-related items, including flooding, which Abbarno called “one of the biggest issues that’s holding our community back from reaching its full economic potential.”
“Not only the memory of flooding, but the economic harm from flooding, but also the stigma of bringing businesses in and recruiting new businesses when they’ve heard about how flooding has devastated our community and how it stopped I-5 and you couldn’t transport goods,” he said.
Continuing to fund the community’s mitigation plan will be important, he said.
“Really, I’m very honored to be part of that process.”
