Leadership with the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce is on a month-long road tour across the state, and the tour included a stop here in South Sioux City earlier this week.
About 30 local business and government officials met with state chamber officials Monday afternoon at the College Center to talk about its work in supporting state business interests and offered a look ahead to the 2027 Legislative calendar.
South Sioux City was the second of 24 stops across the state that the Nebraska Chamber is making and the first of five in Northeast Nebraska. They were also scheduled to visit Norfolk, O’Neill, Wayne and Columbus Chambers this week as the tour moves across the state this summer.
“It’s a chance for us to connect with business leaders across the state in a more relaxed atmosphere and talk to people, learn what they are working on and seeing how we can help,” said Tara Lee, executive vice president of partnership and programs for the Nebraska Chamber, who emceed Monday’s 90-minute program. “We always try to bring the area’s state senator in there. Our state senators work well with the Chamber on a lot of issues. Obviously, we’re going to clash sometimes on bills, but for the most part, we have a lot of huge supporters of the Chamber in the Capitol building.”
Among those who have a good working relationship with the state and local Chambers of Commerce is State Sen. Glen Meyer, who was also on hand to talk about what the Legislature has been working on and some of the hurdles that are part of the process.
Executive vice president Hunter Traynor highlighted 11 bills the state Chamber supported that the Legislature passed during the 60-day session earlier this year.
Among the legislation the Chamber worked to pass to help the business community were:
— changes to state minimum wage provisions
— dedicated funding for workforce housing
— community improvement districts and Inland Port expansion
— changes to the state’s Workers’ Compensation Act
— eminent domain restriction for private generation serving large industrial loads
— Grow the Good Life Act to keep employers in the state
— raising the childcare subsidy eligibility from 130 percent to 185 percent of the federal poverty level
Meyer said that while he has been supportive of the Chamber’s efforts — he is one of 41 state senators who voted in favor of Chamber-supported legislation in the last session — he is by no means a rubber stamp for them.
“Hunter and I get along very well although we’ve been on the opposite end of some discussions,” he told the group. “He represented the Chamber very well in a hearing on TIF funding and beat me up pretty good, and after the hearing as he was leaving, he came over to shake my hand and I told him ‘You’re 100 percent wrong, but we’re still friends.’”
Meyer said that the upcoming 90-day session will, as usual, focus on the state’s biennium budget for fiscal years 2027-28 and 2028-29, and said he will be working on property tax legislation, particularly with how it will be used to fund public schools in the state.
