Business Days a Big Success

I've been light on the posting this week due to our big event of the year: Business Days at the Capitol. We had numerous speakers and issue panels over the last day that have made the event very educational and enjoyable. Here's a short recap.

Business Days kicked off with a lunch on Thursday with the "State of Business" address from the Chair of the Montana Chamber Board - Karen Olson Beenken, a small business owner in Sidney. John Harrington did a good write-up of her speech in the IR today. And yes, if you read the article you will notice that the Montana Chamber has finally started a political action committee, called the Montana Prosperity PAC. More on that later. In between lunch and dinner, we had a number of issue panels open to the public at the Capitol building on everything from tax simplification to health care.

The dinner was our annual Legislative Appreciation Banquet, where we had a number of legislators come from all over the state. We also had Senator Jon Tester as our keynote speaker. Tester did an excellent job of detailing his current work in D.C. as well as his future policy plans. We are very pleased he took time out of his busy schedule to speak to the business community.

The next morning was our "Eggs & Issues" breakfast, which included a good government panel discussion on term limits, reapportionment and lobbying disclosure for government employees. Representatives Bill McChesney of Miles City, Jesse O'Hara of Great Falls, and former legislators Haley Beaudry of Butte and Gary Forrester of Billings participated in this interesting discussion of government reform.

The rest of the morning was again filled with issue panels at the Capitol Building. Panels were held on affordable workforce housing, energy development, education and work comp. Many attendees made comments about how informative these discussion were for them. Shortly after the panels, the governor addressed a crowd in the Capitol Rotunda regarding the state's business climate. He encouraged business owners to be ambassadors to the rest of the country by bringing in new businesses to the state.

The closing lunch featured a speech from Secretary of State Brad Johnson. He updated the attendees about the various projects his office has worked on to make business filings in our state more user friendly.

Thanks to all who attended and participated in this year's Business Days event. Next year, Business Days will be on January 5-6th, which should be the first few days of the legislative session.