Report of the MCAA Legislative Committee

Words: Joe Aker

MAC PAC

The MCAA had an extremely successful MAC PAC event at last years annual meeting, the best we have had to date. The PAC raised over $40,000. We plan to have another very successful event this year.

Political Education Fund

The committee has had a very successful year so far raising funds for the political education fund. We had a very successful golf outing at mid-year that benefited the PEC. In addition at the convention we will have a Top Golf fundraising evening that should be very successful as well and this year’s South 40 event will benefit the PEC. These events should put us on pace to hit some new highs with our PEC.

MCAA Issues

The MCAA has all of our current position papers on the MCAA web-site which can be found at www.masoncontractors.org. Look under Legislative and you will find the position papers. The legislative committee recently met in person in Washington DC and discussed the future of the committee and looked at identifying new issues in light of the new Congress and Administration. An issue which will remain at the forefront is employee misclassification. The MCAA will look to focus efforts on Workforce Development, Regulatory Reform and Infrastructure Spending. We are excited to see where the new Administration and Congress will take us. We also will be monitoring and providing input on tax reform issues. Lastly, the committee will be pushing the continued building of relationships with our representatives in order to build our influence in DC.

Phone 2 Action

This Fall the MCAA began a new phone 2 action service which now allows us to contact members quickly and efficiently and ask them to contact their members of both the House and Senate with a message on a pending bill. The hone contact is a seamless process and makes for a very quick turn around on the request.

Silica

The MCAA is still a part of a construction coalition suing the Department of Labor over the new silica rule. The case is expected to move relatively slow. In addition, the MCAA has contracted with Jackson/Lewis to produce a written program members can adopt and use as their own and to develop a train the trainer program that would allow a member to send a key employee the program who would then be qualified to teach others to be the competent person on a job site.

The new administration should provide some type of relief to the rule even with court proceedings. We are hopeful the administration would re-open the rule making process and allow for changes to make for a more palatable rule.

Check-Off

The check-off bill made it the furthest it ever has and had a real chance of passing. It passed the House in the lame duck session and was moved to fast track in the Senate where it got held up and ultimately killed when the Senate ended business in early December. We are not sure at the time of this writing whether or not it will be re-introduced in the 115th Congress.
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