Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development

Task Force Description

Members of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force believe that economic freedom is the cornerstone of prosperity. The Task Force promotes policies that enhance competitiveness, promote employment, encourage innovation and limit government regulations imposed on business. The Task Force develops model policy to facilitate the implementation of these policies in the states and educates ALEC members through Task Force meetings, issue briefings, policy papers, and special workshops.

Major Issues

Transportation and Infrastructure—The Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force encourages the use of public-private partnerships (P3s) related to transportation infrastructure. P3s—mutually beneficial contracts between government and private sector entities to deliver public services—accelerate delivery schedules, decrease costs, and transfer risk away from the government. Members of the Task Force also support policies that give states the flexibility to determine how best to utilize their transportation dollars. This keeps decision-making in the hands of those who best know the intricacies of their state’s transportation infrastructure needs, thus providing better services at a lower cost.

Labor and Employment Reform—The Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force’s model policies on labor preserve freedom of association for employees while protecting worker choice and taxpayer dollars. To those ends, Task Force model policies promotes collective bargaining transparency, secret ballot elections, and employee choice regarding union involvement.

The Task Force also examines the effects of overly burdensome occupational licensing requirements on the economy and supports policies that allow individuals to pursue lawful occupation free from occupational regulations unrelated to public health and safety.

Financial Services—An area of policy that affects most Americans every day, the insurance, banking and lending industries are home to thousands of complex regulations. Members believe that in many instances, over-regulation of a financial tool lessens its availability and ultimately harms the consumers the regulation was intended to protect. For that reason, members of the Task Force work on model policies that allow free markets to flourish while protecting consumers.

Good Governance Practices—To ensure Americans receive the most return on their taxpayer investment, state governments should operate with transparency, accountability, and efficiency. To achieve these goals, members of the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force have passed model policies that identify situations in which private sector involvement can provide public goods and services in a more efficient manner, provide for the detection and elimination of fraud, waste and abuse in government, and require accountability in the regulatory process. These commonsense solutions can limit the size and scope of government by streamlining the process by which the government operates.

Meeting Information