The Carolinas Associated General Contractors (CAGC) has issued a call for members to support Political Action Committees in North and South Carolina as the election season approaches.
“Your contribution to the NC or SC PAC enables us to provide financial support to elect legislative and statewide candidates who can be champions for the construction industry and to support legislators who are currently or aspire to be in leadership positions where they have significant influence over legislation and funding,” the CAGC announcement said. “The dynamics of this election year has created uncertainty and volatility that could unseat some of our long-time allies. We need to be able to help these vulnerable legislators that we count on for support.
“Our window for support to them is in the next three months and accordingly we need to raise PAC funds from our members.
While contributing directly to candidates is helpful and encouraged, it is more effective to give to the industry’s PAC where legislators can associate the contribution with CAGC and with your individual lobbyists who see them each day. Legislators routinely look at our PAC reports to assess our strength and influence based on how many in our industry participate in our PAC. Unfortunately, for the size of our industry we are woefully lagging in the number of contributors to our PAC. We need to increase these numbers!”
Contributions to the CAGC North Carolina PAC are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. As well, contributions from corporations, business entities, labor unions, and professional associations are prohibited. Each individual may contribute $5,100 per election.
CAGC says successes in the past year have included:
- Passage of the Connect NC Bonds
- new money for transportation and employee misclassification legislation in NC and transportation funding
- workforce development initiatives
- ccontractor licensing law changes in SC, and many other successes
“This success hinges both on having effective lobbyists AND having supporters of our industry in each state’s legislature,” the CAGC announcement said.
“Next year, we will be continuing our efforts to further increase funding for infrastructure (transportation bonds in NC are already being discussed) and seek favorable regulatory and tax policy changes that can help the industry. We are also already engaged with lawmakers regarding the critical workforce development needs in both states and are brainstorming ways our states can help us in promoting construction as a profession. But, we have to have powerful champions that care about and can help us with these initiatives.”