Utah Tech Council Uses Advocacy to Leverage the State’s Tech Priorities

Leveraging its leadership on early-stage capital issues, the Utah Technology Council (UTC) has played a transformative role in the development and passage of legislation impacting Utah’s technology industry. We had an interesting conversation with Richard R. Nelson, president and CEO of UTC, to discuss how some of those accomplishments were achieved.

How do you develop and leverage the solid relationships that you have with the Utah legislators. What things did you do to solidify those?
Our superb relationship with TECNA has helped tremendously — we have leveraged what we have learned from the best practices of other regional technology association leaders across North America on matters of significance to the technology industry. By becoming an advocacy group, we are able to help advance the most pressing issues of our industry.
Back in 2002, the No. 1 issue was early stage capital. We asked our members — through a series of focus groups — the classic question, “What keeps you up at night?” No. 1 was early stage capital. The charge, as we followed up with our board, was to go change the capital structure of the state. To accomplish this, we needed to become an advocacy group and become credible with our 104 legislators. The result: In 2003, UTC championed the Utah Fund of Funds, highly significant entrepreneurial economic development legislation that has fundamentally improved the capital structure of the state’s early stage funding.
Recently, the fund increased from $100 million to $300 million. This initiative has not cost the state anything and is the best legislation in the country. We have learned that it’s very important to get buy-in from industry. In fact, we have monthly public policy forums with our members, and then during the six-week legislation sessions we have weekly public policy forums. UTC is now the voice of technology in the state.
Recently, two of our most influential policy makers commended UTC as a stellar state center. Sen. Curtis Bramble (R-UT) and I found ourselves as keynote speakers at a rural telecom conference. He said UTC is the gold standard for industry to deal with the legislature. Coming from him, it was an enormous compliment. Sen. Bramble said, “You [UTC] understand the issues. You know them well. You do your homework. You are credible and you work closely with us. We’re doing important, major things together.” At another event, the governor’s chief of staff Derek Miller made a similar comment.

Please describe some of the policy priorities that UTC is focused on to foster growth and opportunity for the SMB IT sector.
We find that advocacy is a superb method for accomplishing our three major priorities which we refresh every five years.
The first priority is talent shortage. By having an advocacy focus at the state level, we can address the complexities of the talent shortage here in our state. We have been encouraging technology industry execs to participate in programs involved with STEM: Utah Scholars, Junior Achievement and FIRST Robotics. We work with the Department of Workforce Services annually to come up with a list of the 50 hottest STEM jobs in Utah for students, parents and counselors.
Our industry execs are meeting with counselors yearly to talk about our industry’s needs. We drove passage of the STEM Action Center legislation two years ago and [drove] additional funding for it this year. We are a contributor to the statewide STEM Media Launch and promote it with our members and have our own commercial. We have held a roundtable discussion with Senator Hatch and industry execs on Skilled Workforce reform.
Frankly, it’s ideal to work with TechVoice at the national level on this issue as well. I wish we could do much more at the national level on several complex issues, like talent shortage.
The second priority is early-stage funding. As I mentioned, the 2003 Utah Fund of Funds has been one of UTC’s major industry accomplishments for many years that has fundamentally changed the capital structure of the state and has drawn more than 200 venture and private equity sources to Utah. This past year, its financial framework was challenged. We weighed in on the proposed amendments and worked with the bill’s co-sponsor on friendly amendments that prevented the loss of critical tax credits. UTC is one of the best examples in the country of transforming the state financially with early stage capital. It is a fundamental reason why Utah is one of the top states in venturing.
The third priority for UTC is establishing valuable connections. I now have an initiative with my board and am working to understand who they need one-on-one relationships with and who they want to meet. We have helped facilitate interesting meetings with board members and other top CEOs.
1. Increasing the availability of temporary skilled worker (H-1B) visas by substantially raising the annual cap and enabling additional market-based adjustments — creating a program that is more responsive to market demand while avoiding overly burdensome hiring and recruitment requirements.
2. Exempting all advanced STEM degree holders at U.S. universities from the annual employment-based green card cap — retaining more of these highly sought after graduates in the U.S. and placing them on a fast track to permanent residency.
3. Creating new investment visas and green cards for immigrant entrepreneurs who launch businesses in the U.S. and meet key job creation, revenue generation and financing goals — addressing a significant policy gap and fueling the nation’s engine of economic growth and innovation.
The Utah Technology Council strongly urges our federal delegation to support legislation that facilitates these three industry priorities. If we all could do that at the federal level and apply diplomatic pressure on our members of Congress to do the right thing for this extraordinary technology industry, we could see amazing results. But we’re not doing that on a federal level. We’re just not working smart enough.

How does participating in TechVoice as an alliance partner help your organization be successful?
TechVoice is super responsive, but I’m not convinced that we have enough buy-in from other tech councils to create that critical mass. That’s where we need to go.
There are some of us who are very active and recognize that operating on the state level is not enough. There are a few of us who do work in Washington. It gets intimidating and certainly complex. The only way we’re ever going to get there is by having a superb national IT partner like what TechAmerica and TechVoice is evolving into. I think we are a work in progress. I’m hopeful. It’s certainly a lot better than being out there on your own. You can’t get there federally that way, and we need to because several national issues have affected our members: trademark amendments in years past, patent reform and Internet sales tax. These are not state issues. These are national issues, and they have to be resolved at the national level.
Fortunately, we have enough credibility to do something at the state level, but it needs to be a national effort. Federal policy is extremely important for all of our states and all of our tech councils in the United States. I hope that we continue to build a comprehensive state advocacy network that also could be used very strategically with all members of Congress in those same states and regions.