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A year ago, Maryland business leaders were scrambling to campaign against a potential sales tax on computer services.

As the legislature prepares to open its 2009 session on Wednesday, business executives don't have a similarly galvanizing issue to rally around. Rather, they are addressing a mish-mash of concerns, from reining in spending to boosting the state's biotechnology industry.

While it's unlikely that a computer sales tax or something similar will come up this session, that doesn't mean business executives such as John Eckenrode are not monitoring the legislature. The state's budget shortfall for fiscal 2010 could reach $2 billion, making executives wonder if tax hikes will be proposed.

"Unlikely does not mean it won't happen," said Eckenrode, president of Baltimore high-tech company CPSI and co-founder with Thomas Loveland of the Maryland Computer Services Association. The group formed about a year ago to lobby for tech concerns and was a key player in the campaign that resulted in the repeal of the computer tax.

"In the unlikely event that a computer sales tax gets proposed, we'll be there in a hurry, unlike the 2007 special session, where we just plain weren't there," Eckenrode said.

The tech organization plans to share with legislators data from a report by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore released in November that showed that the Baltimore-Washington region, which includes Northern Virginia, ranked second only to New York in information technology employment with 270,000 workers. Of those, about 100,000 are in Maryland.

From 2003 to 2007, Maryland companies attracted more venture capital than those in Virginia, $2.8 billion versus $2.2 billion, according to the report. Nationally, the region ranked seventh.

Health insurance a concern

Health insurance has long been a key concern to businesses, and that issue is again high among the 2009 legislative priorities of groups such as the Maryland Chamber of Commerce. A new state program launched last year to help small employers subsidize health insurance costs has been slow to attract participants.

The program is designed for employers with two to nine full-time employees that did not offer health insurance during the previous year and whose workers have an average salary below $50,000. Some have said it is hard to meet those requirements.

Another program, the small group health insurance plan, is hampered by laws that provide "no incentives for cost containment, limit plan design flexibility and require among the highest number of mandated health benefits in the country," Maryland chamber executives said. The plan saw its participation decline by 9 percent from 1999 to 2007 to about 54,000 employers, according to state figures.

The chamber is asking that legislators broaden rating bands in the small group plan to help attract lower risk, younger participants to the pool, and incorporate rating factors to encourage cost containment.

"We must reduce the heavy subsidies that the current rating methodology requires so that we can attract more of the young and healthy to the pool," Ronald Wineholt, Maryland chamber vice president of government affairs, recently testified before a state joint committee on health care delivery and financing.

Other priorities for the Maryland chamber include limiting workplace regulations and securing more federal funding for transportation improvements.

Despite budget problems, the state should not save money by cutting back its international presence, said Kenneth D. Weiss, president of Plans and Solutions Inc., a Gaithersburg business consulting company that works in areas such as international trade and marketing.

"It's getting harder for companies here to sell overseas and harder for companies outside ours to sell here," Weiss said.

This report originally appeared in The Business Gazette.