Some 100 Los Angeles-area business leaders and government officials flew up to Sacramento last week to lobby legislators on the need for health care reform and additional transportation funding for the region.

The top priority for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce on its annual Sacramento lobbying trip was health care reform.

“We are pushing for comprehensive health care reform that would in the end result in smaller increases in financial outlay for our members and for their employees,” Chamber president and chief executive Gary Toebben said just before he flew back.

The key sticking point last week was in the employer contribution component of any health care reform package that emerges this year. In his health care reform plan unveiled in January, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger would require all employers to provide health care coverage for their employees or pay to the state an in-lieu fee equal to 4 percent of payroll to fund coverage for the uninsured.

But state Sen. President Don Perata, D-Oakland, recently released his own health care reform plan that required employers to pay at least 7.5 percent of payroll.

“In our visit with him, we told him that a number of our small business members would balk at that figure, but that we would not take a definitive position before seeing the total package,” Toebben said. He added that Perata told the business leaders that the 7.5 percent figure is a proposal and “would not be the final word.”

Meanwhile, Toebben said business executives also pushed legislators for more transportation and housing dollars from the record $40 billion in infrastructure bonds approved by voters last fall. “We told the legislators that Los Angeles must get its fair share of highway bond money and housing money. We were team players and passed the bonds last fall and we reminded them of the outcry that was generated when L.A. didn’t get its fair share of the initial allotment from the California Transportation Commission this past winter.”

That commission relented and added funds for the completion of the carpool lanes along the San Diego (405) Freeway among other projects. Toebben said he felt “more confident” after the lobbying trip that L.A. would continue to get its fair share in future rounds of transportation funding.

The other key issue for local business leaders was water infrastructure, especially repairing numerous levies in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta area in Northern California. About one-third of the water used by L.A. area businesses and residents passes through the Delta region. After Hurricane Katrina, concern rose that the levies in California would rupture, cutting off that water supply.