Who will speak for business on education?

Today is Preview, the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual look at what businesses can expect from the next 12 months.

Part policy seminar, part motivational rally, Preview also features a trade show and Las Vegas restaurant tasting. It’s one of the seminal events on the business calendar for Las Vegas.

But I wonder what the 104-year-old Chamber sees for itself when it looks ahead, especially now that a newly formed group is moving to get in on the conversation.

The Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance is the modern incarnation of the old Nevada Development Authority. The alliance was renamed and got new leadership after Gov. Brian Sandoval reorganized economic development efforts in Nevada.

On paper, the Chamber and the Alliance seem to have different but complimentary missions: The Alliance recruits new businesses to Nevada, and the Chamber services businesses once they get here. But — although both groups officially deny any discord — there have been reports of tension between them over education, and in recent months, the Alliance has begun to look more like the Chamber.

At its State of Economic Development event on Wednesday, Alliance President Jonas Peterson reviewed a chart he called “the funnel,” which showed the fate of the 251 companies that showed initial interest in moving to Nevada in 2014. The largest percentage of those that rejected Southern Nevada — fully 35 percent of companies — cited the quality of the existing or planned workforce. And that, Peterson said, is tied directly to the region’s education system, which just about everybody admits needs to be improved.

That’s why the Alliance wants in on the education debate from a business perspective, traditionally the Chamber’s purview. And while the two groups are aligned on some issues — both opposed the Education Initiative, a proposed 2 percent margins tax on the 2014 ballot — Alliance CEO Tom Skancke went further, meeting and working with the Clark County Education Association to blunt the campaign in favor of the initiative, which was overwhelmingly defeated.

But Skancke’s attempts to bridge the gap between teachers and business (he has a board that looks like a who’s who of business, law and government in Southern Nevada) has irked some. The Chamber, along with the Nevada Resort Association and the Retail Association of Nevada, distanced themselves from a November education policy conference sponsored by the Alliance that featured state Senate Majority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson, and Assembly Minority Leader Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas.

Instead, the Chamber held its own K-12 education policy conference, broadcast on VegasPBS and the Internet.

That’s not where the duplications end, either. While the Chamber has its seminal Preview event today, the Alliance has Perspective, the annual release of a compilation of intricate research aimed at economic development. The publication is sponsored by some of the same people who underwrite Preview, and both feature the work of numbers guru Jeremy Aguero.

Only now, Perspective will expand with a redesign, quarterly newsletters and an all-new event later this year.

During the 2015 Legislature, the Chamber will be represented in Carson City by a new lobbyist: James Wadhams, one of Carson City’s best and most accomplished advocates. The Alliance? It announced Wednesday that it had hired Sam McMullen, who until recently had represented … the Chamber of Commerce.

But maybe it just looks like the Alliance is morphing into an all-new Chamber. Both groups have essentially the same position on Gov. Brian Sandoval’s plan to make the business license fee a progressive levy based on gross receipts: study it. While the Chamber has been busy promoting a tax study it commissioned that advocates expanding the sales tax to services, the Alliance seems like it wants to get to yes on some tax solution.

At Wednesday’s Alliance event, Skancke began his remarks by saying Sandoval had delivered on his promise of economic development and predicted that the governor soon would deliver on education. While that’s not an endorsement, and certainly not an official position of the Alliance, at the very least it’s not an echo of the most common message the business establishment has usually given on taxes: “No.”

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.