Small Business Focus: Legislation could help small businesses
Published 12:00 am Monday, December 30, 2002
By JACK FARIS
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” the song goes, extolling the endless variety of holiday traditions that Americans celebrate as the calendar winds down.
For the nation’s small business sector, especially retail outlets, this season helps make up for slower revenue periods.
For others, it means time to relax, enjoy our friends and families and rededicate ourselves to those values that under-gird our democracy.
This time of year, it’s virtually impossible to avoid feelings of hope and optimism for what the future may bring. New Year’s resolutions are more than traditions, they’re the challenges we extend to ourselves to improve something important in our lives.
It’s rare that small-business owners turn to the nation’s capital for hope and optimism, but just a few days ago, one government agency offered up an idea that, if fulfilled, could not only boost the morale of business people everywhere, but encourage those who have never taken the entrepreneural leap to do so.
What’s the big idea? Legislation.
Normally, just the mention of that very word strikes fear in the hearts of business owners. After all, their experience in the legislative arena is one of defense, of constant struggles to roll back some ill-conceived law that threatened to swipe additional dollars from their tax registers in the form of new taxes or reduce their bottom lines by adding costly regulations.
But the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration isn’t your typical government agency. After all, they know a small business when they see one.
And the idea that has been offered by Thomas M. Sullivan, chief counsel for advocacy at SBA, is one that bears close attention. He claims that this proposal could save billions in forgone regulatory costs.
Sullivan recently proposed that state lawmakers enact model legislation patterned after the federal Regulatory Flexibility Act.
That law requires federal agencies to consider the impact on small business before issuing final regulations.
Just in the past year, Sullivan said, the Office of Advocacy save small-business owners more than $4 billion in potential regulatory compliance costs. How?
By making sure that the voice of small business was heard early in the regulatory process. He believes the same thing can happen in all 50 states if lawmakers adopt the model bill.
It makes sense. By paying heed to those who own and operate the nation’s Main Street firms, federal agencies can ensure that dollars that would have been wasted on burdensome new rules are available to be used in hiring new employees, buying new equipment and funding other business-growth investments.
And, this still allows government agencies to meet regulatory requirements that range from improved environmental quality to increased family security.
Many states currently have a patchwork of laws that protect small-business owners and their employees from excessive regulatory mandates. Some offer protections similar to the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Others offer no protection.
This is a big idea. Let’s hope state legislators make it one of their New Year’s resolutions; it certainly is one of NFIB’s.
JACK FARIS is president of the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s largest small-business advocacy group.