Published January 2002

Lawmakers, pay attention
to small-business concerns

By Carolyn Logue
Guest Editorial

In order to rise to the challenge the economic recession has thrown us and emerge as a stronger state and nation, we must start with the wagon-pullers of the American economy — small business. Put them back on the road to recovery, and we can all ride along.

At the end of November, the 17,000-member Washington chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business, the state’s largest small-business advocacy group, presented its “Small Business Economic Agenda” to Washington lawmakers in order to give them a road map to recovery.

Legislators would be wise to put aside the wishes of Bill Gates and the boys at Starbucks and Weyerhaeuser for a moment and pay primary attention to folks like the typical Washington NFIB member who employs about six people and takes home an annual salary of around $35,000.

Why? Because these people are Washington’s largest employer, generating jobs for 60 percent of the nongovernment labor force. Their size is significant, but it is also a handicap, since rules and regulations passed by lawmakers cost small businesses twice as much to comply with as they cost larger companies.

While NFIB members in other states have for 15 consecutive years listed the cost of providing health care for their employees as their biggest problem, that is not the No. 1 difficulty of Washington NFIB members. Here, they list navigating through our state’s regulatory morass, 100,000 pages of it, as the top concern.

Getting a grip on the many out-of-control state agencies and departments is the top priority for NFIB/Washington.

When businesses seek to expand — which can mean hiring more people and providing more tax revenue for the state — they mistakenly do so under the assumption that they have received proper approval from one state agency only to find out — at considerable cost — that another agency has ordered a halt.

When smaller businesses aren’t being buffeted by environmental regulations, $700 million worth of workplace regulations are waiting just around the river bend.

Again unique in the nation, Washington state’s experiment with its needless ergonomics rule is certain to stifle productivity and job creation without any certainty of measurable reduction in workplace injuries — injuries that have been steadily falling the past 10 years through voluntary programs.

In its agenda to lawmakers, NFIB/Washington has proposed some solutions to our state’s regulatory mess, the most simple and significant being a complete scrapping of the ergonomics rule and more legislative oversight of all regulations before they take effect.

While health care might not rank as high in Washington state as in others, it still hovers near the top. Almost 10 years ago, 65 percent of NFIB/Washington members carried health care for their employees and themselves. That percentage is down to 47 today. The state can do its part to rectify this unacceptable situation by not larding up health-care plans with more mandates at the expense of basic care.

Reform of our state’s Unemployment Compensation, Workers’ Compensation and Wage & Hour laws also would give some gas to the recovery. So, too, would cuts in our Business & Occupation taxes and a freeze on our nationally high minimum-wage rate.

NFIB/Washington has provided lawmakers with some valuable solutions that could spur an economic recovery. But will they listen? After all, small business doesn’t have the celebrity power of large corporations. This should not, however, let legislators off the hook from doing the right and just thing.

Carolyn Logue is Washington State Director for the National Federation of Independent Business.

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