By: Cynthia Kurtz
Posted 5/29/2013
This week the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed) released its 2013 business survey results. BizFed is composed of over 100 business associations like the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership and chambers of commerce from every corner of Los Angeles County. Their sole purpose is to advocate on issues important to business and they are very good at what they do.
Every year they conduct a poll
to “take the pulse of business owners and executives and find out key issues of
concern that they deem most critical to the ongoing operation and growth of
their business.”
The 2013 survey contained
responses from a wide variety of businesses - 47 percent were CEO’s or business
owners, 34 percent represented closed corporations, 23 percent were individual
proprietors and 22 percent were business organizations.
The questions covered 19 topics
from infrastructure to immigration and water to worker’s compensation insurance.
Five issues clearly stood out as critical.
For the third year in a row taxes and fees were the number one concern. Government
at all levels is having trouble paying for services and investing in public
infrastructure. In order to maintain service levels they turn to fees and taxes
at just the time when businesses are least able to pay.
The second ranked issue - also
for the third year in a row - is government regulations. Clearly this is closely related to fees and
taxes. Even though government struggles to meet their current obligations,
federal and state regulatory agencies are adding new rules. Someone has to pay
for implementing the new rules and the first answer is usually a new fee.
It is easy to see the conundrum
we find ourselves in. We can’t afford what we have on the books today but we
continue to add new regulations. As if that weren’t enough, there is another
aspect of the rules, fees and taxes puzzle that is equally perplexing. New regulations are developed without much
thought given to what they will cost or who will pay for them - and that is by
design.
As an example, last week I was
invited to a meeting with representatives from the State Water Resources Control
Board. They are looking at new trash regulations and wanted to get input from a
variety of interested parties. Good questions about cost effectiveness and who
will pay were raised but the representatives told us that while they agreed
that those are important questions, they were not allowed to consider them in
their rule-making. They just promulgate “effective’ rules that fall to some
other agency, presumably local governments, to implement and pay for or force
the private sector to pay for.
No one can think that this is a
good way of doing business. It is like buying a $250,000 Bentley because it is
the best car made without looking at the sticker price or considering how one
will pay for it. Of course in that case a car can be returned. Unfortunately
there is no return policy on shortsighted regulations. I am not sure who decided
that cost and funding should be considered independent of developing the
regulations but it is past time to reconsider that decision.
Sorry but space prevents me from
letting you know about the other three top issues from the survey so look for
those in weeks to come.
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