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Feeling Over-Regulated? Let Your Voice Be Heard
Dawn Rivers | December 1st, 2008 - 05:30 AM
(11) found this useful. Do you? 
One of the brightest bright spots in all eight years of the Bush Administration was Tom Sullivan, chief counsel of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy.
There are a lot of reasons for that, which I won’t go into right now (although, if you’re interested, feel free to check out my final podcast interview with Tom shortly before he left Advocacy for greener private-sector pastures). But one of the coolest things he left behind him was the r3 initiative.
The Regulatory Review and Reform Initiative (that is, r3) has its roots in Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Under that part of the law, regulatory agencies are required to occasionally blow the dust off the regulations on their books and take a look at them, to see whether they might be outdated, ineffective, duplicative or otherwise unnecessary.
That sounds a lot simpler than it is. There are hundreds of thousands of regulations on the books; just deciding where to start must be fairly overwhelming. Sullivan’s idea was to harness the experiences of small business owners who need to deal with those regulations by asking them to nominate federal regulations they believe are in need of reform.
Advocacy launched the r3 initiative in early 2007 and, by the end of the year, had received almost 90 nominations from small business owners. Possibly some doubters would have expected small business owners to line up and suggest that all federal regulations should be got rid of and, further, that the government should just leave them alone.
But the small business community did Tom Sullivan proud. The nominations were, he told me, thoughtful and reasonable and always mindful of the original purpose of the regulation in question. In some cases, the proposed reforms simply reduced administrative inefficiency. In others, small business owners used the opportunity to bring federal regulators up to date with industry standards that were leap years ahead of the regulatory requirements.
From those nominations, a “Top 10″ were selected and submitted to the relevant agencies as candidates for review and reform. Among those original ten regulations, seven have received some form of agency review and/or reform proposal and one was the subject of a legislative proposal to get the job done.
Not too shabby, huh?
(You can get more information on the status of the Top 10 Rules, 2008, by visiting www.sba.gov/advo/r3/r3_status.html.)
So, why do I bring all this up? Well, Advocacy is accepting nominations from small business owners for another round of review candidates, to be reduced to their Top 10 Rules for 2009. So, if your small business is or has been subject to a particularly absurd, outmoded or pointless set of federal regulations, now is the time to make your voice heard.
Before you submit your candidate for regulatory reform, be sure to review Advocacy’s nominating guidelines to ensure that you provide all the information they need to evaluate your submission.
Thanks the the SBA Office of Advocacy, small business owners have an opportunity to do more than complain about those pesky regulations that give us all the hives. But whatever you do, do it now. The deadline for r3 nominations is December 31, 2008.
* * * * *
About the Author: Dawn Rivers Baker, an award-winning small business journalist, regularly reports and analyzes small business policy and research as the editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal. She also blogs at The Journal Blog.
Dawn is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.
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Randy San Nicolas | December 1st, 2008 at 7:28 am
In the payment systems industry “over-regulation” (specifically prepaid card issuing) is a reality businesses must battle each day. 2009 is going to be an interesting year.
Randy San Nicolas
http://www.prepaidenterprise.com
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Rose Anderson | December 1st, 2008 at 10:36 pm
“nominate federal regulations they believe are in need of reform. ”
Hi Dawn, who will benefit from that? the nominee or the one who nominated? or vice versa?
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Dawn Rivers Baker | December 1st, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Hi Rose.
Well, the small business owners will benefit (assuming their nomination is selected by Advocacy) when the regulating agency reviews the rule and the feedback on why it needs reform, and makes changes to that rule to make it less onerous.
I’ve always thought it was interesting that Tom Sullivan’s take was that it benefited the agency, too. First, because it saved them some work trying to prioritize which regulations to review. And second, because it was a way to forge relationships with the small business community, which would help them to do their Regulatory Flexibility chores more easily.
I’m not sure the agencies saw it that way but I’ve always thought it was very much to Tom’s credit that he was always looking for ways to make the relationship between regulators and small businesses less adversarial and more cooperative.
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Anita Campbell | December 2nd, 2008 at 7:15 am
Hi Dawn, I agree that the r3 program — seeking input on regulations to change or simplify — is an excellent one.
This time around I’d like to see more regulations nominated that apply to the mainstream of small businesses. The first time around, the only regulation with broad appeal was simplification of the home office business deduction — and I understand that has resulted in congressional bills.
But most of the other regulations nominated were environmental or affecting special industries — and not benefiting the vast majority of small businesses.
Again — don’t get me wrong. I am not criticizing the program. It’s a great idea. Just offering suggestions for improvement this time around.
Anita
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Dawn Rivers Baker | December 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
I noticed that about the first round of recommendations, too, Anita. My hunch is that there are a few industry specific sets of regs that bother small firms in those industries but, since most small businesses are REALLY small, there aren’t as many recommendations as one might expect.
For one thing, there are some sets of regs that don’t kick in until you have a certain number of employees. For example, OSHA regs only apply to firms with more than 20 employees (unless that has changed since a spokesman told me that back in 2000).
There are other sets of regulations that perhaps small firms don’t complain about because they don’t really know about them. The FTC promulgated a mass of regs to implement the CAN-SPAM act but I question how much detail is commonly known about them.
Probably the set of regs that impacts the largest number of small businesses across the board would be IRS regulations. Nobody gets away from those. And too much of that stuff can only be addressed by legislation and, specifically, a real push to simplify the tax code.
But that’s another post.
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Rose Anderson | December 2nd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
OOh. So as I understand it Dawn — both parties do benefit in this program. Thanks for pointing that out to me…
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» Simplify Government Regulations for the Small Business Majority, Not Just Special Interests Selling to Small Businesses | December 16th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
[...] Dawn Rivers Baker wrote about this program a few weeks ago: The Regulatory Review and Reform Initiative (that is, r3) has its roots in Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. Under that part of the law, regulatory agencies are required to occasionally blow the dust off the regulations on their books and take a look at them, to see whether they might be outdated, ineffective, duplicative or otherwise unnecessary. [...]
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