Deadline largely met for state rule review
By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer
For the first time since the Small Business Regulatory Review Board was created in 1998, most state agencies met the deadline to provide a list of new regulations that may affect small businesses.
Until now the board had been largely ignored by state agencies.
Most agencies missed deadlines in 1999 and 2001 to review rules for their potential impact on small businesses, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, which oversees the board.
However, during a state Cabinet meeting in May, Gov. Linda Lingle instructed agencies to start cooperating with the board. Most of them met Monday's deadline.
"It's amazing they've got that much agency response, since the agencies haven't responded before," said Michael Hull, Hawai'i regional advocate in the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy in Phoenix. "Obviously, there's a lot of anti-business regulations in Hawai'i right now, so this is an important process."
The regulatory review board was created by the Hawai'i Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Act, which has been praised by some outside the state as model legislation. Under the law, any new rule or rule change must be reviewed to determine the number of small businesses affected and to what extent.
The board, which comprises business leaders on a volunteer basis, also serves as a conduit for complaints about rules adopted by state agencies, but so far it has played a role in altering only a handful of the state's regulations.
Compiling the list of rules is supposed to ensure that obsolete or unnecessary regulations are regularly updated or removed from the books. A list of all rules takes up 517 pages, according to the Legislative Reference Bureau.
As of late yesterday, the only agencies that had not submitted lists to the board were Human Services, the University of Hawai'i, Human Resources Development, Hawaiian Home Lands, Public Safety, Defense and the attorney general's office. The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism said that, generally, these agencies don't have rules affecting small businesses.
So far DBEDT has identified about 170 rules that affect small businesses with 100 or fewer employees, either by requiring payment of fees, purchase of equipment or training among other things. Once completed, the master list, which is expected to include several hundred more rules, will be included in the board's annual report to the Legislature due in December.
Board member Robert Speers said the level of cooperation that the board is receiving from state government is unprecedented.
"We believe this is in fact a new beginning and a good-faith effort on the part of the departments and the governor to take seriously the Small Business Regulatory Review Board," he said.
Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8093.
