Opinion: Freight elevator regulations burden small business
By William Vernon
Everybody says they love small business. They describe it as the backbone of our economy, or say that Main Street is the best place to shop. But state policymakers can’t seem to stop themselves from adding economic burdens that make it harder and harder for small business to survive, let alone grow and prosper, in Massachusetts.
The latest example is a new regulation proposed by the obscure Board of Elevator Regulations in the state’s Department of Public Safety. The board’s proposal would require that all freight elevators installed before 1962 be retrofitted or replaced, a proposal that could cost up to $100,000 per elevator.No one wants unsafe elevators. But these expensive changes would be required on recently inspected elevators that are currently operating safely.
This new regulation would of course have an undue burden on small businesses, which operate most of the pre-1962 elevators. The great majority of elevators affected are located in affordable space in older city mills and factories - where start-up and small businesses, particularly manufacturing, are normally located.
This is a perfect example of a state regulator imposing what appears to be a reasonable requirement that on closer examination, provides little benefit. It’s prohibitively expensive for small businesses with limited resources.
Massachusetts is a small-business state. More than 150,000 small and independent businesses with fewer than 100 workers employ nearly 1.5 million people – half of the state’s total workforce. The small-business community is a resilient group facing some of the highest costs of doing business in the nation, including energy, health care, unemployment insurance, wages, and housing costs. But the difficulty of growing jobs faced by small businesses is reflected in the state’s total jobs numbers, which have not recovered from the 2001 to 2002 economic slowdown. This is a major historical departure from past recoveries where job growth was led by small businesses.
The proposed elevator regulations are a symptom of burdensome regulations whose economic impact on small businesses is seldom considered. A cost-benefit analysis of all new regulations prior to implementation is required by law, but seldom undertaken seriously. In fact, members of the Elevator Board were not able to delineate the cost or even the number of companies that would be affected by a new rule at a public hearing in December. The board did not even fully notify affected companies prior to the public meeting.
The cavalier attitude toward the "backbone of our economy" too often found in the state bureaucracy must end if Massachusetts is going to regain its preeminent economic position and experience the economic expansion that we all want.
William Vernon is state director of the National Federation of Independent Business/Massachusetts. More information about NFIB is available online at www.NFIB.com/newsroom.
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