News Roundup

Officials: Louisiana Not Good Environment For Small Businesses

City Business
May 14, 2008

BATON ROUGE — It is too difficult for small businesses to conduct businesses in Louisiana and the state should improve its regulatory process for small business.

That’s the message state House Speaker Jim Tucker and Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Stephen Moret had for nearly 60 small-business owners attending the National Federation of Independent Business’ Small Business Day at the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge today.

“We’re hearing from our constituents that the regulatory process needs to be updated. That’s something we’re seriously going to take a look at,” Tucker said.

Moret said NFIB “is going to have a seat at the table. Big corporations have whole departments to deal with regulations, but with a small business, it’s coming out of your hide. We need to make it easier for people to do business in the state of Louisiana.”

Regulatory reform and flexibility is one of NFIB’s top priorities the current session of the Louisiana Legislature, said Renee Baker, state director of NFIB Louisiana. In particular, NFIB is calling for legislation requiring state agencies to report the cost of new rules and regulations before enacting them.

“Running a small business isn’t easy,” Baker said. “Our members are small, family-owned businesses. It simply isn’t fair for agencies to pass new regulations without first thinking of the likely financial toll on small businesses. Small business is too important to the state’s economy for policymakers to ignore it.”