Delegates Still Making Their Voices Heard

A year after the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business, the nearly 2,000 delegates have spun off into an efficient, nationwide lobbying network for the small-business community.

Some are now considered small-business experts and are sought after to testify at congressional hearings. Others meet in closed-door sessions with federal bureaucrats to hash out new regulations. Still others are handed draft copies of federal reports for their comment.

These small-business-owners-turned-lobbyists are helping to push through 60 recommendations from the June 1995 conference in Washington, the third such national gathering.

But unlike the 1980 and ’86 conferences, from which delegates returned home to mind their own businesses, more than half these entrepreneurs are still actively working for change. Via conference calls, faxes, the Internet and occasional trips to the Capitol, they are teaming with political leaders eager to help them, said Jody Wharton of the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy in Washington.

“This is very new,” Wharton said. “Small business has a voice here. . . . On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House and Congress have examined these recommendations.”

“We’ve never had Congress involved [in implementation] before,” said Betty Jo Toccoli, a 1995 delegate and president of the California Small Business Assn.

Toccoli marveled that loyalty to the recommendations became a political issue earlier this month when Rep. Jan Meyers (R-Kan.), chairwoman of the House Small Business Committee, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) accused President Clinton of vetoing eight bills containing some of the top conference recommendations. Meanwhile, Clinton, who has called the conference a highlight of his presidency, frequently asks SBA administrator Phil Lader for progress on implementation, Toccoli said.

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The attention, Toccoli said, is because “small business is viewed politically by both parties to be a resource for the fall election.”

Small-business visibility has also been aided by the Office of Advocacy, she said. The federal agency created a regional structure to help delegates track the status of their recommendations. The office issued a progress report in December and will send out another next month. About 200 of the delegates will return to Washington in December for a summit meeting.

Although less than half a dozen conference recommendations have become policy or law, about 80% of the others have been included in measures that Clinton or congressional leaders are hammering out, Toccoli said.

These include:

* Independent contractors. Conference delegates wanted a clearer definition of what constitutes a company employee versus a contract worker. Recent hearings in the House Ways and Means Committee have examined the issue.

* Estate taxes. Repeal of the federal estate and gift tax laws to allow for easier inheritance of family-run businesses have been proposed by both Democrats and Republicans.

* Health care. Small businesses called for tax-deductible medical savings accounts and portable benefits, which are contained in a bill sponsored by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.). Clinton supports the bill but threatens a veto if MSAs are not limited to smaller businesses.

* Pension reform. The president’s National Employee Savings Trust plan and the Republican’s Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees both call for portable 401(k) accounts.

Conference recommendations that are now a reality include:

* International trade. Creation of a one-stop-shopping program to help small businesses get into international trade has been met, in part, by the creation of 15 Export Assistance Centers nationwide, the Export Import Bank’s Working Capital Guarantee Program and the U.S. Business Advisor, an online service that began in February.

* Fines. Rather than summarily imposing fines for violations of federal law, the administration has directed agencies to waive fines if the money that would have been paid goes to correct violations.

* Regulatory flexibility. Delegates called for the costs of new regulations to be assessed and for regulations to be revised if they are found to be too onerous for small businesses. They won both in the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, part of the Republicans’ “contract with America.”