Small vendors to offer policy agenda
A “top 11” list doesn’t have the zing of a “top 10,” but that’s how many items were squeezed onto the wish list voted on last week by small-business owners and others who met to decide how California can refuel its economic engine of 3.2 million small firms.
The ideas, finalized during the two-day Governor’s Conference on Small Business and Entrepreneurship at a Los Angeles hotel, will be presented to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to guide his legislative agenda over the next two years.
State legislators are expected to also take up some of the ideas as the basis for possible laws or regulations.
Whether the proposals -- which included dropping the requirement that even the smallest firms pay the state’s $800 minimum franchise tax and adding teeth to requirements that state agencies use more small vendors -- will be implemented remains to be seen in the next few months and possibly years.
“You ask for the moon, the stars and the sun, and you are happy when you get a quarter of a star,” said Tanie Sole, a conference attendee and principal at Sunnyvale-based Greenslip Inc., which is working on using algae as renewable fuel.
The 11 final proposals are posted online at gov.ca.gov/press-release/11128.
Sole was one of several hundred small-business owners, trade association representatives, government officials and state workers at the conference who negotiated their way through about 130 draft proposals meant to make it easier to do business in California.
The preliminary recommendations were hammered out before the conference by 10 groups that focused on access to capital, innovation and technology, entrepreneurship encouragement, taxes and healthcare, among other issues.
The topic-specific groups were convened in the spring by the California small business advocate, Marty Keller, who was a key force behind the first-ever conference.
Between the sometimes-marathon policy debates, the attendees heard a series of speakers, including a luncheon address Tuesday by the governor.
Schwarzenegger, facing an estimated $11.2-billion budget shortfall, said the state needed to take the bottom-line, action-oriented approach familiar to business owners to help solve its cash crunch.
“We wanted to bring everyone together, to bring you together, to craft, basically, a plan, a plan to lead our economy into our next era -- not a conference where we just dialogue but where we want to create some great action, some new partnerships,” Schwarzenegger told the crowd.
(You can watch and listen to his speech and the other public parts of the first day via a webcast taped by the Kauffman Foundation. It’s online at video.kauffman.org/services/player/bcpid2071394001.)
The conference was the kind of big idea that entrepreneurs can relate to, said another small-business owner in attendance, Jamie Douraghy.
“You have to start with a dream and a vision. If it takes root, then it has credibility. If not, you move on,” said Douraghy, president of Artisan Creative, a Los Angeles-based temporary staffing agency for creative professionals.
He and other attendees said they were inspired by the energy the conference generated and hopeful the proposals would bring some relief to what many owners of small businesses see as burdensome state regulations and tax levels.
Encouraging entrepreneurship will be even more important as more people decide to start their own businesses after losing their jobs in the ongoing economic downturn, he said.
Douraghy echoed a point made by other small-business owners at the conference as they debated the next step in turning their wish list into reality: The government should serve as a facilitator but should not be expected to take control of the process.
“At the end of the day, it’s not going to be up to the government,” he said. “It’s going to be up to us to take action as entrepreneurs.”
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