my perspective on: small businesses

It has long been said “the busi­ness of Amer­ica is busi­ness.” We might very well say “the busi­ness of Ari­zona is small busi­ness.” Small busi­nesses make up more than 96 per­cent of our state’s employ­ers, as well as the bulk of the mem­ber­ship in the Greater Phoenix Cham­ber of Com­merce. It’s impor­tant for our elected offi­cials to under­stand that what is good for small busi­ness is good for our com­mu­nity. We owe it to our­selves to elect lead­ers who will help cre­ate an atmos­phere where small busi­nesses thrive, secur­ing our future prosperity.

Unfor­tu­nately, many small busi­nesses must leap over road­blocks put in their way by those very pub­lic ser­vants we have cho­sen to lead our state. Here are just a few:

• An unem­ploy­ment insur­ance rate hike will take place next Jan­u­ary. While nec­es­sary to ensure the state can con­tinue to pay unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, it comes at a time when other costs of busi­ness are increas­ing (while most busi­ness rev­enues are not).

• Many busi­nesses that would nor­mally pay their June sales tax col­lec­tions to the state in late July will now instead have to make those pay­ments in June, poten­tially cre­at­ing a cash-flow issue.

• A pro­posal to expand the state sales tax base to include ser­vices (such as hair­cuts or oil changes) in addi­tion to goods would see many busi­ness own­ers spend­ing more time col­lect­ing taxes than actu­ally run­ning their businesses.

In fair­ness, there are prac­tices that ben­e­fit Arizona’s small busi­nesses, including

• Health insur­ance vouch­ers for small busi­nesses that help defray the cost of premiums.

• Afford­able, stripped-down health insur­ance plans, often referred to as “man­date lite,” allow­ing busi­ness own­ers to offer some ben­e­fits rather than none. This also reduces the strain on the state’s Medicare-like AHCCCS plan.

• Reduced paper­work on drug-and-alcohol test­ing pro­grams, help­ing small busi­nesses with work­place test­ing pro­grams receive dis­counts on their work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion policies.

To cre­ate a more pro-business envi­ron­ment in Ari­zona, we must encour­age more small busi­ness peo­ple to run for elected office. If our gov­ern­ment – of, by, and for the peo­ple – has more lead­ers who “sign the front of the check” and not just the back, decision-makers will have a greater under­stand­ing of the needs of and con­straints on small busi­ness peo­ple. A pro­posed online “one stop shop,” where busi­ness own­ers can find all the reg­u­la­tions and infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to their busi­ness in one place, should be funded and com­pleted. And it is vital that gov­ern­ment fea­ture less red tape and reg­u­la­tion and lower tax bur­dens on those who drive the sup­ply side of our economy.

The Greater Phoenix Cham­ber of Com­merce is actively work­ing on behalf of our 3,100+ mem­bers with sev­eral pro­grams and ini­tia­tives designed to help small busi­nesses suc­ceed. We are stress­ing busi­ness fun­da­men­tals by offer­ing more net­work­ing events and sem­i­nars like our “Back to Busi­ness” series. Already we have seen a 22-percent increase in atten­dance at our events, show­ing the strong demand for these programs.

We con­tinue to act as a con­duit between the busi­ness com­mu­nity and elected offi­cials. A new series of “Coun­cilmem­ber Con­nect” tours brings Phoenix City Coun­cil mem­bers to com­pa­nies in their dis­tricts, builds rela­tion­ships, and show­cases the con­tri­bu­tion these busi­nesses make to our com­mu­nity on a daily basis. And we are prac­tic­ing “thought lead­er­ship” by host­ing Phoenix Forum events on impor­tant top­ics such as global trade, sus­tain­abil­ity, and the impact of the mil­i­tary on Arizona’s econ­omy. You can find out about these events and any­thing else you could ask about our cham­ber at www.phoenixchamber.com.

With our state’s cen­ten­nial less than two years away, the time is now for all of us to demand and work toward mak­ing Ari­zona a leader in com­merce, indus­try, and inno­va­tion. These are big dreams that will only be accom­plished with a thriv­ing small busi­ness community.

Todd Sanders has been the pres­i­dent & CEO of the Greater Phoenix Cham­ber of Com­merce since May 2009, after more than three years as the GPCC’s vice pres­i­dent of Pub­lic Affairs and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment. A native of Bogota, Colom­bia, he came to the U.S. as a young boy. Mr. Sanders holds a bachelor’s degree in polit­i­cal sci­ence from North­ern Ari­zona University.