Remember this at the Next Election: Voter Mandates Don't Mean Sh*t

"I would prefer not to cut positions and library hours. I would prefer to go after redundancies in business regulation," San Francisco Supervisor David Chiu said at a Land Use Committee hearing April 6.

Proposition I, passed in November 2007, created the Small Business Assistance Center and required the Office of Small Business to issue a report that “makes recommendations regarding the streamlining and consolidation of [regulatory] departmental functions under the Office of Small Business.” According to the law itself, that report should have been completed by April 2008.

In January 2009, Chiu — who helped write Prop. I — requested a hearing on the status of the streamlining efforts at the Office of Small Business. That hearing took place in April. The office’s executive director, Regina Dick-Endrizzi, gave the main testimony and claimed that the report (at that point already a year late) would be forthcoming in mid-August.

Chiu told me he never received that report. Efforts to reach Dick-Endrizzi were unsuccessful. [Update: I did speak with her and she confirmed that there is no such report.]

To be fair, the Office of Small Business is understaffed and it’s no surprise that dire budget cuts in store for city government mean department heads are not cooperating with Dick-Endrizzi’s efforts, as they are both distracted and unwilling to give up an inch of bureaucratic territory.

But the Office of Small Business and department heads report to Mistermayor, who needs to make it clear that this is a priority. Prop. I is an obvious and decent voter mandate for The City to find more efficient ways of delivering services to small businesses. With no end to our budget woes in sight, everyone should be on board with stimulating our local economy while finding ways to do more with less.

Small-business owners do it every day.

Comments

[Alek]

I think it's also worth noting that progressives have pushed hard in the last decade to make sure that small businesses would not be exempt from most of our City's employment and environmental laws, as well as others. This was over the objection of small business owners and their representatives.

Given the fact that these necessary laws impose significant and disproportionate burdens on small business, it's the least the City can do to try to figure out how to help those same businesses navigate the bureaucratic morass and get by.

Those small businesses were wrong to object, and have been extremely petty towards customers and the general public in some cases, but they're right to complain about the lack of progress on Prop I. Many of us who pushed hard for paid sick leave, HAP, etc. voted for Prop I as a way to try to lessen the burden of compliance.