Policy Is Rarely Designed Around Your Business
Policymakers need to understand how proposals affect real businesses. Sharing your operational realities helps connect policy decisions to the employees, customers, and communities they impact.
Written by
Parker White
Policymakers have a difficult job. They are balancing competing priorities, constituents, industries, political considerations and public interests. They cannot possibly understand how every policy will affect every business.
State legislators average very low wages, around $40,000 a year across the country, and have limited staff capacity. As a result, their policies are often not well researched or backed up with data. They depend on lobbyists and activists for information on the impact of proposed legislation.
That is why businesses need to participate in the process. A policymaker may know that a proposed law will affect restaurants, but do they know what it means for a restaurant with 12 employees, thin margins and a lease that has another seven years remaining?
They may know that a regulation affects construction. But do they know how it changes the economics of a five-person contractor competing against national firms?
They may know that a tax provision affects manufacturers. But do they understand which portion of the supply chain is actually bearing the cost?
Policymakers know policy. Businesses know how policy works in the real world.
Someone has to connect those two things, and you owe it your employees, business, and customers to have a seat at that table.