Small biz feels left out of legislative blitz

BOSTON — A top lobbyist for small businesses said that he does not see lawmakers giving a “primary focus” to that sector, with hefty bills on economic development and health care missing an opportunity to lift up Main Street businesses.

“I think they need to be a top discussion item,” said Jon Hurst of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, adding that there was “not enough” targeted legislation for small businesses moving through the State House.

RAM joined with the Mass. Restaurant Association and the National Federation of Independent Business at a lobbying event inside the capitol on Wednesday, timed about two and a half months away from the end of large-scale lawmaking for this term.

“This is an election year. This is the year in which we do an economic development bill. Yet, what level of discussion has there been on helping our main streets, helping our small businesses? They are the backbone, they are the majority of our jobs,” Hurst told the News Service.

He added that he saw “a general taking-for-granted of small businesses out there.”

Rep. Paul McMurtry, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Businesses, told the News Service he agreed that “sometimes in policymaking, we take small businesses for granted.”

“And a lot of us in the small business community focus on running and managing and operating that business day-to-day, don’t have time to focus on the policies and legislative issues,” added the Dedham Democrat, who owns and operates Dedham Community Theatre.

NFIB’s Christopher Carlozzi told the crowd in a State House meeting room that Gov. Maura Healey’s so-called Municipal Empowerment Act “should be on a lot of your radar screens.”

The governor’s bill would open the door for increases in local-option meals and occupancy taxes, and Carlozzi said he saw “quite a few mayors and town officials” at the bill’s committee hearing who were ready to embrace the new revenue tools.

“If you’re a restaurant, if you’re in hospitality, we don’t want consumers to find a reason to go to New Hampshire, or go to Maine, or go to another state and vacation. We want them spending their dollars in Massachusetts,” Carlozzi said.

While Healey’s bill is still pending, top Democrats haven’t advanced it and have shown little interest in the local option taxes, apart from a potential new tax on high-dollar real estate transactions to fund affordable housing investments.

Sen. Bruce Tarr listed off other “challenges” that face small businesses, including the cost of workers’ compensation and Paid Family and Medical Leave contributions.

“There are so many issues when every day you’re running a small business and it’s Thursday night, and you’re thinking about making payroll for Friday,” Tarr said, “and you’re wondering, ‘How am I going to get through that next day, or that next week, with all of these different things that are coming at me?’”

Public policy affects both the “very flat to down sales” numbers as well as the “very high costs” that local shops must deal with, Hurst said.

“And particularly for small businesses, some of the costs out there are just choking them,” Hurst added. “It’s one thing, if you’re big companies or you’re very profitable margin type of companies, whether it be biotech, health care, technology, banking and so forth. They’re doing OK, but their customers are not. The small businesses are not. So we have to start focusing on, what can we do to help them?”

While that could be a “major thrust” of the economic development bill, he said he sees legislators’ eyes attracted to areas like biotech and climate technology.

“I mean they’re perfectly important for our economy, but there should be an equal thrust on helping our small businesses survive and thrive,” he said.

Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, said lawmakers were faced in the near-term with “a number of vehicles” that could carry small business priorities, including the Senate budget bill scheduled for debate next week. Senators have filed 1,100 amendments to the bill, including around 110 from Tarr, some dealing with the sales tax or health insurance purchasing cooperatives.

The Retailers Association passed out a list of four priority bills at the event, though one of them — related to insurance purchasing cooperatives — has already been effectively relegated to the dustbin by a joint committee.

Sen. Michael Moore’s bill (S 687) would allow insurers to “provide members of small business group purchasing cooperatives with year-end incentives based on administrative efficiencies resulting from the group purchase of coverage,” according to a summary.

The Joint Committee on Financial Services sent it to study in February. It remained one of the focuses of the lobby day, though, and Moore told the crowd he would potentially file the language as an amendment to the pending economic development bill.

The Millbury Democrat said he expected action on the eco-dev bill “over the next month and a half or two months,” a timeline that could have Democrats scrambling like they did two years ago when they couldn’t agree to a bill at the July 31 deadline.

“There’s a big health care bill [in the House] this week,” RAM’s Hurst told the News Service. “How much of that is focused on lowering the cost of health insurance for small businesses? Not seeing much on that, right?”

Other priorities on the Retailers Association list included bills dealing with credit card surcharging (Rep. James Murphy, H 1101), workers’ compensation premium payment schedules (Sen. Susan Moran, S 695), and a proposed “vendors’ collection allowance” to compensate businesses for collecting and remitting taxes (Sen. John Velis, S 1957).

The credit card surcharge bill is in House Rules, the workers’ comp bill was sent to Senate Ways and Means in March, and the vendors’ allowance bill is still before the Joint Committee on Revenue.

Ahead of their lobbying stops around the building, Jessica Muradian of the Mass. Restaurant Association also prepped attendees on opposition to the tipped wage ballot question. The head of the Restaurant Association is among the plaintiffs in a pending Supreme Judicial Court challenge to the question’s certification to appear before voters.

Muradian said that “we will find out by the end of June if we won that case or not. If we win it, then there’s no more ballot question. If we don’t win it, we fight on and we win it at the ballot in November with your help.”

Moore has conducted his own unscientific poll of restaurant workers, he told the business owners.

“I have, on occasion, been out and asked and tried to survey some of them. and when you actually explain what the law will do, they do understand this is going to hurt them, that their wage is going to go down,” he said, adding that policymakers should focus on the tipped wage issue “because I don’t think a lot of people really understand what the effects are going to be, and also the employees who are benefiting from the current system.”

For McMurtry’s part, he sees a number of small businesses, including his own, still affected by negative implications of COVID-19. He said the Legislature should “put some focus on the small business community” as local outfits continue to emerge from the pandemic.

McMurtry told the News Service that business at his 97-year-old cinema is “still challenging” post-COVID, but he’s staying the course.

“We get the right movie, we do well,” the Dedham Democrat said.