Killer Squirrels!
The legislature will consider over 2300 bills introduced in this session. Certainly some are critical to addressing the state budget, reforming California’s under-performing educational system, and crumbling infrastructure. However, they can’t all be gems and therein lies the problem. California Squirrel takes exception with the numerous resolutions, constitutional amendments and bills that clutter the legislative calendar and act as distractions from the serious issues facing the state.
- California ranks as one of the worst tax environments for small businesses – Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council.
- California ranks last among the states and Washington D.C. as a place to do business – Chief Executive magazine
- California ranks 49th in business friendliness (a measure of regulations and legal system) and 48th in cost of business (taxes and commercial lease rates) – CNBC Survey
- California’s lawsuit climate is among the worst in the country – U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform
- California ranks as second-worst run state – 24/7 Wall Street
- California in the bottom tier of states in the friendliness of its laws to business investment – US Chamber of Commerce
- It takes eight months to two years to get permits to build a restaurant in California. In Texas, it’s one and one-half months.
- The total cost of regulation to the State of California is $492.994 billion which is almost five times the State’s general fund budget, and almost a third of the State’s gross product. The cost of regulation results in an employment loss of 3.8 million jobs which is a tenth of the State’s population. COST OF STATE REGULATIONS ON CALIFORNIA SMALL BUSINESSES STUDY 2009 (Cal State Sacramento)
- Since the Survey’s inception, California has consistently been one of the most expensive states in which to operate a business – The 15th Annual Kosmont-Rose Institute Cost of Doing Business Survey
California is among the highest state income and sales taxes in the nation and one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, yet state politics seem consumed with how to divide a shrinking pie rather than how to expand it. California’s legislators should be working to improve the quality of life of all Californians, not legislating economic winners and losers. For the proposed legislation that goes beyond mere distraction and veers towards destruction of California’s economic development, we call those KILLER SQUIRRELS!
