As the newly appointed Chairman of the Pennsylvania NFIB Leadership Council, Cranston shares why he joined NFIB more than 20 years ago and how NFIB is working with Pennsylvania lawmakers to improve the business climate in Cranston’s home state.
As an owner of a long-time family business he took over from his father and grandfather before him, David Cranston knows first-hand the issues that plague small business owners.
What are some of the challenges you face as a small business owner, and how are you dealing with them?
I guess my biggest challenge is growing sales. It just seems that I am always faced with hurdles to grow our sales – either employee hurdles, meaning they don’t have the right people selling. It could be regulatory hurdles that my customers face and makes it difficult for them to move forward with their construction projects. Or, it could be financial hurdles such as when the economy slows and clients aren’t doing capital projects. So, it’s challenging for us to find and get commitments to do business at that point. It’s always wrapped around sales.
How is Pennsylvania NFIB dealing with the challenges to minimum wage?
We’re trying to educate the legislators that hiking the minimum wage is just detrimental to the overall business climate. First of all, what it does is it creates wage inflation all the way up and down the scale. If the minimum wage is raised that means people making more than minimum wage now will be inclined to request higher wages and that just pushes up the wage structure of all organizations. And so it causes increased costs in small businesses for all folks.
What issue has been your priority since taking over as Chairman of the Leadership Council?
Since we have a new legislature and a new governor, our priority is to continue to improve the overall business climate in Pennsylvania, and that kind of takes on a two-fold process. One is to continue to work to eliminate the capital stock and franchise tax that we’ve been working on for 15 years now and it looks like it’s finally going to be phased out this year. We’re going to make sure that happens. Also, we have a new governor who has proposed the largest tax increase in the history of our state. So, we are working to help educate the legislature as to how negatively that will impact small businesses as well as the families of Pennsylvania.
How has NFIB helped you run your business?
Several years ago, the state accelerated the collection of sales taxes. This meant that we had to pay our sales taxes before we actually received payment from our customers. It was an extremely onerous process, and then we got penalized if we didn’t do it properly. After that legislation came out, I went to NFIB to explain the situation, and they worked with the legislature the following year and were able to have that new law changed so that it wasn’t quite as onerous. And even after that new law was changed, it still wasn’t fixed properly. So, NFIB went back a second time to and fixed it the following year again. It helped not only my business, but also all small businesses that were in a similar situation of having to pay sales taxes before we actually collected them. I was frankly amazed at how NFIB took up the cause and ran with it and made a change.
