08/09/2004
CONTACT: Michelle Bolton, 602.263.7690 or Tony Malandra, 415.664.9685
NFIB/Arizona issues biennial grade on Main Street issues
ARIZONA -- Which state lawmakers were the most supportive of Main Street mom-and-pop shops? NFIB/Arizona, the representative group for state small-business owners, today released its biennial report card on 91 lawmakers.
Unique among most organizations, NFIB takes its lobbying positions based solely on what its members tell it are the issues vital to their survival. That information is conveyed to lawmakers and they are then scored on those issues. Although it is impossible to include all the necessary elements that go into a piece of legislation's progress, the voting record used 14 bills in House of Representatives and 12 bills in the Senate during the 2003-2004 session of the Arizona Legislature as a general guide to evaluating a lawmaker's attitude toward small business.
Legislators must have voted for the small-business agenda 70 percent of the time in order to be considered a pro-small-business lawmaker. In the end, 13 Senators and 37 State Representatives passed. Stellar standouts with 100-percent, pro-small-business voting records included Senators Jack Harper of Glendale and Dean Martin of Phoenix and State Representatives Ted Carpenter of Phoenix, Eddie Farnsworth of Gilbert, Randy Graf of Green Valley, John Huppenthal of Chandler, Gary Pierce of Mesa and Bob Stump of Peoria.
"Small businesses have different difficulties in remaining solvent than big businesses do," said Michelle Bolton, state director for the 10,000-member Arizona chapter of NFIB, America's largest small-business advocacy organization. "For example, they pay more to comply with the same regulations than do big businesses. Small businesses are not smaller versions of big businesses, yet these dynamic enterprises employ nearly 60 percent of all Arizona workers and generate 100 percent of all net new jobs."
