Small-business association testifies against department’s proposal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Tony Gagliardi, Colorado State Director, [email protected]
or Tony Malandra, Regional Media Manager, [email protected]
DENVER, Nov. 15, 2018—In testimony given today at a meeting of the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment, the state director of Colorado’s leading small-business association warned of the punishing effects of a proposed rule for the Converse County Oil and Gas Project.
“The proposed Regulation 20, implementing the Colorado Low Emission Vehicle Program Action … which your office is currently conducting rule making, will be extremely detrimental to Colorado’s economy,” said Tony Gagliardi, NFIB’s Colorado state director, “punishing especially consumers, auto dealers, rural Coloradans, and many small businesses which rely on pickups, SUVs and/or vehicle fleets, for many years to come.”
The rules hearing is a result of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s executive order adopting California’s low emissions vehicle standard, which was added by the Air Quality Commission during a work session.
“The California rules were written with California’s conditions and circumstances in mind, not Colorado’s. Colorado has more severe winters, a larger and more remote rural area, and more high country than California does,” Gagliardi told the commission. “That is why three-quarters of the new vehicles purchased by Coloradans are in the ‘light truck’ category, which included pickup trucks and SUV’s. That also explains why in many rural counties that number is higher, up to or even exceeding 90 percent. In contrast, only about 50 percent of the new vehicles bought in California fall under that category.
“Small business owners in our state already face a number of challenges in trying to keep afloat in their important role of providing jobs and contributing to the local economy. Adding thousands of dollars to the purchase price of vehicles that they need to run their businesses or limiting the options they have for purchasing such vehicles, is an additional burden which is unnecessary and unfair.”
Click here to read Gagliardi’s full testimony. NFIB is the state’s leading small-business association. To learn more, visit www.nfib.com/CO and follow @NFIB_CO on Twitter.
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For more than 75 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven. Since our founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.
National Federation of Independent Business/Colorado
1580 Logan St. Suite 520
Denver, CO 80203
303-831-6099
www.nfib.com/colorado
Twitter: @NFIB_CO
