AUSTIN (July 24, 2023) – Job creators across the state are rallying behind a new law signed by Governor Greg Abbott that will make it easier to comply with regulations of their small business. As reported by The Center Square, small business owners are calling the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act a ‘game-changer’ that ‘will help them stay afloat, take care of their workers, and provide services to customers.’

Several NFIB member small business owners shared their perspectives with The Center Square. CLICK HERE to read the full article. Excerpts are below.

Small business owners must comply with numerous federal and state regulations of their business.

“Dallas-based small business owner Greg Brown of W.W. Cannon LLC said small businesses already comply with numerous federal and state regulations. His employees live and work in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin and ‘thankfully don’t have four different sets of employment laws coming from each one of these cities. We do not need another governing authority to mandate any other employment laws.’’

“Dallas-based small business owner Andy Ellard of Manda Machine Co. told The Center Square, ‘We obviously want and need to be in compliance with the laws, but there is only so much time in the day to try to keep up with the tangled web of regulations that live on the local, state and federal levels.’”

The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act gives small business owners greater certainty in the regulatory landscape.

“[San Antonio-based small business owner Lisa] Fullerton also described the current regulatory process in baseball terms. ‘Business owners are standing in center field watching state regulations coming out of right field, and municipal mandates coming out of left field,’ she said. ‘When there are so many agencies allowed to mandate the regulatory grounds for small businesses, it’s a challenge … and expensive to create infrastructure support to monitor compliance.’ The new law creates certainty, which is what all the business owners said is necessary for their operations.”

Small business owners will continue to take care of their employees.

“The [Austin] city council was ‘trying to solve a problem that didn’t exist,’ [Robert Mayfield] said [of the recent attempts to pass numerous mandates]. Small business owners like himself already ‘take care of our employees when sick or otherwise,’ he said, ‘or they would go somewhere else to work, especially with this tight labor market.’”

The Center Square has also reported on how some city officials and politically motivated labor groups are misleading the public on the bill, leading news outlets to print “verifiably false information” when it comes to worker protections and local control.

READ: FACT CHECK: Local Control Is Alive and Well in Texas

WATCH: Expert on City-Sanctioned Rest Breaks: ‘That’s Not a Safe Environment’

READ: Opinion: Employers Will Continue Providing Water Breaks, Workplace Protections for Employees

Background:

The Texas Regulatory Consistency Act was approved by the House on a bipartisan basis in April, before passing the Senate in May. NFIB and local job creators testified before both the House and Senate in support of the bill, with one NFIB member saying: “We need the protection of the state, when it comes to cities telling us how to run our businesses.”