Transcript:
Siegel: Folks, welcome back in. Good to have you with us right here at the BOSS Business Hour. It is designed and focused and targeted on small business owners. Glad to be with you at KDWN in Las Vegas as we get right back to it.

Assemblyman Richard McCarthur has great concern about something that he ought to have great concern about. As you well know, in this state, the nation's highest unemployment rate. The nation's highest foreclosure rates. How many governments do we have around here with bloated issues that they are dealing with, and too bloated themselves. If they were, in f act, in t he private sector they probably would not survive. Couldn't afford to keep them that bloated as they private sectors have had to size down because o f the economy. Well, we have laws that are being passed, hundreds of new laws, mandates and costs, on the taxpaying public, and all of that has a direct impact on small business in this state. Assemblyman Richard McCarthur is concerned about that. Glad to have him on the program. Assemblyman, thanks for being with us. How are you today?

Assemblyman: Well, I am doing fine. Thank you for having me on.

Siegel: It is a pleasure. Tell us about this dilemma of this nonsense, really, of having all of these laws, frivolous bills, and trying to put more imposition on the private sector. What about all that?

Assemblyman: Well, as you know, one of the BDRs (bill draft requests) that I put in was to cut down on the number of bills people could put in. Last session was my first session, and I felt the same way at the end of the session as I did at the beginning. There are way too many bills in a small state and we are trying to get them in in too short a period of time. So, the bill I put in was just to cut the amount of bills in half. Hopefully, that will get people thinking about putting in bills that are going to do something that is going to benefit the state rather than just throwing in a whole bunch of bills because you can.

Siegel: You know, that really is the problem. Really what it does, and those people who own small businesses in this state who have been devastated by this economy in this state, tourism way down, people not being able to afford to come in and gamble and that sort of thing, from other states, the realty is that this legislature ought to be dealing with those issues rather than everything else under the sun. Having every parent have a car seat alarm, for example, a proposal of that sort. I mean, how far are they going to go in dealing with this when the fact is that you are dealing with the periphery, not with the central focus of what you should be dealing with, which is the small business situation and the economy here.

Assemblyman: Oh, absolutely, and that is part of the problem. That is why I wanted to cut back on this. Just put bills in that we really need, that is really going to help people. You get the feeling sometime that these legislatures can put in a whole bunch of bills, and I guess maybe they think that makes them a better legislature, I guess, if they put in a lot of bills, but it does not help us, it does not help the business community. We really just need to think a bout what we are doing. We got a lot more bigger problems going on right now than a lot of these bills are going through and the problem is, when you just put a lot of bills in, some of them just are not any good. They are just bad bills and there is no reason for us to be spending our time on them.

Siegel: Well, the most indignant part of it to me when I saw the report on this and your proposal is that it is beyond my comprehension that, and I think every small business owner in this state, no doubt if they were aware of this, and now many will be, would feel the same way, and that is very simply that we cannot have our legislature spending its time during a legislative session debating on the floor some of the bills that they are dealing with. The cross dressers want to be assured they cannot be fired for going into the bathrooms used by the opposite sex. So, you are going to be dealing with that. They want to talk about state recognition of Children's Day to honor children. I mean, I could go through the list. The realty is that while, you know, it is kind of like narrowing fiddling while Rome is burning. I mean, do these people, your colleagues…. I mean, you get it, you have got a bill to cut back on these, but do the legislatures understand that the state is in a crisis economically and what they are dealing with is totally peripheral and nonsense?

Assemblyman: You know, I am not sure. That is why I don't understand why they are putting some of these bills in, and that is one of the reasons I want to cut back on them. But, you know, we can put in an awful lot of bills now. I think a new assemblyman just coming in has five bills he can put in by December 15th and then he has got another deadline to put two more in by February, and that is the lowest amount. Senators get more. Committee chairman get more. Heads of a lot of government agencies, they get a bunch. I mean, there are a whole bunch of bills that people can put in right now. Even if you come in half, that is probably too many. I just think we need to consider what we are doing. It is a short period of time we have to work with and we ought to be working on things that are a lot more important to us and get those things out of the way. Right now, you just cannot read all these bills. I mean, there are so many of them coming through and we really need to spend our time working on bills that are going to help the state of Nevada and our economy. We have got some big problems right now.

Siegel: Is it fair to say, as you have observed your colleagues, that having this freedom, as you described it, putting in five bills and then two more, seven bills per legislature, and then the agencies and all of that, is it fair to say that it directly detracts from the time in the session in which you could b e dealing with issues related to the economy?

Assemblyman: Oh absolutely, because all of these bills they come through the committees and, you know, I come home at night and read all those bills, because they have to come through your committee and you want to know what is going on. So, whether they are frivolous or not, you spend a lot of time reading those bills when we could be sitting around and actually talking about some of these problems that are going to help the economy and the state and small business owners.

Siegel: It is really frustrating. What would be your priorities in terms of bills that really count and matter? As you know, this is a program that is focused on small business. What can we do in this state to try to help bring back some vibrancy in the small business community?

Assemblyman: Well, you know, we have had a lot of information and a lot of bad press and ads on, you know, who creates jobs and that sort o f thing. I think we all know that the way it has been framed makes it look kind of bad when some people say, "well, that's not the government's job." The government needs to create an atmosphere so business can create jobs. I mean, that is where jobs are created – businesses. Anything the government does it creates a debt, because the tax payers have to pay for it. So, we need to make sure that we have the tax structure and, I don't know if you want to call it the lack of regulations or less regulations, so businesses can go out and do their jobs and make things work. I mean, that is where you are going to get all the people that are going to be hired. That is where jobs come from, is private business, and we need to spend out time on making sure we can balance this budget without raising taxes and without hurting business. I mean, that is the only way this economy is going to recover.

Siegel: It sounds like you are saying, fundamentally, government stay out of the way, let us do our work in the private sector?

Assemblyman: That is pretty much what I was trying to say without saying it, I guess.

Siegel: Well, you did, and it is right on point. I think a lot of people out there appreciate the point you just made. But, of course, you made another point and that is not only does it detract from time we have talked about, but what about the nature of overburdening small business with regulation. If every time you pass a law, it may not directly effect small business but it certainly does indirectly, what about every one of these laws that passes being a burden in terms of more regulation on the private sector?

Assemblyman: Well, of course, that is the other problem. Anything to give someone in the government time and power, and that is a lot of bills to write, you know, they will fill that void and they will do it. You know, looking at all these bills that comes through some times, it looks like some of these people think that if they have 10 or 12 BDRs that they have to fill all of them, and you just don't. We just need to make, put bills in that are going to help us. Of course, any time you get someone a chance to write another bill up, there is always a possibility it is not going to do exactly what it says. And if it turns out it is going to hurt small business, you know, we are basically stuck with it for two more years until we can f ix it. You know, a lot of these bills really have good intentions, sometimes some of the things that come out in the practical way you don't know it is going to happen. It was a good bill, but there are some things you have to fix. Even if it is a good bill, you have to wait two years before you can make some of these small modifications. So, every time you put a bill in and it has got more rules and regulations in it, especially when it has to do with business, you have got the possibility of getting hurt. I think that is one of the big problems right now. Businesses don't know what is going to happen. I mean, the economy is still going down and you don't know what the government is going to do to you. You know they are going to have to raise taxes some place along the way, I am talking about the federal government, just to counteract small of the monstrous debts that we are accumulating. So, yeah, it is pretty much, please government, stay out of the way and let's get this economy rolling again.

Siegel: Assembly Richard McCarthur, I thank you very much. Great point. I appreciate it and good to have you on the program. Coming right back with Mike Siegel and the BOSS Business Hour.