Washington came to Tulsa on Monday as U.S. Rep. Kevin Hern hosted a congressional field hearing on how regulations affect small businesses.
Hern said the problem isn’t necessarily specific regulations, but the burden of complying with all of them.
"The problem is, you have multiple agencies across the federal government, you have multiple agencies at the state and the local level. And these are very complex regulations. Some — I’ve been in small business my entire life — some even conflict with each other," Hern said.
Chad Selman’s Skiatook pecan farm requires a lot of hands-on labor American workers don’t want to do, so he turned to temporary agricultural worker visas. Selman said that involves several federal agencies, from the Department of Labor to the State Department.
"It’s so difficult to work through every single one of them I actually pay an outside consultant to deal with that, and I do several contracts that year. And so, it’s extremely difficult to manage," Selman said.
It seems red tape helped shelve a plan to sell take-and-bake Andolini’s pizzas at Reasor’s supermarkets. Elizabeth Osburn with the Tulsa Regional Chamber said under federal regulations, using a common topping would force Andolini’s to have a trained inspector present when pizzas were being made.
"If it’s a cheese pizza, this rule doesn’t apply, and even if there’s fish on the pizza, it wouldn’t apply. But at the point that there’s a single piece of pepperoni on the pizza, the inspector has to be present," Osburn said.
The rules would also require documentation on where every other ingredient came from, even the water in the dough.
OSU Tulsa hosted the hearing of the House Committee on Small Business Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access. Hern was joined by the subcommittee chairman, New Jersey Democrat Andy Kim.
