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Taking care of business?
“The races that are going to affect the building industry are right here in Doña Ana County. The people we need to send to Santa Fe need to be business friendly.”
First off, it makes sense and is entirely appropriate for Roewe to advocate for business generally, and his industry in particular — after all, that’s his job. Yet we as a community have different, more dynamic priorities than does an industry representative. It’s important that we are careful about what we ask of our elected officials since we just might get it. We know intuitively that healthy communities are more than housing developments and market shares, we must demand that our elected officials make decisions and policies that are “business friendly” only when it benefits our community overall.
What exactly does business friendly mean?
Because he doesn’t elaborate, I don’t know exactly what Roewe means about elected officials being business friendly, but in many cases language like this has been used to push for the following:
- Weak regulatory structures
- Cronyism
- Corporate welfare
- Cozy relationships between government and industry that led to not only large-scale disasters like the BP oil spill and the recent national credit crisis, but also local problems like questionable land deals between a local developer and the politicians to whom he gave campaign donations
There’s no denying that a few businesses or industries have benefited from this paradigm but our communities suffer.
So what should businesses expect from government and elected officials?
- Transparency and fair dealing
- Predictable regulation and standards
- Reasonable and consistent time frame for getting their needs met
- Competence, honesty and professionalism
Many people have used the analogy that government should act the same way a sports league does, which is by setting and enforcing rules that allow fair competition among everyone. In the NBA, for example, it’s important that the teams and players all play by the same rules. What would happen if Lebron James got punched in the gut every time he went up for one of his spectacular windmill dunks? (Although one can imagine his former Cavalier teammate Anderson Varejoa doing this the next time Lebron plays in Cleveland.)
Setting and enforcing rules allows for fair competition where the best players can excel. The same — no more or less — should go for business.
Elected officials should set regulations and policies (based on the common good) and ensure those rules are followed — picking winners and losers isn’t appropriate. Besides, as Thomas Molitor’s recent article on this site rightly points out, elected officials are not always good at picking a winner.
So what should we expect from our elected officials?
We should expect elected officials to advocate for the common good of their constituents. This means that they must see the community as a whole and determine what will bring the greatest good. If being more business friendly means allowing our communities to become less safe for ourselves and our children, reduces our quality of life, exploits our workers, or endangers our environment then that is not appropriate — no matter how many jobs it creates.
So what should the people expect from elected officials vis a vis business?
- Enforcement of regulations, especially those meant to protect our families, worker safety and the environment
- Transparency and zero tolerance for cronyism at any level of government
- A long-term economic development plan that creates a vibrant diverse economy
- A long-term economic development plan that values sustainability over short-term profits that exploit our people or planet
- Collection of taxes and fees that fairly and adequately repay the public investment and infrastructure that are necessary to allow businesses to thrive. This includes the externalized costs and benefits of doing business in our community
Besides, there’s not just one voice of business
Finally, it must be noted that there isn’t just one monolithic voice of business. Like any other healthy group, business people hold wide-ranging opinions on many topics, including what policies are business friendly. Locally, for example, the Las Cruces Hispano Chamber of Commerce and the Las Cruces Green Chamber of Commerce support wilderness designations whereas the Greater Las Cruces Chamber and the Building Industry Association of Southern New Mexico do not support the pending proposal in Washington as currently written.
Furthermore, an emerging trend is the adoption of alternative business models that strive to be more community-friendly. For example, the Mountain View Co-op Market incorporates principles like the Triple-Bottom Line, which argues that a responsible sustainable business must be not only profitable but also take care of its employees and the planet as well. And Positive Energy Solar follows the 3 to 1 salary rule which holds that the highest paid employee will never make more than three times that of the lowest paid. For business folks like these, making a profit is only a portion of their larger mission and role in our communities.
Meanwhile, on the national level, we see high-profile companies like Apple and Nike revoking their memberships in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce out of dissatisfaction with their policies. With this dynamic chorus of business voices — not all of whom are singing the same tune — who are the elected officials to listen to, much less be “friendlier” towards?
All of them, of course.
How? By creating a fair playing field where businesses can perform their unique and essential role of building prosperity and contributing to the improvement of the community as a whole.
Nick Voges is the blogger behind NMPolitics.net’s Zeitgeist. E-mail him at nick@nmpolitics.net. This article has been updated to clarify stances on the pending wilderness bill.
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The years of de-regulation and allowing businesses to do anything they darn well please, regardless of the consequences, need to be over NOW.
Yes, small businesses need support and fair rules and regulations to follow…but that attitude has evolved into an anything-goes, screw-them-all, more-for-us atmosphere, especially amongst larger businesses. Time to slow down the gravy train for rich corporations and unscrupulous CEOs and demand that they be responsible to their communities, their employees and their customers.
Oops, forgot to add that your survey listed only state taxes, that is pitifully short of looking at a holistic picture of what “business friendly” consists of.
So Hemingway, would you opine then that NM is a wonderful place to do business and we need not change anything about our taxes, regs, etc. on businesses? If so, please explain why we are such a poor, uneducated, and underpaid state vs. say Texas. If we are such a business friendly state, what is wrong here?
Sorry a better gauge of New Mexico is the Tax Foundation – the detailed2010 State Business Tax Climate Index. New Mexico ranks 23rd.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/bp59.pdf
The CNBC survey is bogus. You had some guy – CNBC sr. correspondent Scott Cohn – traveling the U.S. looking for the country’s most business-friendly states.
CNBC ranks New Mexico as 45th in the US for being business friendly. Doesn’t that indicate the current crop of politicians and regulators are bad for business? If you think CNBC is biased and define “business friendly” as Mr. Voges does here, then why is New Mexico the death valley of business in America and we are so poor? Why then is it that New Mexico lives off the government dole and businesses run to Arizona, Texas, Colorado, etc. instead of here? Don’t you think it is time to change something here? Or should we just dismiss this circumstance and ranking as nasty businesses wanting their own way and we are right to have things as they are?
Great discussion of what “business friendly” really means! It’s interesting how we tend to automatically react to terms like “business friendly” in an emotional, subjective way that reflects a pre-existing stance or ideology. Thanks, Nick, for getting us to think about what “business friendly” policies are really in our community’s and our country’s best interests.
I want to comment, too, on dkloke’s statement about cronyism. He says, “Doing repeat business with a contractor or supplier who knows your needs and provides good service for fair price is not a bad thing.” That is so true!! It isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing.
But that isn’t cronyism. Cronyism is generally accepted as a term describing business relationships based on social, political or financial relationships alone without regard to qualifications, capability, or commitment to the greater good. The price we pay for cronyism includes inefficiency, loss of productivity, reduced competition in the marketplace, loss of opportunity for those who have merit, and decreased economic performance as a whole.
Agreeing with the substance of the article, I just want to put in a word about cronyism.
Doing repeat business with a contractor or supplier who knows your needs and provides good service for fair price is not a bad thing. Neither is having a personal rapport with the people you contract with.
Objecting to such patterns of behavior on principle is one of the oldest straw-man tactics in the book. Doing the same thing today as yesterday is not inherently corrupt; but attacking it as corrupt is a great way to stir up political foment for other purposes.
Fairness should be one of several guides to conduct, but it is not an end in itself. Principles are theoretical exercises, and we can learn a lot from them; government is a practical one, and it’s something we need in order to maintain and protect what we have.
Transparency is valuable and maybe even essential for good government, but people have to be prepared for what they see. Hiring the cheapest contractor, or a new one every cycle, doesn’t necessarily produce consistent service and quality, or save money in the long run.
I think one goal for better communities would include some basic education and information about civic administration for all citizens. These topics may not seem compelling out of context in high school, but community members seeking a partner in their local (and regional, and even national) government would serve themselves well to learn about the methods and the challenges involved. And as the article points out, business is not the only partner government needs to satisfy.
This is serious – so let have a little fun. Here is what Mr. Roewe might mean by “business friendly”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9h3OJ9WThA
Mr. Roewe acts like an attack dog and tries to bully any opposition to his views about what is good for Las Cruces and Southern New Mexico. I really think his goal to rename Las Cruces – Roewesville where there are no regulations. In my opinion his anti-community opinions like his anti-wilderness stance and his criticism of the mayor and the city council are in reality anti-business. True business leaders work on consensus – building that will aid the construction industry as well as the entire community.
The BIA’s Roewe consistently stresses that he’s here to protect and defend the building industry, and Voges is right to point out that this often has nothing to do with the public good. The Las Cruces Homebuilders Association used to be a respected part of the community, but that’s a thing of the past. Elected officials should be commended for ignoring Roewe’s unpleasantness and constant negativity as they try to find solutions that serve the homebuilders and community alike.
A very good commentary! Business friendly to Mr. Roewe is no regulation at all and no impact fees! That is the bottom line! In other words let’s turn the city to the big developers.