An open letter
to Hawaii’s small
business owners

You're frustrated. You work much too hard (but you haven't lost your passion). You cherish your employees (but you can't satisfy their needs). You relish competition (but you don't have the cash flow with which to compete).

Whatever you achieve, you have to accomplish on your own (but you're used to that).

You've looked to the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii for some support, but you haven't gotten any.

So you paddle on, against the current, and you're optimistic because the climate is improving, but you're getting tired.

Every year, you hope the state Legislature will cut you a break or two. You try to follow the process, but you don't have the time to attend the open meetings or prepare testimony or hang around for hours in order to testify in person. You really hope someone -- the Chamber of Commerce, for instance -- will represent you with vigor and awareness.

That's not happening, is it?

Let's look at just a couple of bills (indicative of numerous others) that will become law unless the governor vetoes them without being overridden.

The bill that would jack up the general excise tax to fund mass transit on only Leeward Oahu initiatives (HB 1309) is a new burden for you. The Chamber has been supporting this tax increase. The bill will hurt you, and there is no evidence that you will ever see any benefit from it. The Chamber is not representing your best interests here, it is undermining them. Small Business has looked to the Chamber for decades to decrease the general excise tax, not increase it!.

Workers' compensation reform is even more astonishing. The chairwoman of the Chamber's board of directors and the president of the AFL-CIO publicly joined in an "unholy alliance" to agree with the House and Senate majority leaders to not address our workers' compensation crisis until "next session." Not only did this alliance preclude any meaningful relief this session, but the Chamber also did not stop HB 1309, which would outlaw the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations from moving forward with newly implemented rules that would start the reform at the administrative level.

SB 1352 will require the Department of Health and Human Services to identify and publish in the newspapers annually the names and addresses of every business that has any employee and/or dependents receiving state-subsidized health coverage such as Quest or Medicare. Would that be you? The Chamber did not even make an appearance on your behalf, yet their alliance partner the AFL-CIO initiated the measure.

The most flagrant atrocity that has surfaced during the past legislative session is everything that has not been accomplished on your behalf.

Unless and until you have a true, passionate, intelligent, and informed and akamai voice in the "Halls of Uncertainty" on South Beretania Street, you are doomed to continue paddling against the current and to be sustained by only your passion for your local small business and your employees.

The Employers' Chamber of Commerce was created to support small-business owners, managers and -- yes -- employees.

We have established credibility among legislators and with the administration because we understand the issues that affect small businesses and we are articulate in discussions about them. We track the bills. We testify. We make some waves. We get heard.

The Employers' Chamber of Commerce is ready to step into the loss of the voice of small business, the Chamber of Commerce of Hawaii. But we need some help.

You might consider the return you currently feel you get from the dues you pay for your Chamber membership ... and whether they might be applied more effectively somewhere else.

There are other bills laying in wait for the 2006 session. We will be preparing this summer to represent small business, and we're well-armed for the next session. It's obvious that the Chamber is unprepared, unwilling or unable to represent you properly or intelligently.

What can you do? Stay tuned. In the next weeks, the governor will have the opportunity to veto the errors in judgment committed in the Legislature because of the misinformation (or lack of information) from the Chamber, the institution that represents business, and from their alliance with the AFL-CIO.

The message to the governor must be strong and supportive, to put an end to the annual legislative cop-out that goes, "Well, there's always next session."