Joan Hartley

Hartley Leads Unanimous Senate Passage of Legislation to Protect Small Businesses From Onerous Regulations

Bill ensures that analysis of agency regulations include their impact on small businesses

Senator Joan Hartley (D-Waterbury) brought a bill before the Senate which will expand the information that is included in analyses of state regulations to better reflect their impact on small businesses. The bill received unanimous support in the Senate, and now moves to the House of Representatives for further consideration.

“This bill will make Connecticut’s regulatory more transparent, and ensure that we know the impact that each proposed regulation would have on our small businesses,” said Senator Hartley, Senate Chair of the Commerce Committee. “Small business is one of Connecticut’s strongest engines for economic growth and job creation. It is critically important that we ensure the impact any regulation has on small businesses is known and minimized as much as possible.”

Senate Bill 302 expands the types of information that must be included in a regulatory flexibility analysis. Regulatory flexibility analyses are written to identify how an agency can accomplish the objectives of a proposed regulation while minimizing any adverse impact on small businesses.

Once passed, this bill will require that all regulatory flexibility analyses include the proposed regulation’s scope, the types of businesses it may affect and the number of small businesses subject to the proposed regulation. Additionally, the analyses will detail whether and to what extent the regulatory agency communicated with small businesses or small business organizations in developing the proposed regulation. The bill also requires that analyses include whether a proposed regulation will require small businesses to increase the number of reports they produce, pay additional taxes, purchase any products, hire new employees or take on any other potentially burdensome requirements.