On October 13, APCBA conducted a special breakfast meeting at Pearl Country Club designed to help the Governor's administration in achieving the objective of cutting government impediments to business formation and operation. Because the problems for businsesspersons tend to "spill over" from State to City/County to Federal levels, we included elected and government officials from each area. The program was explicitly non-partisan and was focused on searching for the "big picture" of solutions to the major obstacles. We started and ended with the assumption that all in attendance sincerely wanted our Hawaii to prosper, and that each was prepared to make major sacrifices to accomplish that objective.

Theme of our meeting was centered on our APCBA philosophy: When a customer is served well and is happy, he wins. Only if the customer wins does the serving business win. If both the customers and the businesses win, the community wins. That's us: win/win/win/ or Win3.

In attendance were ten elected/appointed officials and 28 business owners. Discussion was lively, spirited, friendly and helpful to all.

A great deal of networking was generated. In addition most legislators made copious notes based on the ideas flying around the room.

Major points were:

Business problems:

* Fear of retribution for complaints of unfairness/unreasonableness in inspection/enforcement of rules is real and endemic.

* Too many laws and rules are applied capriciously or unreasonably.

* Laws or rules that are not now being enforced are out there and we never know when or where someone might decide to start applying them.

* Some required reports are silly, time consuming, useless, and duplicative (specific examples were given).

* Government agencies lack customer orientation.

* Too many laws, too many regulations.

* Lack of common sense. Unreasonable adherence to rules.

Business Solutions:

* Privatize, privatize; introduce competition and customer service.

* Reduce number of bills that can be introduced in any period of time.

* For every bill passed, require two to be annulled.

* Eliminate all rules, regulations, laws that are not being enforced.

* Require the administration to report all violations of the law by them (not enforcing established laws) or face consequences.

* Sunset all laws present and future. Make current lawmakers repass or let the law die.

* Reorient government workers toward service and help, not power and intimidation. Introduce common sense.

* Eliminate the licensing process or make it meaningful. Government Problems

* Not enough business people speak out.

* Government workers can and do outlast elected or appointed officials.

* Too much is asked of legislators. Too many "special" interests? Difficult to say no?

* Individual Accountability and Responsibility are too often glossed over.

* Legislators need more support when taking difficult business-friendly actions.

Government Solutions

* Meetings like this help clarify issues and get more businesses involved.

* Use the current system. It's all we have. Our comment: That's how we got where we are!

All in all, we felt the meeting went well. But, we believe we could and should have done a better job of pinpointing solutions.

Our next WIN3 Pre-Legislative Meeting next year will have a better handle on specific solutions. However, two recurring solution themes occurred: We need more personal involvement as well as more and better education.

We were disappointed that the Senate President, House Speaker and Lt. Governor did not exhibit more personal interest in this program. And, we regret that we could not find any government employees at the business owner interface level to attend. They also experience fear.

Thanks to our co-sponsors Hawaii Test Boring, Small Business Hawaii, Pacific Shelving Company and Hawaii National Bank.

To firmly establish the fact that we are committed to prosperity for each productive person in Hawaii, we presented each participant with a $1,000,000 bill at the end of the meeting. Due to an unfortunate (for us) error some got two bills. Rest assured, our discrimination had no discernible pattern. Back off, EOC!!

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