On behalf of the City’s small businesses, I am pleading with the Board of Supervisors to declare a moratorium on headline-grabbing legislation. We simply can’t afford it. Small businesses are still fighting through the economic downturn. At the same time, the City is struggling to close a $500 million budget deficit, laying off thousands of workers and fighting to keep vital services available. In this climate, there’s just no room for politics-as-usual. But they’re at it again. This time, the Small Business Commission on Monday will decide whether to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s idea that small business owners who sell mobile phones need to post San Francisco-specific product labels for customers. In the words of one public health official, if the government starts requiring warnings on everything with undefined risks, everything “from apples to xylophones” would have to be labeled. The last thing we need is the City getting into the business of mandating product labels in convenience stores, dry cleaners, and restaurants for all kinds of different products. What’s next? Will I need to get my labels approved by the government with information on what ingredients are in the hair product I sell? As many as 15,000 city workers are facing lay-offs. Nine hundred school workers, including 10 percent of the City’s teachers, are facing lay-offs. Metered parking may be extended to Sundays. The City’s police force faces $30 million in cuts. We just don’t have the luxury of spending money on silly nannny-state ordinances. San Francisco politics is a circus. We all know that. We all know that won’t change. But on behalf of small businesses, we’re asking that our political leaders stop the merry-go-round at least until we’ve weathered the economic storm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On behalf of the City’s small businesses, I am pleading with the Board of Supervisors to declare a moratorium on headline-grabbing legislation. We simply can’t afford it. Small businesses are still fighting through the economic downturn. At the same time, the City is struggling to close a $500 million budget deficit, laying off thousands of workers and fighting to keep vital services available. In this climate, there’s just no room for politics-as-usual. But they’re at it again. This time, the Small Business Commission on Monday will decide whether to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s idea that small business owners who sell mobile phones need to post San Francisco-specific product labels for customers. In the words of one public health official, if the government starts requiring warnings on everything with undefined risks, everything “from apples to xylophones” would have to be labeled. The last thing we need is the City getting into the business of mandating product labels in convenience stores, dry cleaners, and restaurants for all kinds of different products. What’s next? Will I need to get my labels approved by the government with information on what ingredients are in the hair product I sell? As many as 15,000 city workers are facing lay-offs. Nine hundred school workers, including 10 percent of the City’s teachers, are facing lay-offs. Metered parking may be extended to Sundays. The City’s police force faces $30 million in cuts. We just don’t have the luxury of spending money on silly nannny-state ordinances. San Francisco politics is a circus. We all know that. We all know that won’t change. But on behalf of small businesses, we’re asking that our political leaders stop the merry-go-round at least until we’ve weathered the economic storm. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4929,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[1006,3620,5025,6255,487,8529,1984],"class_list":["post-11231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-1006","tag-3620","tag-5025","tag-6255","tag-487","tag-8529","tag-1984"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2V9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4929"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}