In Limbo

Another section of the SBREFA created regional fairness boards and a national ombudsman. The boards are supposed to receive complaints about federal agency heavy-handedness and refer those complaints to the ombudsman. The ombudsman, Peter W. Barca, will issue his first annual report early next year.

Barca's report will be based on input from the fairness boards, which have been slow to get off the ground. Scott George, general manager of Mid America Dental, Hearing, & Vision Center in Mt. Vernon, Missouri, serves on the board in his region. His board's members were approved in September 1996, but the White House took 11 months to approve the one-page form the board sent to Washington as a condition for starting its work. "Getting this process off the ground has been frustratingly slow," says George.

George thinks some federal agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), have tried more than others to take SBREFA's aim to heart. In fact, OSHA, as part of Vice President Gore's Reinventing Government initiative, has tried to reorient its state inspection programs toward "cooperative compliance." Yet even OSHA has come under fire from small-business groups that don't approve of its program.

Congress did use a SBREFA provision to force the IRS to delay a rule increasing the tax on many limited partnerships (See "Tax Talk," September). But that postponement is a lonely victory on the SBREFA ledger.

Contact Sources

Mid America Dental, Hearing & Vision Center, 1050 W. Hayward Dr., Mt. Vernon, MO 65712, (417) 466-7196

Rep. Sue Kelly, (202) 225-5441, dan.boston@mail.house.gov

Small Business Administration, National Ombudsman, 500 W. Madison St., #1240, Chicago, IL 60661, (312) 353-0880

This article was originally published in the December 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: In Limbo.