If you are one of the estimated 900,000 owners of a small business in Pennsylvania, here’s some good news.
Governor Tom Corbett last week signed into law Act 76 which requires state
agencies to consider less costly or intrusive
alternatives before imposing a new regulation on your small business.
In a bulletin to their firm’s clients, Saul Ewing attorneys Andrew T. Bockis and Richard Guerra explained:
“Act 76 requires state agencies, when proposing a new
regulation to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC), to identify
numerous factors concerning how the proposed regulation will affect small
businesses. IRRC is the Pennsylvania agency tasked with reviewing all
Pennsylvania agency regulations to ensure they are in the public interest. Most
agency regulations, including those proposed by the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection, must be approved by IRRC before going into effect.
Under the new law, state agencies must:
- Identify
how the new regulation will financially, economically and socially impact
small businesses. - Estimate
the number of small businesses that will be affected by the proposed
regulation.
- Project
the cost of compliance with the proposed regulation for small businesses. - Describe
methods by which the state agency could reduce the proposed regulation’s
impact on small businesses.”
A copy of the full bulletin is available here.
For thorough coverage of environmental news, issues, legislation and regulation in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, try a free subscription to EnviroPolitics, our daily newsletter that also tracks environment/energy bills–from introduction to enactment
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