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Area business community: Trump's order potential win for small companies Members of the Lehigh Valley business community say they generally welcome an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that aims to cut regulations. Trump on Monday signed the order, which says federal agencies should eliminate two regulations for every new one. According to Trump, the cost of any new regulation should be offset by eliminating regulations with the same costs to businesses. The president said the order is aimed at cutting regulations that particularly affect small businesses. In the Lehigh Valley, nine out of 10 businesses employ fewer than 100 people, and the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce says more than 90 percent of its 5,000 members are small businesses. The Chamber supports Trump's order, said Tony Iannelli, its president and CEO. "I've been talking with business leaders, and they now feel there is someone [Trump] who is sensitive to business and some of the regulations," Iannelli said. "I think from a strictly business perspective, they feel they have an ally in the White House." While details were lacking Monday, people interviewed agreed: The less red tape, the better. Allentown labor attorney George Hlavac said it's too early to know the exact effect of the order until specific regulations are chopped. "I would think most business owners would agree [with cutting regulations], but for the rest of us, what it means for employees, we have to reserve judgment," Hlavac said. Valley business owners have grappled with regulations from former President Barack Obama's initiatives: the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, and more recently, rules that would make certain employees eligible for overtime. Rick Principato, CEO of Tower Products Inc. in Palmer Township, said the overtime regulations were a "bothersome waste of time with no real benefit." The regulations were placed on hold after a federal court in November blocked the rule that would have made an estimated 4 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. "The requirement of dropping two regulations for one new regulation is great," said Principato, whose company makes chemical products for the printing industry and employs 20. "I would submit it could be 3 to 1 but this is a great start that will help smaller businesses across the country." Other regulations that could be axed, Hlavac said, are changes under Obama that govern elections by employees who desire to unionize. "It was not one or two changes, but numerous changes about how elections will be timed or the process, and what an employer can or cannot do," Hlavac said. "I could see that being on the chopping block." While Hlavac and others said they agree with laws that protect workers, they shouldn't come with the potential to cripple businesses. A survey released in mid-January from the National Small Business Association found that the average small business owner spends at least $12,000 a year dealing with regulations. In addition, the survey said, 14 percent of small business owners spend more than 20 hours a month on federal regulations, and more than half of small business owners spend a staggering $83,019 average on regulatory costs in their first year of operation. "There is a need for the laws that protect workers in the workplace, but sometimes I get the feeling things are going too far," Hlavac said. In addition to the Affordable Care Act and pending overtime regulations, another burden placed on small businesses is navigating and complying with the federal tax code, a process that often comes with the added expense of hiring accountants and tax professionals, said Loren Speziale, a partner at the law firm Gross McGinley in Allentown who regularly counsels small to mid-sized businesses on corporate and employment matters. While those are just some of the regulations that small businesses say put a strain on their operations, Speziale said there's still plenty of unanswered questions, including how the administration will quantify the costs of regulations that are removed and added. Generally speaking, however, she expects the changes to be more employer-friendly than those implemented under the Obama administration. But, Speziale noted, not all regulations are equal. In other words, cutting two regulations for every new rule doesn't always add up to a net benefit for businesses. "I think it's going to be wait and see," she said. "It's not the number of regulations. It's the substance of the regulations that's going to come into play." But according to Trump, the order will mean the largest cut in regulations by the federal government. "If you have a regulation you want, number one we're not going to approve it because it's already been approved probably in 17 different forms," he said. "But if we do the only way you have a chance is we have to knock out two regulations for every new regulation. So if there's a new regulation they have to knock out two. But it goes way beyond that." But experts on government policy said Trump's formulation made little sense. "There's no logic to this," William Gale, a tax and fiscal policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said before seeing the executive order. "The number of regulations is not the key. It's how onerous regulations are. This seems like a totally nonsensical constraint to me." Read the original article here.