I wish we could tell small businesses that fewer regulations and lower taxes were coming their way starting January 1 but not even a pandemic could throw our State Legislature off course from their mad drive to create more burdens. Three current and soon-to-take effect laws are discussed in detail in a half-hour podcast featuring […]

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signing of Senate Bill 1383 came as little surprise to the state’s leading small-business association, which, along with more than 100 other business groups, warned against it. Tragically, previous vows from the governor and lawmakers to help devastated small business owners crawl out of this virus-ravaged economic recession have proven to be a […]

The recent flurry of stories about small business woes often miss an important part of the picture: Small businesses’ role in helping fund government’s important responsibilities. Consider the City of Placerville. Located in El Dorado County with the original colorful Gold Rush era monikers, the sometimes controversial Hangtown and the more staid Dry Diggings, the […]

Small businesses, of all economic sectors, have been hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The most stricken industries – restaurants, hospitality, tourism, entertainment and personal services, and their supply chains – are disproportionately served by small businesses.  According to Homebase researchers, “While large corporations have largely been able to avoid mass layoffs, the same can’t […]

My friends at BizFed, the Los Angeles Business Federation, just released the results of their May survey of business owners. Among other disturbing findings on the impact of COVID-19 on the businesses, almost half of all respondents said their revenues have dropped by more than 50%.  And our organization, the NFIB, the leading small business […]

“Bring Back Borello!” will never work as a rallying cry, but it might be a timely agenda item for California legislators to seriously consider when the coronavirus coast is clear for them to return to Sacramento.  In the meantime, the April 30 second anniversary of the state Supreme Court’s Dynamex decision and the Assembly Bill […]

The federal government and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are taking steps to help small business in this time of dire danger, but ultimately it will be individual citizens as consumers who must save the national and state economy. In Washington, small business interruption loans were part of the first major bill passed by Congress and […]

Fresno? Like Harold Lloyd hanging from a building clock, this was once a city that only made news for its tenuous grip on financial solvency. No longer. Now, Fresno is the fifth-best-managed city in the nation, according to the recently released Financial State of the Cities report from Truth in Accounting.