washington business

The result is higher compliance costs, reduced flexibility, and diminished competitiveness

across health care, manufacturing, agriculture, energy-dependent industries, and technology— particularily for small and mid-sized firms. next steps

The report outlines ways to improve and streamline Washington’ s regulatory environment, including:

• Adopt a“ regulatory budget” based on compliance costs

• Conduct sunset reviews on major rules and regulations

• Fix permitting bottlenecks with enforceable service standards

• Expand risk-tiered regulation for low-risk activities

• Modernize occupational licensing In the legislative session that ended March 12, lawmakers had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill to speed up processing times for state permitting and licensing, building on the success of Gov. Bob Ferguson’ s Executive Order 25-03. Unfortunately, the bill failed to make it across the finish line. AWB supported this bill.“ Unpredictable and inconsistent processing timelines have a real economic and personal impact on our businesses and on their employees,” AWB’ s Emily Wittman testified.

Failing to pass the law was a missed opportunity to make a good start on an important project— doing the hard work of making sure Washington’ s regulatory environment supports the economy rather than weighing it down.

visit www. awb. org / reports-data to read the report economic and household implications of regulatory intensity

-1 to-2 %

Annual Economic Growth

-1 %

Annual State Productivity

the indirect job impacts per small- to medium-sized business

2.75

Jobs lost

due to direct compliance costs

2.5 Jobs lost

due to unintended regulatory consequences

3.75