Small business people vent at meeting
Chattanooga small business operators Monday gave federal officials an earful over issues such as regulation, net neutrality, education and tax cuts, with hopes their opinions will lead to changes.
Bruce LeVell, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s regional advocate for much of the Southeast, oversaw a more than hourlong meeting with the group. He said his reports go to President Donald Trump and the White House on a weekly basis.
“[President Trump] wants good, definitive answers and suggestions,” he told a handful of business people during a meeting at the INCubator on Cherokee Boulevard.
Fred Pearson, owner of Pearson Industries, said the biggest threats to small companies is predatory big businesses. Pearson, an inventor in the national defense sector, said big businesses often take the ideas of small companies and “expect you to fight them off.”
“It’s killing innovation,” he said. “America’s strength is the individual. Current law gives big business the go-ahead to defeat the individual. Big business has the government’s ear.”
Mike Harrison, co-founder of a new Chattanooga company that offers internet-based phone systems to small businesses called Ring-u, said his No. 1 gripe is net neutrality.
In places where there is only one internet carrier, it can block certain services, he said.
“Net neutrality is the foundation to how the internet works,” Harrison said.
When companies start filtering services, they’re no longer a common carrier, he said.
“They need to be neutral and allow all traffic,” Harrison said. “It kills the internet and kills their usefulness. It’s going to kill us and everyone else in the telecommunications industry.”
Late last year, the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules, which had required internet service providers offer equal access to all web content.
Callie LeCompte, of the GoodBridge Foundation, said she worries about local educational attainment. She said that
while the Hamilton County Department of Education has a $385 million budget, many students have fallen behind in reading by the third grade.
“That frightens me,” LeCompte said.
She also noted that a relative of her’s lives in North Georgia near the Tennessee line and close to Chattanooga’s EPB and its ultra-fast internet service. But, LeCompte said, regulations won’t permit EPB to expand its service to her relative’s residence.
Lynn Talbott of HR Business Solutions said she and her clients would like to see more details of the recently passed federal tax cut bill. Added details would permit companies to have more visibility in terms of taxes, she said.
Chris Gobble, the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce’s senior director of public policy, told the SBA officials about the INCubator, noting it’s the third largest small business development center countrywide.
“We’re doing it better than anyplace in the nation,” he said.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318.