A coalition of Puget Sound business leaders issued a challenge to Washington State lawmakers Thursday, calling for greater complexity and obfuscation in business regulations.
Representatives for the Seattle Area Alliance for Increasing Complexity in Government Regulations (SAAICGR) announced their proposal in a press conference from Olympia Thursday morning.
“The business climate in Washington is pretty challenging right now thanks to the seemingly endless amount of red tape the state forces you to go through to perform even the simplest of tasks,” said Costco CEO James Sinegal, one of the groups founding members. “But we are confident that with just a little more effort, ‘seemingly endless’ can turn into ‘literally endless.'”
During the seven hour event, SAAICGR outlined a simple, three hundred and forty-five step process that state lawmakers can follow to make Washington’s business code the most convoluted in the history of bureaucracy.
“Today’s code is complex, sure,” said Starbucks CEO and SAAICGR member Howard Schultz, “but it could be so much more byzantine.”
Schultz said that any set of business regulations that allows businesses to make minor changes in less than ten years “simply isn’t challenging enough.” He went on to compare navigating codes and regulations to solving complex, multi-layered logic puzzles, but without the logic.
“It’s so rewarding when your lawyers and accountants finally decipher the code after six or seven years,” said Sinegal. “We hope the legislature will work with us to expand that feeling of accomplishment to as many business owners as possible.”
If they succeed, it could funnel directly into the general feeling of smugness you get from your average Seattlite (especially if he or she is a business person).