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Vear battles onerous business regulations |
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Saying that State Representative Steve Vear is pro-business
is a little like saying Michael Jordan is big on basketball.
In fact, Vear’s decision to run for the House in
1998 was prompted by a desire to right the wrongs he felt businesses were
suffering at the hands of government regulators. A small-business owner himself, Vear operated a successful
tax accounting firm that worked with hundreds of small businesses throughout
Hillsdale County. He became frustrated with the multitude of cumbersome
regulations that seemed unnecessary or even bizarre. “There’s a lot of foolish legislation passed,”
he said. “I decided the best way to deal with it was to get in the
legislature and change it.” During his two terms in office, Vear has proved an ally
to retailers, supporting MRA on such issues as exemptions to telemarketing
restrictions, passage of the streamlined sales tax bill and repeal of
the Single Business Tax. The telemarketing package, passed late last year in differing
forms by the House and Senate, is now heading to a conference committee
to iron out differences. Vear says the final package must allow some leeway
for local businesses to contact their customers. “We at least need to get exemptions for businesses
under a certain size,” he said. Though the streamlined sales tax bill was signed by Governor
John Engler last year, adding Michigan to a multistate coalition working
to simplify sales tax laws, Vear says the issue still needs attention
to make sure progress continues. When the bill was up for consideration in the House, Vear
strongly advocated enabling the state to more easily collect the use tax
customers already owe on out-of-state purchases. MRA promoted the bill
as a way to level the playing field for retailers, but Vear added a new
twist. “I’m sick of people cheating and me paying for
it,” he told his legislative colleagues in House testimony. Vear considers repeal of Michigan’s Single Business
Tax his brainchild. Though he did not ultimately sponsor the legislation,
which was passed in 1999, he was the first to request development of such
a bill from the Legislative Service Bureau. Because of state budget woes, a freeze on the scheduled
rollback of the SBT is still a threat, although Gov. Engler’s budget
avoids an automatic freeze by keeping the Budget Stabilization Fund above
$250 million. Vear says the bigger concern is what will happen to the
yearly reductions in the tax when the new governor takes office next year.
Since elimination of the SBT takes place gradually over
the next 20 years, Vear is seeking reforms to make the tax less burdensome
in the meantime, such as allowing employers to deduct the cost of providing
health insurance to employees. He says the tax is unfair as it currently
stands and should become more of a profits tax than a value-added tax. “It’s always seemed crazy to me that you can
lose money and still pay the tax,” he said. Vear is skeptical of recently proposed legislation requiring
retailers to remove all but the last five digits of customers’ credit
card numbers from receipts, a practice known as truncation. The bill is
aimed at reducing credit card fraud, but would force many retailers to
pay for new processing equipment. “It sounds like a bunch of rigamarole for nothing,”
he said. “It’s campaign rhetoric - something to show to the
public and say, ‘Look what I did for you.’” Vear says legislators, including many of his fellow Republicans,
have been all too quick to jump on the bandwagon in support of bills that
appear popular with constituents but aren’t good public policy. As
examples he cites the credit card truncation bill, telemarketing restrictions
and increases in unemployment compensation, along with other issues ranging
from directional drilling under the Great Lakes to mandating health insurance
coverage for diabetic supplies. His philosophy is to keep government from unnecessarily
interfering in people’s lives. “The smaller the government, the better the government,”
he said.
Though term limits have brought in new legislators with
new ideas, serving such short periods in office has prevented those legislators
from reaching full effectiveness, Vear says. “It takes four years to figure out how the system
works, who you can trust and who you can’t trust,” he said.
“By then you have only two years left if you’re in the House.
You can easily be stalled for two years.” Though Vear’s maximum term in the House is not yet
complete, he is running this year for a Senate seat in the newly created
16th District, which covers St. Joseph, Branch, Hillsdale and Lenawee
counties. He’s already well into the process of raising funds. Vear continues to press for changes in government that
benefit business, although he says it can be frustrating to be part of
government and still not be able to change it. “It’s a challenge and a great honor to be fighting
for the people, to keep government from taking away their rights,”
he said. This article was written by Michigan Retailer staff writer Rachel Whitaker. |
Standing
up for the needs of business is not just one of many causes that concern
the Hillsdale Republican - it’s the main issue that defines him as
a legislator. 
“The
big threat will come in the next budget year when we see who’s governor,”
he said.
That
belief is one reason Vear opposes term limits, which he says take away
citizens’ right to choose to keep a legislator who has served them
well. He says term limits tend to shift power to the state bureaucracy
because administrators are less responsive to demands for reform from
legislators who will be out of the picture in a few years.