Corbett touts new Pa. rules to ease ‘burden’ on business

Gov. Tom Corbett is promising a whole new ballgame for small businesses that he says are trapped under the weight of Pennsylvania regulations.

After touring a Lebanon County manufacturing company Monday, Corbett outlined new ground rules for state regulators.They’ll have to embark on a more thorough exploration of how regulations in the proposal stage could ask too much of small businesses.”They need to tell us how much it’s going to cost small business to comply with regulation and what kinds of record-keeping and administrative costs they will confront,” the governor said.

The legislation has been stopped twice before by former Gov. Ed Rendell — something Corbett says illustrates a backward approach to governing.”Government is happy to burden business, but don’t burden government, is what that says,” Corbett said. “That says about all you need to hear about the culture of government.”

But the bill that made it to the governor’s desk this year isn’t an exact carbon copy of the bills vetoed in the past.

Those previous versions would have given small businesses a chance to request judicial review of overly onerous regulations.The provision was deleted from the measure the governor signed.