"We're from the government, and we're here to help you!"

Those words are dreaded by many, and with good reason. Cory Doctorow, writing at BoingBoing, draws our attention to a New York Times article horror story describing how the San Francisco city government 'helped' a would-be entrepreneur. Here's an excerpt.

Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.

“It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”

Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.

The ice cream shop’s travails are at odds with the frequent promises made by the mayor and many supervisors that small businesses and job creation are top priorities.

. . .

Ms. Pries would not say exactly how much it all cost, including construction, but smiled and nodded when asked if it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There's more at the link. It's worth reading the whole article, to see what happens when government at any level - city, state or national - gets too full of itself.

The video clip below was produced by the San Francisco Planning Commission itself to illustrate the 'brokenness' of the present system. They hope it'll help their proposed improvements to gain the necessary approvals.

All I can say is, it'll be a cold day in hell before I voluntarily try to start, or run, any business at all in an operating environment polluted by such bureaucratic-nightmare procedures! It's no wonder so many people and companies are 'voting with their feet' - and their wallets - by leaving California!





Peter