Legislative findings.

The legislature finds that: A. a vibrant and growing small business sector is critical to creating jobs in a dynamic economy; B. small businesses bear a disproportionate share of regulatory costs and burdens; C. fundamental changes that are needed in the regulatory culture of state agencies to make them more responsive to small business can be made without compromising the statutory missions of the agencies; D. when adopting rules to protect the health, safety and economic welfare of the state, agencies should seek to achieve statutory goals as effectively and efficiently as possible without imposing unnecessary burdens on small businesses; E. uniform regulatory reporting requirements can impose unnecessary and disproportionately burdensome demands, including legal, accounting and consulting costs, upon small businesses with limited resources; F. the failure to recognize differences in the scale and resources of regulated businesses can adversely affect competition in the marketplace, discourage innovation and restrict improvements in productivity; G. unnecessary rules create entry barriers in many industries and discourage potential entrepreneurs from introducing beneficial products and processes; H. the practice of treating all regulated businesses as equivalent may lead to inefficient use of agency resources, enforcement problems and, in some cases, to actions inconsistent with stated legislative intent of health, safety, environmental, economic welfare and other legislation; I. alternative regulatory approaches that do not conflict with applicable statutes may be available to minimize the significant economic impact of rules on small businesses; and J. the process by which state rules are developed and adopted should be reformed to require agencies to solicit the ideas and comments of small businesses, to examine the effect of proposed and existing rules on such businesses and to review the continued need for existing rules.