WI Businesses Sound Off About Overregulation

The joys of red tape inflicted for no good reason

Several Door County small business horror stories were exchanged the morning of June 18 when the Door County Economic Development Corporation (DCEDC) and Door County Visitor Bureau (DCVB) hosted a business roundtable with representatives of the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA).

The two groups had invited small business owners around the county to gather and share stories with employees of the DOA's relatively new arm, the Office of Business Development, which was created in 2012 to serve as a liaison between business, the Small Business Regulatory Review Board, the state legislature and state agencies.

Amy Austad LaBott, owner of Door County Ace Hardware, Sturgeon Bay, told of how the Department of Natural Resources forced the store to conduct costly and apparently unnecessary underground testing of a parking lot for a recent store expansion, 10 years after the business was okayed for an earlier expansion that required a series of costly underground tests for the same parking lot.