Q. What are the responsibilities of the review board?

A. We work with existing rules that are old and need to be reviewed for business impact. We look at all new rules written from each session. We also look at issues that are brought to us by small business or industry dealing with rules or proposed rules that would have a large business impact. Our sole purview is to address regulatory business impact on small business.

Q. In what other ways is the board helping small businesses?

A. We realized, and this was really before my time, that small business was pretty uninformed about their rights, so we started working on a "Small Business Bill of Rights." We are just now completing that and it should be completed in about two weeks. It's taking an informational form so it will be a brochure, just really letting small businesses know what their rights and their expectations can be and are.

Q. Do small businesses in general know that they can go to your board for help?

A. They don't. It's been quite the struggle to get the word out. We received a very generous donation from one of our board members that allowed us to hire a communications firm to help us, so it's starting to make a huge difference. Business owners are so caught up in trying to meet some of these regulations, and it's very discouraging when you look at all the regulations and in many cases these businesses either don't start because of them or they really slow their growth down.

Q. You've been with the board from the start?

A. I was on the original group (under Gov. Ben Cayetano) and then I had served my term and took time off. When Gov. Lingle was elected, I asked if she would put me back to the board and she did. My passion is small business and I knew that she was supportive of small business, so I really thought that we would be able to accomplish a lot.

Q. Does the review board have the authority to prevent a rule from being implemented?

A. It's a review-and-recommend board. We are definitely dependent on the support of the governor as to how they're going to take our recommendations. We find the governor's office to be extremely cooperative because we are not foolish about our recommendations. When we ask her not to sign something we outline the reasons and it's pretty clear that the impact would be intolerable. There are times we will say, "No, you are not ready to go to public hearing," and there are times that we will say, "We would like you to go to public hearing" because there may very well be some issues that we're missing.

Q. Has the review board always had the support of the administration?

A. At the very beginning it was just a case of, "No, we don't want to go through the review process and it takes too much of our time." That was very difficult. There was a time when the board really felt that it didn't have the support of the governor and may have put aside making those kinds of decisions, maybe deferring them.

Q. How do you approach new rules?

A. We've divided the (state) departments up with the board members, using their expertise. So when a new rule comes forward or review of an older rule, that rule is assigned to the board member. They review it and we put it on a meeting agenda and we invite those affected and the departments to come to the table with us. We have public testimony so we hear as much input as we can, talk to the department, take the recommendations of the board member that has done an in-depth review, and make our recommendations.

Q. What's your biggest challenge?

A. I call it "so many rules, so little time." Our biggest challenge is to get the reviews done on a rule that is brought to our attention. An example being the certificate of need rules for medical facilities, medical equipment, and on Maui we had a pretty big issue regarding a second hospital. Those are rules that we would like to review. Sometimes the departments really don't want us to do that. They're pretty aware that it's got a business impact, they try to justify the necessity for the impact. I'm also right now working the PUC wanting them to review some rules, but they don't want to do that. So I think that's probably our biggest challenge.

Q. Is it a matter of respect?

A. The Legislature makes the laws and the administration has to write the rules. I think there are a number of things that go on. One is that sometimes rules are very poorly written. I don't think that it's any particular administration, I think it's across the board. In poor drafting of rules you can cause quite a bit of impact. It's also a tremendous workload for the administration and the different division heads and we understand that. Therefore we've divided into units of two years and we ask them to review so many rules in a two-year time so we do try to make it a goal that's attainable. In most cases, we're very happy with the response. We've had the odd case where a rule has been pushed (past) us because they don't want to come in front of us. Fortunately, in many cases the governor says, "No, you go back to the regulatory review board like you're supposed to."

Q. If you could restructure the authority of the board, what would you do?

A. It's the word "recommendation." I'm struggling to understand how we would make that a bit more of a deeper authority. I'm not sure if the correct word is "shall" or "may." But we are looking to strengthen that. I don't quite know how I see that right now on paper. It's just something that we're beginning to look at.

Q. What is your vision for the board?

A. My long-term vision is to know that each time that we have a change of administration that we don't have to go through a massive re-education and a drive to get their support. It would be from a small business point of view. We're, what, No. 44 in the nation for business friendly? I think that long-term goal is to move us up in the nation and understand that we are a business-friendly state. That's going to take a lot of work.

Reach Curtis Lum at culum@honoluluadvertiser.com.