The Chamber submits testimony to the Philadelphia City Council on the Ease of Doing Business in the City

On March 17, 2021, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia President and CEO Rob Wonderling testified about the Ease of Doing Business in Philadelphia to the Philadelphia City Council’s Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. Below is a copy of his testimony.

Testimony Submitted by Rob Wonderling, President & CEO, The Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia

Good morning Councilmember Squilla, Councilmember Green and members of the Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. Thank you for hosting this important hearing regarding the Ease of Doing Business in Philadelphia. As the City looks toward a post-pandemic future, we must all be committed to getting Philadelphians back to work, and ensuring that city workers, regardless of where they live, return. After ensuring people’s safety from COVID, I can think of no other decision that will have as profound an impact on our city’s future than whether we can re-start our economy to get those who lost jobs back working and create higher paying jobs than those who were among the working poor prior to the pandemic.

As the City is moving to recover from the pandemic, — and with as much as $1.2 billion in federal stimulus funding coming to the city — we must make sure it’s easier for entrepreneurs to start a business and improve the regulatory environment for existing businesses. Recent statistics show more than 1,000 Philadelphia area businesses have permanently closed since March 2020 and the labor force shrank by 45,623 since February 2020. To ensure these impacted residents and businesses are able to take part in an inclusive recovery, we will need to be obsessed with making it easier for all businesses, especially neighborhood businesses to reopen, grow and add jobs without facing additional hurdles.

We know there is a significant amount to do to make it easier to begin or operate a business in Philadelphia. In 2019, Philadelphia was ranked the 12th most difficult city to start a business in the U.S. with the level of difficulty in opening a small to mid-sized business, locating an establishment, hiring employees, paying taxes and getting operating permits. Some of the top ranked cities for ease of doing business include Atlanta, Charlotte, Oklahoma City, and Arlington, Virginia. The reasons these cities rank so high up is due to issues such as the time it takes to open a business, the ability to fill out forms online instead of in person, and getting questions answered in one location instead of going from one government office to another.

In January, the Chamber of Commerce announced it was seeking to create a new partnership between government, business and the community as the Philadelphia region re-opens following the COVID-19 crisis. It’s a comprehensive approach to advance smart pro-growth policies designed to grow jobs across Philadelphia, with a specific focus on the following:

• Creating a Commercial Corridor Renaissance Fund with additional funding for the PHL Taking Care of Business program in order to revitalize these business districts that serve as the backbone of many neighborhoods.
• Creating a specific business tax exemption for microbusinesses (defined as businesses with $250K or less in revenues).
• Tax credits for businesses that achieve certain thresholds in local business procurement and job creation.
• Now with approximately $1.2 Billion in federal funds being directed to the City over the next two years, we now have a unique opportunity to shape the City’s operating budget to
  redeploy resources that will accelerate the creation of jobs for citizens throughout the city.

As part of the partnership, we are working with City Council and the Kenney Administration on ways to make it easier to do business in Philadelphia and to create an environment that offers quality customer service to our business community.

Philadelphia has long recognized that it needs to make doing business in the city easier. With new stimulus funds coming in, we now have a unique opportunity to shape the City’s operating
budget to redeploy resources that will accelerate the creation of jobs for citizens throughout the city.

We applaud Councilman Derek Green for introducing the Ease of Doing Business resolution in City Council to kick-start a process which will ensure respectful, efficient, and timely service for all business owners who interact with the city; cut through the red tape that can prohibit the growth of well-paying jobs; and uphold a Business Owners’ Bill of Rights.

Starting and running a business is hard enough and shouldn’t be made harder by unnecessary red tape or inflexible bureaucracy. With smart policy reforms, we can do better.