State to air small businesses' policy ideas

Since May, dozens of small-business owners and advocates have been hammering out preliminary policy proposals to present at the conference.

Their recommendations are meant to position the state to thrive in the fast-changing global economy while improving the business environment for the 3.5 million small firms here.

"I hope the conference will develop a consensus small-business action agenda and the network to see their priorities through to adoption," said Marty Keller, director of the state Office of Small Business Advocate, a Schwarzenegger appointee and the force behind the conference.

The proposals are divided into 10 categories, including innovation and technology, access to capital, healthcare and implementation of Assembly Bill 32: California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires a reduction in carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The 300 or so participants at the invitation-only conference will craft and vote on recommendations meant to guide Schwarzenegger's legislative agenda for the next two years. The last of the preliminary draft proposals was posted online last week at groups.google.com/group/californiasmallbusiness?hl=en.

In addition to Schwarzenegger, scheduled speakers include Louis Rossetto, co-founder of Wired magazine and now a chocolate entrepreneur in San Francisco; David Fischer, Google Inc.'s vice president of global online sales and operations; and Dan Rose, vice president at Facebook.

Planning for the conference began in the spring, before the current economic turmoil and the governor's call for legislators to return to Sacramento for an emergency session to address the state's budget deficit. Keller said that the conference could help shape the debate.

"It creates a great opportunity for new thinking and potential suggestions to arise from the business grass roots," Keller said.

Scheduled for Nov. 18 and 19 at the Renaissance Montura hotel near LAX, the event is modeled after the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business. All but four of the 60 policy recommendations made there resulted in laws or regulations, according to Keller's office.

Here are samples of the draft recommendations, which number about 130. Many suggest greater public-private partnerships; some require state resources that may be hard to come by if the economy remains troubled.