I think you know as well as I do that when you get legislation like this, you very often feel this is the nose of the camel. Okay, they start off with this and then they expand it a little further, and then the next thing you know they are taxing industry to pay for the cost of the regulatory apparatus that’s being established. And the first thing you know, you’re really being asked to preside at your own funeral.
To me it is just damned incompetent to consider legislation without knowing what the cost is going to be. In business we couldn’t do this. We couldn’t have jobs if we ran our business that kind of way.
This bill is the greatest piece of idiocy to come down the pike in quite a while. You know, people wonder why we’ve lost 145,000 jobs from Philadelphia in the last 20 years. If people would spend as much time trying to help develop industry in this city as they have trying to fight it, we’d be a lot better off.
I feel that the sponsors and endorsers of Bill 270 have been "taken in" by the spurious and irresponsible claims of its drafters. I very much fear that those drafters are motivated by a "zero-risk" philosophy which is impossible to achieve….Not only is it unnecessary, but attempting to achieve "zero-risk" can destroy business and commerce.
It is a bad bill based on undemonstrated premises. It will accomplish nothing constructive in Public Health value, but rather will do a great deal of harm to the City’s business and commerce, and most importantly, its economy.
Finally, you should be appraised of the need for security and secrecy to research and develop products. In many, many instances, such security would be unattainable under Bill 270. The lack of privacy and security would strike the hardest at our great and large corporations which research and develop most of the new products which enhance our health and quality of living.
[I]t is conceivable that this trade secret data would be considered so valuable that a company would elect not to do business in Philadelphia rather than disclose it and so I have detailed our concerns on the issue of confidentiality.
Not only is disclosure of this confidential trade secret data unnecessary to safety and health protections but raises serious questions regarding the taking of private property without compensation and due process in violation of Constitutional rights.
The imposition of large cost burdens on the private sector [rests] ultimately on the U.S. economy. [Additionally there are] many less visible secondary effects that cause substantial incremental costs…to society generally. [These include] losses in productivity of labor, equipment, and capital, delays in construction of new plants and equipment, misallocation of resources and lost opportunities.
On Friday, June 23, the world ended for some U.S. textile firms.
