There Is Such A Thing As Timing

July 26th, 2008 by Jake Hatlin | Posted in Talking Policy |

What happens when your timing is off?  It could leave you out in front of your wide receiver with a long pass, or it could mean that you let the cat out of the bag a little earlier (or later) than planned.  In the case of the Texas state government, not having their timing down has left them on the wrong side of small business owners across the state.

The situation is simple, Texas is trying to reduce its cost of doing business by streamlining the office suppliers who keep the shelves of our many state agencies stocked with pens and paper.  As such, the current long list of suppliers approved for state agencies to shop at is about to be reduced to just two large scale suppliers so that the cost of units will go down and Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Taxpayer get to see more of their tax dollars put to use elsewhere. 

There’s just one problem, the vast amount of businesses that are going to lose their state office supplier status are small businesses, and they’re really pissed off about it.  Many publications across the state reported this story, but the Austin American Statesman gets the link because apparently I am trying to keep their columnists employed.

According to the AAS, pulling the estimated 400 million dollars a year that the state regularly spends on furniture and office supplies away from small business competition is going to leave many of those small businesses who have grown accustom to being a vendor struggling to make ends meet.  From the article, written by David Shieh:

The news has distressed small-business owners across the state, many of whom say they rely on the state contracts to keep their operations afloat. Although the comptroller’s office has invited small businesses to participate in the bidding process, only a handful of companies — large corporations such as Staples or OfficeMax — would be able to handle the size of the proposal…  

Now, normally I am a fan of our state government looking for ways to save a buck because I think that our government should run more like a private business by keeping its cost of operation as low as possible.  However, in this particular case the timing of the cost saving move will likely leave the money saved (about 12 - 15 million a year if I heard correctly) not worth the aftermath of the damage done to Texas’ relationship with its small business owners.

If you’re as clever as I hope, then you have picked up on the timing issue that I am referring to.  Small business in Texas was already pissed off at the state before word of this move ever broke.  Why?  The new and improved business franchise tax that they just had to dig deep and find a way to pay for earlier this summer.  I can almost guarantee you that if any of the businesses about to get squeezed out of their office supplier contracts also had to cut a check to the Comptroller then they aren’t going to vote for a single incumbent come this November, Republican or Democrat…it doesn’t matter.

So there in lies the problem.  Small business already feels the victim of the state by the business franchise tax (which is a debate for another time), and as they see it the state is now back no less than 60 days later to rub salt in that wound by taking more money from the till.  Sure, it is highly probable that only a small fraction of small businesses in Texas are going to be effected by this, but that doesn’t matter.  Who do you think other small business owners are going to side with when they read about this in the paper, the state or their own brethren? 

I remember once back in the day I decided to get back at a friend who was habitually taking advantage of my generosity by going behind his back one night and running up his bar tab to an insane ammount and then ducking out just before it was time to close out.  But just to show that there was no hard feelings, I picked up the tab next time out even though - dollar for dollar - I was still well short on retribution.  I did so because I didn’t want to stick it to my friend in back to back fashion.  That would not have been good timing.  As it turns out, we’re still friends today.

We’ll see if Texas incumbents and small business are still friends come November.