MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama Sen. Chris Elliot, R-Josephine, filed a bill recently he hopes will streamline the process for businesses, particularly small businesses, to receive licenses and permits.
“We hold ourselves out to be a business-friendly state; well, let’s be friendly to the small businesses too,” Elliott told Alabama Daily News.
Senate Bill 12 would prohibit any state or local agency from requiring, as a prerequisite to awarding a license or permit, a different license or permit from another entity. For example, under SB12, the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board could not require a certificate of occupancy as a prerequisite to awarding a liquor license.
“After two decades in business, I have seen just how Kafkaesque our permitting and licensing process can be, and it is incredibly burdensome on small businesses to have to navigate this,” Elliott said.
“Having a permitting agency have a set of requirements that require, as a prerequisite, some other permit or license from some other entity, that then requires again some license or permit from some other entity… I’ve seen this go five and six different permits deep.”
The bill would not pertain to the state’s occupational licensing boards such as the boards of pharmacy or nursing, with Elliott noting the safety concerns of permitting such boards to be limited in their eligibility requirements for issuing licenses and permits.
Elliott said that he has already received pushback on the proposal from entities that issue said licenses.
On the other hand, Alabama’s small business community, according to Elliott, “love it.”
Rosemary Elebash, Alabama state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, told ADN the bill would almost certainly be supported by small business owners.
“Rules and regulations are just a burr under small business owners’ saddle because there’s just so many of them,” Elebash said, noting that while she supported the bill, she argued it could be taken further.
“I want Sen. Elliott’s bill absolutely, but I think there’s a step further you could go because these barriers to business, these are real. When you have 40 different steps you have to go through to open a barber shop, is that really necessary?”
The United States has among the most business-friendly regulatory environments in the world, with the World Bank’s latest “Ease of Doing Business” report ranking the U.S. as having the sixth-best business-friendly regulatory environments. Further still, Alabama regularly ranks as having among the most business-friendly regulatory environments in the nation, with a 2024 study finding that Alabama ranked eight-highest in the nation for doing business, and third for its overall cost of doing business.
Still, Elebash said that existing business regulation is often a burden on Alabama’s small business owners, and that she would like to see additional reforms, with one example being to mandate that all regulatory compliance requests be given to business owners in writing, and another, being softer on businesses for regulatory violations.
Reducing regulations on businesses – at least in Alabama – appears to be a bi-partisan cause, with Democratic U.S. House Rep. Terri Sewell and Republican U.S. Sen. Katie Britt recently teaming up at a Goldman Sachs event to pledge their commitment to cutting “overburdensome regulation.”
Elliott said the goal of his bill was to save small businesses time, which he equated with money, of which small startups are often in short supply. He also said the bill was filed due to both concerns he’s heard from his constituents, as well as his own personal experience as a contractor.
“It’s the essence of small government, it’s what we’re supposed to be doing in Montgomery, taking little things like this and whittling away at them,” he said.
The bill has been assigned to be reviewed by the Senate Committee on County and Municipal Government, which Elliott chairs. The 2025 legislative session begins Feb. 4.