Obama officials in town to talk
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WASHINGTON -- Obama administration officials arrive in Pittsburgh today seeking input to help entrepreneurs -- and local firms are eagerly offering ideas on how to tweak federal policy.
President Barack Obama and the business community have had a tumultuous relationship in his two-plus years in office, and one attempt to improve it has been an initiative this year to reduce regulatory burdens. Part of the approach is a listening tour focused on entrepreneurs, an eight-city series of roundtable discussions that lands at Chatham University today.
Top officials from the Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Patent and Trademark Office are scheduled to attend. In advance of their arrival, local businesses under the banner of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development pitched reforms in three areas: patents, immigration and research funding.
The initiatives are low-cost -- as the administration and Congress have both displayed a newfound desire to pinch pennies -- and they avoid the major Washington political debates on health care and environmental regulation that have displayed an ideological gulf between the administration and the business lobby.
John Manzetti, CEO of the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, said he looks forward to telling the administration about flaws in the patent system that work against small businesses. "It's slow, it's expensive, and that's enough," said Mr. Manzetti, whose organization helps nurture startup life sciences businesses. "That really bogs down the growth of a small company getting started."
The top concern for Audrey Russo, president of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, an incubator for tech startups, is immigration law. International students who get visas to study at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, have a tough time staying in the U.S. if they are starting their own company rather than signing on at a big-name firm.
Ms. Russo is eager to promote a special startup visa -- a program proposed in the Senate this year by Democrats John Kerry of Massachusetts and Mark Udall of Colorado and Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana -- for foreign entrepreneurs. Comprehensive immigration reform has been stalled for years amid concerns about workers who crossed the border illegally, but Ms. Russo said building this piece into the system should be a no-brainer since 25 percent of technology startups are founded by immigrants.
First Published April 28, 2011 12:00 am
