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If Texas can process an application to form a limited liability company in five days, even less if the registration application is filed online, why does it take California six weeks?
Why does a business owner in Los Angeles have to deliver papers to the secretary of state's office in Sacramento to get expedited over-the-counter service? Why doesn't the secretary of state have counter service in Los Angeles or Fresno or San Francisco?
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen blames state budget cuts for the many embarrassing shortcomings and backlogs in her office. Lack of money should not have been a problem. The business portal side of Bowen's office -- the place where entrepreneurs seeking to form corporations or limited liability companies or partnerships file their paperwork -- is fee-based. Businesses pay for the cost of the operation.
In fact, California charges among the highest fees of any state in the nation for what appears to be perhaps the worst service, as a limited survey by The Sacramento Bee's Jon Ortiz suggests.
In the depths of the recession, between 2008 and 2010, the governor and Legislature foolishly, and possibly illegally, borrowed more than $80 million in business filing fees to balance the state budget. The resulting staff shortages left thousands of business applications, many of them containing uncashed checks, sitting at the secretary of state's office for months waiting to be processed.
