(a) The General Assembly finds and declares that:
(1) Numerous instances of obtaining compliance with state regulatory and reporting requirements impose inequitable demands on individuals of limited means and on small businesses.
(2) Regulatory efforts to protect the state's health, safety and economic welfare have imposed burdensome legal, accounting and consulting costs upon individuals, organizations and businesses of limited resources and are adversely affecting competition in that sphere of the marketplace.
(3) The scope and volume of regulations already in effect have created high entry barriers in many small industries and has discouraged potential entrepreneurs from introducing beneficial products and processes.
(4) The practice of treating all regulated individuals, organizations and businesses in uniform manner for purposes of regulatory and reporting requirements has led to inefficient use of regulatory agency resources, enormous enforcement problems and, in some cases, action inconsistent with the legislative intent of health, safety and economic welfare legislation.
(5) Government information collection has not adequately weighed the privacy rights of individuals and organizations against the government's need for information because the design of the regulatory process has encouraged regulators to treat information as a free good.
(6) The deep public dissatisfaction with the regulatory process has stemmed in large part from a public perception of burdensome regulations failing to correct key state problems.
(b) It is the purpose of this chapter to establish as a principle of regulatory policy that regulatory and reporting requirements fit the scale of those being regulated, that fewer, simpler requirements be made of individuals and small businesses and that to achieve these ends agencies be empowered and encouraged to issue regulations which apply differently to individuals and small businesses than to larger entities.