Bailout money bypasses hard-hit New York, California for North Dakota, Nebraska
From his office in Bismarck, North Dakota, Alan Haut started preparing for the coronavirus relief bill before it had even been passed by Congress.
North Dakota had experienced only a handful of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, hadn’t issued a shelter-in-place order or required businesses to close. But as district director of the federal Small Business Administration office in Bismarck, Haut wanted to be ready. So he began convening community banks and entrepreneurs and sharing early drafts of applications to what would become the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program, with an eye toward ensuring that prairie businesses would be able to get access to loans as soon as the application period opened.
On April 3, the morning applications opened, Jeff Zarling, founder of DAWA Solutions Group, a software company that also puts on an annual oil industry trade show, drove to First International Bank & Trust, whose branch in downtown Williston (population 14,716) was still open, and dropped off a flash drive with his complete application.
“My banker knows my situation, and we communicate through the year,” Zarling said. “So I simply had to run a few financial reports, which took less than an hour.”
It wasn’t long before Zarling learned he would get help. Although sponsorships for the October trade show have dried up as oil prices have crashed, Zarling said the federal bailout money has allowed him to avoid layoffs. That’s because the federal government is keeping his workers paid.
This was the purpose of the Paycheck Protection Program: to subsidize vulnerable small businesses and avoid massive layoffs. The loans will be forgiven entirely under certain conditions, including a requirement that a company keep all of its employees on the payroll for at least eight weeks. Within weeks, the Small Business Administration had exhausted the $349 billion appropriated by Congress, a pace that President Donald Trump has called “an incredible, incredible success.”
An analysis of 1.6 million Paycheck Protection Program loans by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that 58% of North Dakota’s small businesses got loans through the program. A majority of small businesses in Nebraska and South Dakota, neither of which have shelter-in-place orders, also received help.
https://www.revealnews.org/article/bailout-money-bypasses-hard-hit-new-york-california-for-north-dakota-nebraska/
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