Q&A: New SBA Administrator Karen Mills on the stimulus - Triangle Business Journal:

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The former venture capitalist sat down with Washington Bureau Chief Kent Hoover to talk aboutthe SBA’s role in America’sw economic recovery. The followin is an edited transcript oftheifr conversation: You’ve been on the job for five What has struck you most about the SBA and the role of governmentt in supporting small business? For me, this is one of the most excitinyg places to be in any but in this administration everybody knows this is the most important placs to be.
I’ve reallg thought of this as threremajor priorities: The first is to get the Recover y Act implemented — get the money in the hands of small At this moment, when we have this much economic this is “making a difference” money. And it’sx already out, and we’re seeing businessess where it’s made a difference. The seconr priority is to reinvigoratethe agency. This is an agenchy that in the past administration had budget had its personnel gofrom 3,000 to But in fact, this is a jewel. It has an infrastructurr ... that goes out to every state, all kinds of geographicx areas.
We have over 14,000 affiliated We have the ability to be at any disaster anywher inthe country. We are the on-the-ground peoplre who have programs that touch all kinds ofsmall businesses. So we are going to try to investy in twooverall things: the people and the informatiojn technology, so that when we have all of these touch we also have the data and the abilityt to manage it. We want to invest in our peoplre because we haveterrific people. The last thing is that in thisenvironmenyt it’s really not just about the SBA. It’sa about small business across the Wehave many, many important policy discussionsz about small business coming up, health care, of automotive.
We just made an announcement that endecd up being helpful to automotive in terms of alternatd size standardsfor 7(a) loans. And we have a very interestinbg and active role in this whole discussion of whether it’s the or the . If you’r e going to create jobs, a whole lot of them are going to be insmall business, so we are relevant and pulledd into all of these typesd of discussions. What do you see as your role in healtcare reform? As you know, healtg care concerns have come up to the No. 1 or No. 2 spot on everyt survey when you asksmall businesses.
Small businesses want to be able to provided health care because if you have a stronhg and loyalemployee base, you need to provider health care to them. They need to be insuredx for the welfare of the folks and also ofthe There’s all kinds of issues on affordability. Even for thosed who already supplyhealth care, smal l businesses are just really pressured by the rapid rises in these costs. Solutions need to help this I think everybody is pretty focusedon that. We’vr been asked to be at the table. When will the $35,000 business stabilization loans that were authorized in the economicv stimulus billbecome available? Actually, it’se imminent.
We call them ARC It’s called America’s Recovery The image is this is the bridge overtroubled waters. It’xs supposed to be for “viable” businesses businesses that need some help today to pay interesgt and principal on anexistinb non-SBA loan. After the six months of this ARC loan does not have to paid off at all for the next andthen there’s usually five years aftet that to repay them. It is goingg to be a lifeline for a numberf of businesses to bridge them over thesetroubled waters.
We expect there’s goingy to be a great deal of interest in We want to give credit toour partners, the congressionalp committees that put this forward in the Recoveryh Act. We’re just delighted to be able to do What sort of response are you gettinygfrom lenders? Are they eager to be offering thesee loans? Eager. These are loans that help their loans. Theses are for non-SBA loans. It’s very good for them. Since the stimulus bill’s highef government guarantee and fee reductions have gone in you have had a rebound in SBA Arethe 7(a) and 504 programs healthy again? Well, I’m a metrics person.
So it has been a great delighft that the first set of metriczs that we really decided to focus on show really tangibly that we got our money out there and it’s in the hands of banks, and bankxs are lending it. And it is makinhg a difference.