Why is Alaska a loser on SBA disaster loans? Here is a clue.
No state has fared worse than Alaska in receiving COVID-19 disaster loans from the Small Business Administration. Bloomberg News reporter crunched the numbers and discovered an important correlation:
“What we found is that a handful of states, about a dozen states, which were the first states to request a disaster declaration got this outsized share of all the money,” he said. said Zachary Mider of Bloomberg, a reporter from New Jersey.
Only one Alaskan company has secured an economic disaster loan, according to first federal data in the program.
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy declared a state disaster on March 11. But, like most states, Alaska’s request for federal disaster status didn’t arrive until March 17. A dozen states applied earlier and a dozen later, Bloomberg found.
When the money started flowing, every state declared a federal disaster, but by that time, Mider said, states like Alaska were already stuck in a queue.
“And so, even a month later, the money that comes out of the SBA disproportionately favors these kinds of early applicants, those states that were the first to qualify for the program,” Mider said.
Connecticut, Nevada, Washington State and Washington, DC did well. The SBA has made more than 20 loans for 10,000 small businesses there, Bloomberg News reports. For Alaska, with one successful candidate, the rate is 0.1 loan per 10,000 businesses.
Mider said the trend continues if you look at the loan value per capita – the early claimants states got more money. Total loans to businesses in early claiming states are $ 20 or more per capita. Alaska’s $ 500,000 loan alone breaks down to just 68 cents per capita.
The dates may explain why Alaska hasn’t done well in disaster lending, but it doesn’t fully explain why the state has done so poorly. Alaska got less, in number and value of loans, than any other state, including states with small populations and those whose governors did not apply for disaster status until two days after Alaska.
US Senator Dan Sullivan said on Wednesday he was trying to get answers from the SBA to make sure the pattern does not repeat itself.
The initial data on the program does not cover all the disaster loans made in the first batch, so it is likely that other companies in Alaska have already obtained EIDL loans.
Congress on Thursday added $ 60 billion to the disaster loan program.
READ: States that asked first got the most coronavirus disaster relief