Small business job creation grant will reach Lake Tahoe
By Darrell Smith, Sacramento Bee
Sacramento-area small-business development centers will receive more than $600,000, among the first in a wave of federal SBA grants to fund job creation programs, hire more small-business counselors and support microbusinesses across the country, the U.S. Small Business Administration has announced.
“It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs – creating these jobs,” said Panda Morgan, director of the Northeastern California Small Business Development Center’s Greater Sacramento office, which will receive $100,000 as part of the award.
“Who has the potential to hire? It’s small business. We survive on the well being of small businesses,” Morgan said.
In all, nearly $3.9 million is headed to small-business centers in Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina and here in Northern California – six initial awards that are part of $50 million in funding included in the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 that was signed into law in September.
The $616,586 grant for the Northeastern California Small Business Development Center also includes funding for other centers in Butte, San Joaquin, Shasta and Yuba counties, which cover a territory stretching from the Oregon state line south to Stockton and east to Lake Tahoe.
$600,000 comes in to fund non-profit companies to hire “counselors” to teach for profit companies how to do business.
Does anyone else see a problem with that approach?
Has that approach worked yet? We’ve been doing it this way for some time now with the SBA program becoming the dominant member of the “free market” …. . What am I missing?
Seems to me that could be part of the problem? Maybe we should get all these non-profits out of the tax dollar stream so that we can reduce taxes.
Does that sound like a good idea?
Then maybe businesses would start up naturally.
Like the Chamber’s $100,000 grant, more effective results could be achieved simply by throwing cash from the tops of buildings and letting people scramble for it below. This way, less would be gobbled up by costly, inefficient government bureacracy in the middle.
I thought this was going to help businesses start up, but sounds like it will only give a few (based out of Sacramento) jobs.
How about small business loans and mentoring to help people get started, people don’t have cash laying around to start a business, except for those who already have businesses, maybe.