Feds to publish names, addresses of Solano small businesses that took paycheck loans
The move comes after a FOIA lawsuit filed by national news organizations.
(Graphic by Solano News Update)
The federal Small Business Administration (SBA) will publish the names and addresses of hundreds of thousands of businesses in California that accepted loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) earlier this year.
The move comes after a federal judge on Thursday ordered the agency to do so in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by news organizations and other entities seeking precise data on more than 5 million paycheck protection loans made by the federal government toward the start of the coronavirus health pandemic in the United States.
In August, the Small Business Administration responded to the information requests by disclosing the names and addresses of PPP participants who received more than $150,000 in loans. The agency also disclosed non-identifying information about small businesses that received less than $150,000 in loans.
On Thursday, a federal judge said that information wasn’t enough to satisfy the FOIA requests and ordered the SBA to release the precise names and addresses of the businesses that received loans under $150,000. Additionally, the judge said the agency must disclose the precise amount of PPP money loaned to each company.
The ruling affects more than 530,000 small businesses in California that accepted the loan money earlier this year. Under the program, the taxpayer-funded loans do not need to be paid back if businesses used at least 60 percent of the money toward payroll expenses and did not lay off full-time employees or otherwise reduce their full-time head count.
In Solano County, around 3,000 businesses accepted loans of less than $150,000 as part of the program, according to public data reviewed by Solano News Update, including:
140 businesses in Suisun City,
213 businesses in Dixon,
810 businesses in Vallejo,
874 businesses in Vacaville, and
912 businesses in Fairfield.
The exact number of businesses that accepted PPP loans in Solano County cannot be determined because the SBA data made public contains numerous typos and other inaccuracies that makes collating data on individual regions impossible. The data also relies on postal addresses, which makes it challenging to determine how many rural businesses accepted PPP loans when their physical business is located in one county and their postal address is in another. (For example, some rural businesses operating in parts of north Solano County use a Vacaville or Dixon postal address while other rural north Solano businesses rely on a Winters postal address. Winters is located in Yolo County.)
The SBA said its data was sourced directly from partner financial institutions, mostly banks, that offered the loans earlier this year. Any inaccuracies released in the SBA data were also present on loan applications or in systems used by those banks, officials said.
On Thursday, a federal judge overseeing the FOIA lawsuit said the names, addresses and precise loan amounts are subject to disclosure under public records laws because small businesses were notified on loan applications that “their names and loan amounts would be ‘automatically released’ upon a FOIA request.” News of the judge’s ruling and comments in the matter was first reported Friday afternoon by NBC News.
In court hearings, officials with the SBA said the disclosure on the loan form was not intended to mean that the precise information would actually be released if someone filed a FOIA request, an argument that the judge found unconvincing.
Attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) represented the SBA in the lawsuit. Neither the DOJ or the SBA offered comments on the ruling as of Friday afternoon, and it was not clear when the information specified in the ruling would be released to the public.
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