New SBA head plans changes at agency; focus now is COVID-19

NEW YORK (AP) — The new head of the Small Business Administration says she expects to make changes at the agency that she says will enable it to further help small companies devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday, two days after she was sworn in, Isabella Casillas Guzman said her immediate focus is implementing the small business provisions in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package President Joseph Biden signed into law last week.

The country has lost 400,000 businesses since the start of the pandemic, Guzman said, warning that “many more are at risk.”

Guzman expects small business provisions in the rescue package to help, including $10 billion to support state lending to companies, and $100 million for a new program called Community Navigator aimed at giving education and advice to struggling business owners. But, she said, more vaccinations against coronavirus and the $1,400 stimulus payments millions of Americans are receiving will also ultimately aid business by helping the economy recover.

Those are indirect aid programs. The rescue package also included direct help in the form of additional money for the Paycheck Protection Program and more than $28 billion in grants for restaurants hammered by government-ordered shutdowns during the virus outbreak.

Guzman already knows how the SBA operates, having been a deputy chief of staff at the agency during the Obama administration.

“We’ll be looking at our overall programs to see a path forward for small businesses,” she said. Guzman acknowledged that the SBA’s role has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic; she said the agency has gotten attention it never had in the past.

The SBA’s lending focus over the past year has been the PPP,...