PPP RECIPIENTS A WHO’S WHO OF BAY STATE BIZ
Bailout helps all businesses from churches to colleges
Employers dipping into the massive federal Paycheck Protection Program say they saved roughly 1.1 million jobs in Massachusetts — from the Boston Ballet to bagel bakers, a Herald analysis of those loans shows.
The bailouts of up to $10 million are forgivable if borrowers make a “good faith effort” to rehire workers furloughed during the pandemic at their old salaries, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. If not, the two- and five-year loans carry a 1% annual interest rate.
The companies receiving loans is a virtual who’s who list of prominent businesses, schools, restaurants and other institutions in Massachusetts.
A number of wealthy, private schools in Massachusetts also got PPP loans. Buckingham, Browne and Nichols, the alma mater of U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, got one between $5 and $10 million.
The Fessenden School in
West Newton received a loan between $2 million and $5 million, as did the Lawrence Academy at Groton and the Beaver Country Day School in Brookline.
The Archbishop of Boston, and Catholic Charities, also put in for millions in loans. So did the bishops in Worcester and Fall River, the data shows. It came as the coronavirus pandemic forced churches to lock up during the Easter season.
“Working with the Small Business Administration, the Archdiocese of Boston encouraged parishes and related entities to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) given the significant payroll challenges experienced by parishes and agencies resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Terrence Donilon, a spokesman for the archdiocese.
“With the suspension of Masses and programs in mid-March, combined with a dramatic loss in revenue, we appreciate that this program was available for nonprofits including religious organizations,” he added.
But attorney Mitchell
Garabedian, who has taken on the Catholic church over sexual abuse, questioned if the loans are a “Los Angeles Lakers situation.”
The Lakers — the second richest team in the NBA with a reported valuation of $4.4 billion — repaid a $4.6 million PPP loan when news broke of the payment.
Donilon defended the PPP loans, saying church “employees are members of the community who support the good works of mercy that our parishes and ministries provide to the wider public.”
MassFiscal spokesman Paul Craney, a watchdog for government spending, hailed the PPP program for helping out small businesses who have been digging deep to pay taxes for years.
“Usually there’s a lot of waste with government, but this was a good approach to keeping employees employed,” said Craney. “It’s a rare moment when the government stepped up in a time of need.”
The PPP program has been extended to Aug. 8 with $130 billion still left in the fund that has paid out $610 billion. That, according to multiple reports, has saved about 50 million jobs in the U.S. during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Most of those jobs, added Paul Bernardini of smallbusiness lender Kabbage, were for small businesses.
“In a matter of weeks the country came to a halt,” said Bernardini. “The government put out a program that delivered $610 billion. It wasn’t flawless, but you got to give a nod to the sheer volume of loans.”
He added those bailouts helped small business that account for nearly half of all the jobs in America.
The list of recipients in Massachusetts included N.E. Aquarium, Eataly, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Legal Sea Foods, Planned Parenthood, the Wang Theatre, Boston Duck Tours and the American Meteorological Society.
Fishermen, a ski mountain, Newbury Comics, Muffin Town and Tasty Burger are also on the list posted on bostonherald.com that also includes scores more small businesses that can keep the doors open as the state crawls out from under the pandemic shelter-in-place.
As for oversight, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Congress this week he’s looking for a balance of “appropriate protection of small business information” and transparency. That debate is still happening.