Business owners, officials call for release of funds

Small business owners, the Pennsylvania CDFI Network and state officials are calling on the Legislature to release money to help small businesses.

The Pennsylvania CDFI Network, a collective of 17 Community Development Financial Institutions, helped to distribute more than $250 million, a combination of $225 million in state funds and $25 million in county funds, from the PA Cares Act and American Rescue Plan Act funding among 14,530 small businesses, which it said amounted to the retention of 54,483 jobs.

The Pennsylvania CDFI Network is again asking for the state to release more funds so small businesses can stay afloat. The organization held a news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday.

“We believe because the economy is unstable — there’s also a lot of capital, ARPA money — there’s about $6 billion available from COVID relief and we support the request to release $225 million to do round two of the Pa. small business grant program of which we ran that program and got that $225 million [distributed] within six months,” Daniel Betancourt, CEO, Community First Fund and chair of the Pennsylvania CDFI Network said.

As part of the federal American Rescue Plan Act, the state was awarded $7,291,328,098 in state and local fiscal recovery funds in May 2021.

Mandy Book, a deputy director with the Department of Community and Economic Development, said that the Wolf administration supports the $225 million request.

“The Wolf administration is committed to these businesses and Pennsylvanians like yourselves who run them,” she said.

Community Development Financial Institutions typically provide services to small businesses unable to access financing through traditional channels.

“We are standing with an organization that has in fact delivered and delivered well to small businesses across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to make sure that those businesses got the help that they sorely needed,” state Sen. Vincent J. Hughes said.