Small business center takes mild budget cut hit

The federal government has cut its funding to its Small Business Development Centers, but the program’s Inland Empire office has barely felt the reduction.

The reduction forced the local office to change one full-time consultant to a part-time position but otherwise day-to-day operations haven’t been affected, said Vincent McCoy, executive director of the Inland Empire Small Business Center.

McCoy, who joined the Inland office 12 years ago, said the program has endured far worse cutbacks during that time: a 45 percent cutback in 2002 and a 38 percent cutback six years ago, at the start of the recession.

Congress’ mandatory budget reductions in 2013 were responsible for the latest cuts to the small business development program, Foster said.

“It was the sequestration cuts, which were completely out of our control,” Foster said. “But we’ve been through a lot worse. When I started here we had 21 people on staff, and now we’re down to 10.”

The Small Development Center is funded in part by the U.S. Small Business Administration. It provides start-up assistance and general counseling to businesses with 25 to 50 employees.

One of its jobs is to help established businesses with permitting and entitlements. Besides the small business administration, the Inland offices gets much of its funding through foundations run by financial institutions, mostly banks, McCoy said.

The latest budget cutbacks greatly reduced the number of businesses the program can help in California, and thus reduced the number of new jobs created recently, according to a report released this week.

Those cuts led to fewer counseling opportunities, but the program was still able to arrange more than $343 million in loans and equity to start-up and established small businesses in California, according to the California Small Business Development Center in Sacramento.