LEVICK | December 7th, 2020

You Took a PPP Loan. Now Get Ready to Talk About It.

In The National Law Review, Richard Levick suggests ways companies and organizations can deflect criticism and be more sympathetic than those who appear to have profited from the stimulus plan.

Late on Tuesday, December 1, The U.S. Small Business Administration released detailed information about the borrowers who received loans from the federal government’s $659 billion Paycheck Protection and Economic Injury Disaster Loans Program.  The information released includes the names, precise amounts, addresses, industry codes, and lender information for the COVID-19 relief program’s roughly 5.2 million loans. The SBA had previously only released detailed information for loans above $150,000 and with dollar ranges rather than specified loan amounts.  A searchable database is located here.

Did your company, or perhaps one of your clients, apply for and accept a business loan from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) established by the US Federal government’s Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) to help certain businesses, self-employed workers, sole proprietors, nonprofit organizations and tribal businesses continue paying their workers ?  If so, you must be prepared to answer questions about your acceptance of that loan if asked about it.

We have two former journalists on our staff.  Thom Fladung, our managing partner, is the former managing editor of Detroit Free Press, The Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal.  Before coming to Hennes Communications, Howard Fencl ran TV newsrooms for more than 20 years.  Both agree that once the loan recipient information goes up on a searchable, public database, it will immediately become “low-hanging fruit,” with news editors sending reporters out to do follow-up stories about who took what, how much and why…Read more