Oakland County, Michigan Offering Millions in COVID-19 Grants
- Author: Chris Remington
- Posted: 2023-12-06
As of Thursday March 26, Oakland County, Michigan has freed up millions of dollars to provide business grants to existing businesses to keep from shuttering permanently, and for new potential businesspeople who might need some money to get started on a new venture after the pandemic has passed by.
This is something that most experts agree is important. After all, you can give citizens all the stimulus money they can spend, and that still does nothing to help businesses stay open per se. Local businesses have utilities, insurance, employee costs, and rent to pay like everyone else. Not to mention their other overhead costs. The biggest economic issue with a pandemic like this is that many businesses who are forced to shut down for a while can never open back up, leaving people unemployed and fewer businesses to help give the economy a boost.
It's something Oakland County is very aware of, being in Michigan and right outside of Detroit. They know all too well what happens to an area once all the jobs are gone, and so they're starting out with a $3 million budget for grants to help businesses stay afloat, with an additional $6 million in low-interest, guaranteed loans to small businesses and even potential startups.
Named the Small Business Stabilization Fund, County Executive David Coulter assured residents that it would be up and running by April 1 and would offer individual businesses grants of up to $10,000 to start. This is a small business initiative, not meant to prop up larger corporations. It's for the proverbial mom 'n pop shops, so that they can survive the pandemic and keep employing people in the area.
Another way the county hopes the money will help is through $700,000 of the total budget being spent on encouraging manufacturers to switch over their production to creating protective equipment for healthcare workers. This is by no means unprecedented. In World War II, America's government had almost every factory and manufacturing business making wartime goods like bullets, rifles, shells, uniforms, boots and more. Though rather than decreeing it through law, Oakland County hopes a financial incentive will spur the switch.
Other Local Governments Following Suit
Something the world witnessed in 2006 was what can happen to entire communities when their local governments fail them. While everyone has their own opinion on how George Bush handled Hurricane Katrina, or maybe failed to handle, as it were, the objective fact is that their local and state government failed them first. This is something many local governments are trying hard to avoid. So instead of waiting for the partisan fighting in Congress to stop, many more local governments are also following suit, trying to free up funding where possible to provide stimulus relief and business grants for their local communities.
States like Virginia, Washington, New York, and many more have already given out some form of grant or they are currently in the works. The sad fact of the matter, however, is that local governments do not have the funds available to make that large of an impact. They cannot just print money; and for the money they do hand out, it's reflected as a budget deficit which may require higher property taxes and utility prices to make up, once everything has settled down.
This is why most are still relying on the federal government to get out of its own way to provide some disaster relief.
The Standstill Heard - Round the World
In decades past, America stood out as an example to the world on how to get things done. The way the economy bounced back so well after WWII was a template other nations followed to rebuild, including nations like Germany and Japan. However, with the partisan infighting going on in Congress today, much of the rest of the world looks at America as a laughing stock; as something they hope they do not become.
Every time one side of the aisle wants to push a bill through, the other side blocks it. Republicans sought to give money to citizens and businesses, but Democrats claimed that it did nothing to address inequities in diversity hiring, or carbon offsets for big corporations, so blocked it. Then Democrats loaded the bill with all of those measures they wanted, adding nearly another half trillion dollars to it, though Republicans blocked it in return.
For right now, the federal government appears to be hurting Americans more than helping them, with their bitter partisanship and indecision. Meanwhile, local governments like Oakland County are a beacon of hope.
