Iowa Set to Audit $51 Million in Small Business Grants

• Author: Mary Singleton
• Posted: 2023-11-13

Roughly half of the federal government's $2.2 trillion virus stimulus package that was signed into effect last month was set to go to businesses, both large corporations and small businesses. The logic behind this was that when the lock-downs are finally over, and the unemployed get back to work, they will actually need a job to return to. Not giving businesses funding would result in many businesses shutting down, and thus leaving people with nowhere to go once they were allowed back out of their homes into an open economy.

However, par for the course with any government spending, the rumors of misappropriations of funds are already starting to fly. Many states have complained that their businesses haven't received enough money, with some claiming they've received none at all. Huge private universities with billions of dollars in endowments like Harvard are gladly accepting the same amount of money as smaller universities who need it more, without any shame or plans to give the money back. When government starts handing out money, it's a free for all with fish swimming as fast as they can to the top of the tank to get as much food as possible. And this is why Iowa is starting to seriously look into what went wrong with their federal grant money.

After Iowa was set to release $51 million in small business grants earlier this month, a lot of small businesses applied for the grants. Everything from bakeries and lingerie shops to salons that were shut down for being nonessential were applying to get some funds. However, some officials in Iowa started to receive a lot of complaints earlier this week, one filing in after the other, claiming that their applications had either been denied or that they had never heard anything back. So, as of Thursday, April 30, there is an audit underway, with officials looking to see if any of the funds were misappropriated, which is a polite way of saying "stolen"

Iowa's small businesses who are still actually waiting on grant money are really hoping that the money's still available. The audit just started getting underway earlier in the week, so it could take all of May and perhaps even into June before officials find out where the money went.

On the simpler side of things, it could have just been a clerical error. After all, thousands of applications were pouring in, which is very unprecedented and most systems are simply not equipped to handle such a busy influx of paperwork. Though there's also a real fear about the money being stolen, which unfortunately has a very recent precedent in Iowa.

Iowa's Money Came Up Missing Recently

Just last month, an Iowa audit caught a deputy clerk actually pocketing money. This clerk ended up embezzling over $42,000. A clerk named Riki Harrington started taking sums of money back in 2015 and continued until 2018 when the word of an audit started circulating. She had a very elaborate scheme going on. She would take people's utility checks, cash them, and then pay their utility bills with funds appropriated for other services, and just short those services, which just ended up reading as government waste.

This is the real danger any time the government just starts handing out money. It's almost impossible to keep track of. From hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a "bridge to nowhere," or millions of dollars given to inner city schools that just vanishes and never reaches students, there seems to be an abundance of crooks in the United States who use these opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of needy people who are relying on the money.

For this particular audit, no one is suspected of stealing money at this current juncture. It is simply being looked into. All that's clear to date is that something went wrong. Of the $51 million in small business grants, not even half of it has been paid out, and the bulk of applications were not approved. With most being either denied or just not answered, Iowa's small businesses are currently in a state of panic, wondering what they have to actually do to receive some grant money.

Hopefully there's no one running around with millions of dollars in their pocket, forcing others to suffer so they can become rich. Though the audit is what will tell the tall after it's completed.