Bailout money bypasses hard-hit New York, California for North Dakota, Nebraska

From his office in Bismarck, North Dakota, Alan Haut started preparing for the coronavirus relief bill before it had even been passed by Congress.

North Dakota had experienced only a handful of deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the state’s Republican governor, Doug Burgum, hadn’t issued a shelter-in-place order or required businesses to close. But as district director of the federal Small Business Administration office in Bismarck, Haut wanted to be ready. So he began convening community banks and entrepreneurs and sharing early drafts of applications to what would become the $349 billion Paycheck Protection Program, with an eye toward ensuring that prairie businesses would be able to get access to loans as soon as the application period opened.

On April 3, the morning applications opened, Jeff Zarling, founder of DAWA Solutions Group, a software company that also puts on an annual oil industry trade show, drove to First International Bank & Trust, whose branch in downtown Williston (population 14,716) was still open, and dropped off a flash drive with his complete application.

“My banker knows my situation, and we communicate through the year,” Zarling said. “So I simply had to run a few financial reports, which took less than an hour.”

Read more: https://www.revealnews.org/article/bailout-money-bypasses-hard-hit-new-york-california-for-north-dakota-nebraska/
(Reveal News--Center for Investigative Reporting)