Judge orders Trump administration to reveal PPP loan data it sought to obscure
A federal judge said the SBA’s claim that the size of a loan would reveal a company’s payroll was “fundamentally flawed.”
Nov. 6, 2020,
By Ben Popken and Andrew W. Lehren
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Small Business Administration to release details on coronavirus pandemic-related loans that would disclose information on businesses that benefited from $717 billion in federally backed borrowings.
The judge ordered the agency to disclose all the names, addresses and precise loan amounts issued through the Paycheck Protection Program and Emergency Injury Disaster Loan program. The decision comes after a lawsuit was filed by a dozen news organizations, charging that the agency was not fulfilling its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.
The SBA had previously released only summarized and anonymized data for PPP loans under $150,000 — which account for about 4.5 million of the 5.2 million in total loans made — claiming they would violate borrowers’ privacy by revealing the size of their payroll.
When the SBA denied the FOIA requests by news agencies, it argued that releasing government loan information would reveal business and personal information that should be kept private.
Federal Judge James Boasberg rejected those claims, saying in his ruling that, “the significant public interest in shedding light on SBA’s administration of the PPP and EIDL program dramatically outweighs any limited private interest in nondisclosure.” The judge discounted the SBA’s claim that the size of a loan would reveal a company’s payroll, calling the assertion “fundamentally flawed.”
He noted “the PPP loan application expressly notified potential borrowers — admittedly in a form disclaimer — that their names and loan amounts would be ’automatically released’ upon a FOIA request,” and criticized the agency for offering “a series of arguments that essentially all reduce to the unavailing contention that the agency did not mean what the loan-application forms actually said.”
The SBA had no comment, agency spokesperson Jim Billimoria said in an email to NBC News. The Justice Department, representing the agency in the lawsuit, did not reply to requests for comment and whether the Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling.
more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/judge-orders-trump-administration-reveal-ppp-loan-data-it-sought-n1246792?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_lw&fbclid=IwAR2S_psGCksTAIhhMmxTmj-HRZRKeP7ftP7_SNMCNwdPv40PgKoqwajs_6k
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