By Adam Pagnucco.
As complaints mount on MoCo’s not-yet-functioning process for distributing COVID-19 grants to small businesses, let’s contrast our performance to the District of Columbia.
The D.C. City Council passed a bill creating a $25 million grant program for small businesses impacted by the COVID-19 crisis on March 17. The bill also contains a number of delays on taxes and regulations that were not part of Montgomery County’s relief package, although some similar measures have been adopted by other counties in Maryland.
The D.C. government opened the applications process for the grants on March 24. The applications were closed on April 1.
That means 7 days elapsed between the creation of the program and the start of applications. The total time between creation of the program and the closing of applications was 15 days.
The Montgomery County Council passed a bill creating a $20 million grant program on March 31. On April 8, 8 days later, 7 council members wrote a letter complaining to the county executive that the grant process was nowhere close to being ready. That same day, the county published a document list for the grant process but had no application available.
Today is April 14. D.C. opened its applications within 7 days of its council creating its grant fund. MoCo has gone 14 days since creating its fund and, as of this writing, no applications are online. It has been almost two weeks since D.C. closed its application process and we don’t even have one yet. Small businesses in D.C. had a chance to apply for assistance in time to pay rent and bills due on April 1. Small businesses in MoCo did not have that chance.
What is going on, MoCo government?