Sununu Gets Funding for Women’s Business Centers
Sununu
New Hampshire Union Leader
Alyssa Marcus
Boston University Washington News Service
January 25, 2007
WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 —The Senate has accepted Sen. John Sununu’s amendment to the minimum wage bill to preserve federal funding for a Women’s Business Center that serves parts of New Hampshire and two neighboring states. But the amendment’s fate depends on whether the Senate decides to approve the wage bill itself.
The New Hampshire Republican offered his amendment on Tuesday, and the Senate unanimously approved it the same day. But the following day, a move to bring the minimum wage bill up for a vote was stymied, with critics contending that it must be amended to offer offsetting tax breaks to business.
The Women’s Business Center was established in 1995. Its main location is in Portsmouth, but its programs and services are offered across southeastern New Hampshire, northern Massachusetts and southern Maine. The center has received federal funds since 1997, when it started being supported by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership.
The center provides support for businesswomen who want to start, expand or improve their businesses. Some of the programs it offers are specialized training, networking opportunities and outreach to both economically and socially disadvantaged women.
“We have to ensure that there’s a program in place to continue having a place for women that has a history of performance like the one in Portsmouth to continue meeting the needs of the community,” Sununu said in an interview.
Under current law the center and similar organizations receive federal funds for an initial five years, after which they may receive sustainability grants for five years. But a center in its final year of such eligibility, when they are known as “graduating centers,” risked closure as they were forced to begin operating without federal funds.
Sununu said it was important to address the subject now because about a dozen such centers around the country are at the end of their five-year cycles but must continue to meet the needs of businesswomen.
Sununu’s amendment would create a renewable, three-year competitive grant program for graduating centers, provide centers with up to $150,000 in matching federal funds per fiscal year and fund existing centers under money already designated for them.
His amendment also would add privacy protections for the centers and makes centers that have exhausted their eligibility newly eligible for funds under the proposed new program.
In a statement released by Sununu’s office, Ellen Fineberg, the executive director of the Women’s Business Center in Portsmouth, said, “I could not be more pleased with Senator Sununu’s initiative to ensure funding sustains the New Hampshire center in our second decade of work promoting women’s business ownership in the Granite State.”
This is not the first time that Sununu has shown an interest in programs for women business owners. He worked on and supported the issue during his stay in the House and when it came up last year as well. During the 109th Congress, Sununu also co-sponsored the Women’s Small Business Ownership Programs Act of 2006, offered by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).
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