NFIB assembled a special February 25 conference call on the Southern California wildfires with guests from the governor’s office and two business associations discussing where resources were available to help rebuild.

Hosted by NFIB California State Director John Kabateck, the guests were:

• Clair Whitmer, deputy director of the Governor’s Office of the Small Business Advocate
• David Englin, president of BizFed of Los Angels County
• Tim Taylor, legislative and policy director for NFIB California

Whitmer led off the call with a description of her agency, calling it “the main conduit for information content and resources from the governor’s office,” and said one of its big missions is “to accelerate the resiliency of California’s small businesses” through its Outsmart Disaster program.

At the 14:48-minute mark of the call, Whitmer emphasized that her office’s outreach included “home-based businesses, which are often overlooked and a hard-to-measure area.” She suggested small business owners consult a 28-page, online flipbook her department has published, Navigate Any Roadblock. Create a Resiliency Roadmap for Your Small Business.

Whitmer also commented on a variety of subjects, including document protection, public engagement, and the apprehension some are having with applying for loans. “We’re hearing from a lot of people that they’re still carrying COVID 19 [Small Business Administration] EIDL loans and are concerned about accruing more debt.” [20:12-minute mark]

Still, she was “encouraging people to make the March 10 deadline for the SBA relief program. You don’t have to accept the loan. You still have time to make a business decision after you get in the queue.”

David Englin followed Whitmer and described his organization as being comprised of 240 chambers of commerce, trade associations, minority business groups, business improvement districts and other business organizations. “Collectively, we represent 240,000 employers with five million employees throughout Los Angeles County and beyond.”

Right now, according to Englin, BizFed is working in overdrive as a key source of information in partnership with Together for L.A., which he called a key hub for small business resources. Another part of BizFed’s efforts is working the Legislature on a measure, which it helped draft, that would provide employees of small businesses left without any income after the fires get through the next six months. [35-minute mark]

At the 36:05-minute mark, Englin listed other resources available that are unique to the wildfires disaster, including the Business2Business Share Space Program. But it’s not just businesses that were destroyed by fires that are the only concern. Said Englin at the 39:45-minute mark, “One of the things that we are concerned with at BizFed, and this is something we are working on with our various partners, is making sure that as funding becomes available and programs are created, we are not forgetting the businesses who are severely impacted who are not directly in the burn zone.” Englin said such businesses include those who’ve lost 70% of their revenues because of customers caught in the fire and who cannot get loans because these enterprises were not in the evacuation zone.

In his report from Sacramento, NFIB’s Tim Taylor said the Legislature is faced with the task herding all the wildfire legislation into some sort of coherence. “Because everybody wants to be part of the solution, there are so many bills floating around that do like things.” A search of legislation typing in “wildfire’ into the subject field brought back 127 bills.

More resource information is available from this story on the California page of the NFIB website.