Yellowstone County’s Disaster & Emergency Services Coordinator K. C. Williams has received a letter from the Department of Military Affairs for Montana announcing that his application for a grant to improve cyber security for Yellowstone County has been approved.

Official notification will probably not come until about September, said Williams, but at least tentatively the Senior Advisory Committee and the Homeland Security Advisor has selected Yellowstone County’s Cyber Security project for inclusion in Montana’s application to the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA for fiscal 2020. (Emergency services in Montana operate under the auspices of the Department of Military Affairs.)

The $75,000 grant will allow the county to make the needed improvements in a more complete, holistic approach than the phases that the county would otherwise have had to pursue. The end results will be much better, said Williams, and it won’t have to be funded by Yellowstone County taxpayers.

A few months ago, Jeff Slavick, Director of Information Technology in Yellowstone County, submitted a proposal to County Commissioners to begin the process of updating the county’s cyber security which he said was woefully inadequate. Upon learning this, Williams pointed out that improving cyber security of government agencies was a high priority of Homeland Security and they were making grants available.

Williams submitted an application for Slavick’s proposal. Some security the county has to provide by law, but much of it is just matter of good stewardship.

“It is just a better idea to be more secure” with all of the county’s electronic documents and data storage, said Williams, explaining that the county interacts with a lot of government agencies, as well as the civilian population, all of which are subject to potential cyber threats.

The grant will probably have an effective date of October 1. Williams said that he expects that the federal government will require that the project be completed within a year from the effective date.

By Michael Lucci, The Center Square

Real-time unemployment rates climbed across all states during the week ending April 18, based on data from the Department of Labor. A new wave of 4.4 million American workers filed for unemployment insurance benefits, bringing the total count of initial unemployment claims up to 26.4 million in the last five weeks of Department of Labor data.

Montana’s real-time unemployment rate was 18.7 percent. Nationally it had climbed to 21.4 percent on the initial claims data, based upon 50 Economy labor market estimates. Initial claims have decreased week-over-week for three weeks in a row. However, the total count of unemployed American workers continues to climb by millions per week even as new claims slow down.

Real-time unemployment rates vary widely across the states from Kentucky (31.2%) Pennsylvania (29.1%) and Michigan (28.7%) at the high end to Wyoming (12.5%) Utah (11.7%) and South Dakota (9.3%) on the low end.

The real-time unemployment rate uses March Bureau of Labor Statistics data as a baseline, and includes recent workforce dropouts as unemployed. This baseline unemployment count is combined with 5 weeks of initial unemployment claims from the Department of Labor to arrive at the total estimate of unemployed for each state.

This method shows an estimated 35 million unemployed Americans through April 18.

The federal CARES Act and the extensions of its aid provisions have provided financial support to workers and businesses affected by the crisis in order to help them survive the crisis. The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically depressed economic activity, consistent with prior economic research on pandemics, and economic activity will not return completely until there is a vaccine or curative drug for the virus. States now have the tremendous responsibility of executing safe strategies to gradually reopen their economies, balancing the trade-off between healthcare risks and the risks of an economic depression.

Once states are re-opened, they can ease regulatory red tape in order to allow for more efficient business formation and job creation. Re-opening strategies should be followed up by public policy reforms that make it easier to start businesses and find new jobs. State and local red tape should be scaled back, and state tax codes should improve their treatment of operating losses and the depreciation of new business investments.

America needs innovation and growth from the private sector in order to pull the economy out of crisis. This can occur more rapidly if there is policy innovation in the public sector to clear the pathway to economic success. Federal government aid to help businesses survive should not be unwound by state and local red tape. Policymakers can instead take a proactive role in advancing overdue measures to produce a better tax code and lighter regulations.

Michael Lucci is the President and publisher of 50economy.org. He also serves as a Senior Policy Advisor to the State Policy Network. He  was the Vice President of State Projects for the Tax Foundation.

By Evelyn Pyburn

While getting a disaster loan through the US Small Business Administration is an important salvation for many businesses suffering losses because of the COVID-19 business closures, waiting weeks for the loan approval process may still be too much for some small businesses to survive.

To bridge that gap Big Sky Economic Development (BSED) has structured a more immediate loan process designed to get cash into the hands of small businesses, as soon as possible.

In talking to many small businesses in the Billings area and asking them what they needed to survive, Dena Johnson, SBDC Regional Director and BSED Entrepreneurial Development, said that they were repeatedly told that weeks will be too long to wait. She said that one businessman of ten years in Billings said, “I won’t make it if funding takes more than a couple weeks… I need cash and I need it fast.”

A BSED team went to work structuring a program that would fit the urgent need, which will utilize funds from a reserve set aside by BSED for just such a purpose.

In a special BSED “zoom” board meeting, on Monday, the program received approval and Brandon Berger, BSED Director of Business Finance, was given authority to administer it.

Berger explained that the board made available $250,000 to make interim loans of up to $15,000 per owner /business who has filed for an SBA Disaster Relief Loan. Upon application the funds should be available within 24 to 48 hours. The one year loan will be charged 2 percent interest. When the SBA loan comes through for the business owner, the first disbursement will be to repay the $15,000.

If the applicant should be refused by the SBA for a disaster loan, the BSED bridge loan will convert to a three-year loan.

Details for the “BSED Stabilization Loan Program” are still being worked out, but the US Small Business Administration is accepting applications for disaster loans now. BSED will announce when they are ready to accept applications.

Since SBA 504 loan clients are being offered an opportunity to defer their principal and interest payments for six months to help cope with the losses suffered from COVID-19 economic impacts, Berger said those clients will not be considered eligible for the BSED Stabilization Loan Program. Many of those clients have already applied for deferred payments. Berger said those applications are coming “fast and furious.” So far they have received 19 requests.

[Forms to apply for SBA loans is available on line at https:// www.sba.gov/ disaster/ apply-for-disaster-loan/ index.html? mc_cid= 00841b9e69& mc_eid= 906d2a23d1]

Berger explained that the $250,000 is being drawn from a reserve of $1 million that BSEDA acquired through the administration of a federal Small Business Credit Initiative. BSEDA was charged with loaning the money to businesses and as the principle and interest was repaid the agency was allowed to retain the funds to use as they see fit to support businesses.