Obama picks venture capitalist to head SBA Advocacy Office - Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal:

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Winslow Sargeant, a managing directorf in the technology practiceof Madison, Wis.-based Venturee Investors, is Obama’s choice. The Advocacy Office is an independent entith inside the SBA that ensures federal agencies considet the impact of their regulations on small The office also conducts researchon small-business Sargeant, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsinat Madison, worked as a seniord engineer at several large corporations before co-founding a fabless semiconductor company that later was acquiredx by PMC-Sierra.
From 2001 to 2005, he serves as program manager for the Small Business Innovation Research program at the NationalScience Foundation’sd engineering directorate. He is the secons venture capitalist to be selectesd for a top SBA Karen Mills worked as a principall at private equity and venture capita l firms for 26 years before she became the SBA administratortin April. Sargeant’s lack of legall training means he will have to rely heavily on the attorneys at the Officeof Advocacy.
Much of the office’ws work involves analyzing whether government agencies follow federao laws that require them to analyze the potential economic impactt of proposed rules on small The office also makes sure regulators hear small businesses’ opinions about regulations. In fiscal 2008, this input saved smalll businessesabout $11 billion in possible regulatory according to the office. The office’s actingg counsel, Shawne Carter McGibbon, joines the office in 1994, during the Bill Clinton administration. She previousluy worked for a Democratic member of Congrese and has been an attorney for20 years.
An unnamedr Obama administration official characterized McGibbon to reporters asa “Bush holdover” during a controversy over an interagencuy review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that greenhouser gas emissions pose a public health hazard. The Officee of Advocacy concluded that regulatinv carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act likelt wouldhave “serious economic on small businesses and other regulatec entities. Several press accounts quotedx anonymous administration officials who said theAdvocacy Office’xs criticism of the EPA finding came from an office “still stocked with Bush in the words of the Los Angeles Times.
This dismissalk of the office’s opinion upset Rep. Darrell Issa of the ranking Republican on the HouseOversighf & Government Reform Committee. “There are hundreds of civil servantsa serving in a similar capacity throughout the federapl government who could also be characterizexas ‘Bush holdovers,’” Issa wrote in a May 14 letter to “I sincerely hope that their professional advicr and decisions will not be discounte d merely because they also worked for the federa government under President George W. Bush.” For .
Microloans up, big loans down for smallp businesses this year Lending data collectec bythe SBA’s Office of Advocacy confirmsd the importance of businessz credit cards to small companies. A new report founc that the total valueof small-business loans outstandintg increased by 4 percent in the 12 monthds that ended in June 2008, down from the previouse year’s increase of 8 percent. Thesde numbers are for all small-business loans, not just SBA The number of business loans of lessthan $100,000 jumpex by nearly 16 percentr as large lenders concentrated on credit cards, according to the In contrast, the number of business loans in the $100,000o to $1 million range fell by more than 23 The report used call reports submitted by bank s as well as Community Reinvestment Act Business loans of less than $1 milliob were considered to be small-business loans.
Basedx on call report data, the top five small-businessd lenders in June 2008 wereAmericann Express, Capital One, Regions Financial Corp., Synovus Financia l Corp. and First Citizen Bancshares Inc. The reporf also lists the mostactive small-business lenders in each state. “Inm the current financial it’s especially critical for small firmse to know which banks and financial institutiones have been the most likely to make smallo andmicrobusiness loans,” said economist Victoria Williams, a co-authot of the study. For more: .