The Small Business Business Administration on Friday afternoon filed a 25 page response to the Freedom of Information suit filed by
The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, ProPublica and The New York Times on May 12. Six other news organizations joined the lawsuit on May 29.
The SBA echoed the position taken by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin In testimony before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
Mnuchin asserted that data relating to recipients of loans under the $600 plus Payroll Protection Program constitutes "proprietary information, and in many cases for sole proprietors and small businesses, it is confidential information."
The SBA's response goes beyond Mnuchin's statements, citing exceptions to the Freedom of Information Act for trade secrets and personnel and medical files.
Additionally, the SBA maintained that since it has not formally denied the news organizations' request, the organizations' legal action is premature.
Given the notorious delays associated with federal agency responses to requests for records under the Freedom of Information Act, the news organizations might have waited years for the SBA's "formal denial."
As we've said so often, "The value of Information is partly a function of time." Instead of waiting for the SBA's inevitable "formal denial," the plaintiff news organizations properly struck while the iron was hot.
