CAGC Report: AGC Files Lawsuit Challenging PPP Questionnaire

Did your company borrow from the Paycheck Protection Program? If so, you may already be aware of a controversial questionnaire asking for information business owners couldn’t have known when they originally applied for the funding.

AGC of America recently filed a federal lawsuit that challenges the legality of the questionnaire in hopes of pushing the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Office of Management and Budget to revise the questionnaire. AGC CEO Steve Sandherr stated that the SBA does “not have the right to use a secretly crafted form to gather unprecedented amounts of proprietary information that has little or nothing to do with the economic uncertainty that led businesses to apply for the loans in the first place.” The AGC lawsuit also claims that the public was not provided the questionnaire ahead of time for proper review and asks a federal court to restrict the use of it until the SBA can appropriately revise it.

Locally, your CAGC President and CEO Dave Simpson said that “several projects are being delayed, cost of materials has risen, and some jobs have been canceled altogether. We need to feel confident that we can move ahead with the work of the industry and get the job done.”

While Carolinas AGC appreciates the government ensuring the eligibility of PPP applicants, we do have problems with changing the rules midstream and requiring information that seems to go far beyond the intent of Congress. The AGC lawsuit claims that the questionnaire does not ask borrowers to describe the status of their operations and the attendant business anxieties that they were experiencing at the time. Instead, it focuses on what came after, seeking information about the borrower’s business success or failure. The lawsuit goes on to state that the questionnaire is “deeply troubling to many borrowers because their success or failure over the balance of 2020 could not possibly have been knowable in those early days of the pandemic when the economy was headed into a tailspin.” Furthermore, the form is full of yes/no options that fail to allow borrowers the opportunity to explain their circumstances, many which remain uncertain.

Carolinas AGC will continue to report on this as we learn more from AGC of America.

This news was published by CAGC on its website news page on December 16, 2020. Reprinted with permission from Carolinas AGC.