Economic development: Capital Access Loan Program.

Existing law establishes the Capital Access Loan Program to assist small businesses in financing the costs of complying with environmental mandates and the remediation of contamination on their properties, as specified. Existing law establishes within the program the California Americans with Disabilities Act Small Business Capital Access Loan Program (ADA program) to assist small businesses in financing the costs of projects that alter or retrofit existing small business facilities to comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. Existing law, for the purposes of the ADA program, defines a small business as a business that has less than $1,000,000 in total gross annual income and meets other requirements and requires moneys in the ADA program fund, which is continuously appropriated, to be used for contributions in support of qualified loans, costs to educate the small business community and participating lenders about the program, and administrative expenditures, as specified. Existing law also establishes within the Capital Access Loan Program the California Seismic Safety Capital Access Loan Program to assist residential property owners and small business owners in seismically retrofitting residences and small businesses by covering losses on qualified loans for those purposes. Under existing law, the California Pollution Control Financing Authority administers all of these programs and is authorized to establish small business assistance funds for certain purposes, including, among others, funding the programs. This bill would expand the definition of small business for the purposes of the ADA program to include businesses with less than $5,000,000 in total gross annual income. The bill would authorize moneys in the ADA program fund to be used for payments to participating financial institutions or borrowers to provide incentives to participate in the ADA program, as specified, would require the authority to adopt related regulations, and would authorize small business assistance funds to include contributions and nonreimbursable payments made directly to borrowers or participating financial institutions in furtherance of the ADA program, the Capital Access Loan Program, or other programs administered by the authority as part of the Capital Access Loan Program. By expanding the authorized uses of moneys in a continuously appropriated fund, the bill would make an appropriation. Existing law, for the purposes of the California Seismic Safety Capital Access Loan Program, requires the authority to adopt regulations that limit the term of loss coverage for each qualified loan to no more than 10 years and that provide for recapture from the loss reserve account of the authority's contribution for each enrolled loan upon maturation or after 10 years from the date of enrollment, whichever happens first. This bill would shorten the 10-year period for loss coverage and recapture to 5 years. This bill would declare that it is to take effect immediately as an urgency statute.