Veronica Rose, founder and CEO of Aurora Electric, a Jamaica, N.Y., electrical contracting company, has spent nearly 20 years successfully bidding on government contracts. One of the first women to obtain a master electrician's license in a heavily male-dominated industry, Rose has worked on major projects at JFK International Airport and the World Trade Center. Her seven-person firm boasts a customer list that includes General Electric, NBC and Columbia University.
So how much of the $787 billion in stimulus money that the government approved last year has ended up in Aurora Electric's bank account?
"We haven't seen any of it," Rose says. "The stimulus money went to the big infrastructure companies that build highways and bridges--the bigger, deeper, heavier part of our industry where you have to be a big company in order to compete."
Aurora Electric is not alone. A year after the government rolled out the biggest economic stimulus plan in history, small businesses like Rose's are wondering where the money went and why so little of it came their way. While VC-backed startups like Tesla Motors, the Palo Alto, Calif., company that makes electric cars, got a $465 million taxpayer loan, most of the stimulus dollars have ended up in the pockets of big companies that employ thousands of workers, not the millions of small businesses like Rose's that each employ only a handful. In fact, much of the stimulus money has gone to government agencies, bypassing the private sector completely.
To read the full, original article click on this link: The Stimulus Plan: A Year Later - small business stimulus - Entrepreneur.com
Author: Rosalind Resnick
