The New York Times

September 8, 2003, Monday, Late Edition - Final

TWO YEARS LATER: THE MONEY; Downtown Grants Found To Favor Investment Field

BYLINE:  By EDWARD WYATT and JOSEPH P. FRIED 

More than a third of the emergency grant money intended to help small businesses in Lower Manhattan survive after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack went to investment firms, financial traders and lawyers, a result that some New York legislators who helped secure money for the program say they never envisioned.

Twenty-seven percent, or $144 million, of the $539 million World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program went to traders who work on the floors of the financial district's stock and commodities exchanges, to brokerage firms and to investment banks, according to an analysis by The New York Times. An additional $53 million, or 10 percent of the total, went to law firms, some of which employ hundreds of attorneys and generate yearly revenues of tens of millions of dollars, and few of which faced dire threats to their survival.

Far smaller amounts went to restaurants, retailers and other small businesses, many of them dependent on the foot traffic that largely disappeared from Lower Manhattan after the attack.

The inconsistencies in the grant program -- complained about by many but never before completely documented -- did not result from fraud. Rather, they were the outcome of regulations drafted quickly by New York State officials, based on laws that were hastily written in Washington -- all in an effort to quickly distribute badly needed money to suffering businesses. Those rules, for instance, defined small business very broadly, and they required little hard evidence of lost revenues from any business seeking compensation.

In writing the legislation, "we were thinking of restaurants and pizza places and all kinds of service establishments in the neighborhood," said United States Representative Jerrold Nadler, who was instrumental in the grant program legislation and whose congressional district includes the World Trade Center site.

"A lot of discretion over the details of the program was left to the governor and the agencies he set up," Mr. Nadler said. "And a lot of their decisions are hard to defend."

Undoubtedly, the grants helped many small businesses to stay open. Arthur Gregory, owner of the A&M Roadhouse, a restaurant and live-music establishment three blocks north of the trade center site, said the $33,726 he received "helped keep me open because the insurance companies were real bad, real slow."

The analysis by The Times examined 21,069 grant payments made to 14,350 companies. Information on the payments was produced by the Empire State Development Corporation, the state agency in charge of the grant payments, in response to a request made under New York State's Freedom of Information law and is the first public assessment of the grant program since its completion.

Two previous studies, by the United States General Accounting Office and the inspector general of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, looked at the program before all of the applications had been processed. The Times analysis shows that the program produced what for many legislators amounted to several unintended consequences, and that nothing was done to refine the program once those consequences became obvious.

For example, commodities traders and brokers at the New York Mercantile Exchange, a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, received grants totaling $54 million, while the 669 small businesses that were in the trade center itself received $38 million. Unlike the businesses whose offices were obliterated, however, the Mercantile Exchange was operating again three days after the attack.

Officials at Empire State Development rejected any assertion that they should have stepped in when it became clear what kind of companies were being compensated by the program.

"With the economic conditions and physical conditions we were faced with downtown, and the need to get the money out, we had to make decisions quickly," said Kevin S. Corbett, chief operating officer at Empire State Development, which is controlled by Gov. George E. Pataki. "We had no template at all for this kind of challenge."

The analysis also documented additional and, for some, undesired disparities in the distribution of the hundreds of millions of dollars. Small downtown stores that are steps from one another and that suffered the same damage on Sept. 11 and similar declines in business afterward received grants of vastly different size.

It is extremely difficult, government officials and business owners themselves acknowledge, to determine precisely the ultimate impact of the differing grants.

Carl Weisbrod, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business association, said it was hard to know how many companies stayed in business because they had received grants or went out of business despite having received aid. "But the vast majority of our members say the grants were helpful and made them able to get through the rough spots," he said.

Figures from city and state officials show that the number of businesses downtown has fallen by about 5 percent since Sept. 11, 2001, while the number of people employed there -- not counting those who worked at the World Trade Center itself -- has declined by about 14 percent.

Mr. Corbett of the development corporation praised the program. "We feel that the Business Recovery Grant program was highly successful, especially given the time frame and climate under which it was created," he said. "Like all programs, it is subject to retrospective scrutiny."
 
Differing Views


The Business Recovery Grant program was among the largest of a flurry of relief programs intended to help New York businesses and individuals most severely affected by the attack on the World Trade Center. It resulted from the efforts of Republicans and Democrats in New York's congressional delegation who were desperate to secure the $21 billion in promised federal aid.

But in the fall of 2001, differences emerged in how those representatives thought the aid should be structured. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, among others, wanted to set up an Office of World Trade Center Attack Claims to reimburse businesses and individuals in Lower Manhattan.

But the White House budget director at the time, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., prevailed in dictating that much of the money be distributed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its Community Development Block Grant program, which would give local authorities great flexibility in how to use federal dollars.

"Rather than create a new federal agency, we felt that the city and state would know best how to spend that money," said Representative James T. Walsh, the New York congressman who is a member of the Appropriations Committee and chairman of the subcommittee that oversees HUD.

Mr. Pataki and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, both Republicans, supported that approach. But in the end, as the legislation was enacted, the grant program specified that the money be controlled by New York State.

Congress also required that within 45 days, state officials issue regulations for a program to reimburse businesses for economic losses related to 9/11.

"We had to get the money out as quickly as possible," Mr. Corbett said.

Empire State officials, dismissing alternative suggestions from Congress, decided on their own guidelines for compensating businesses. A company's grant would depend on three primary factors: how close the business was to ground zero; its size, based on its annual revenues; and its "economic losses" related to 9/11.

The agency did not require a company to document its losses. Instead, it had only to provide tax returns to certify its revenues in its fiscal year immediately before Sept. 11.

Empire State officials laid the responsibility for those decisions at the feet of HUD officials. "They signed off on the form that did not require documentation of economic losses," Mr. Corbett said. "We were trying to keep the administrative burden within reason."

Officials at HUD say such decisions were strictly up to Empire State Development. "As long as it is designed within the confines of the law, they can structure the program any way they want," said Jan C. Opper, a senior program officer at HUD who worked with Empire State.

Congress had required that at least $500 million should go to "individuals, nonprofits or small businesses" south of 14th Street in Manhattan. Separate grant programs were set up for large businesses. Senator Charles E. Schumer said the New York representatives were concerned that small businesses not go unnoticed.

"Big businesses know how to apply for these programs and how to get their money," he said. "If we didn't set aside something for small business, they were going to have a harder time."

But the legislation did not define small business. Empire State Development ruled that any company with fewer than 500 employees would be eligible for grants, with no restrictions as to annual revenues.

Representative Walsh said he thought the program was intended to help all businesses downtown. "We thought whoever was there, large businesses or small, or residents, should be able to access those funds," he said.

Others differed. "The small-business piece of the aid we introduced really was meant to go to the small-size, small-revenue business rather than the larger businesses," Mrs. Clinton said. "I'm disappointed we didn't specify more clearly what should become of the money."
 
An Exchange Gets a Windfall


Nowhere were the incongruities of the Business Recovery Grant program more evident than at the New York Mercantile Exchange. The exchange restarted its commodities trading system just three days after the attack. The next Monday, traders were back in the pits at the exchange's headquarters in Battery Park City, a few hundred yards from the smoking trade center site.

Despite operating with reduced trading hours, the exchange quickly began to thrive again. The most important measure of the exchange's health -- the price of a seat, or the right to trade commodities contracts on the exchange floor -- hit a record three times before the end of 2001. Trading volume fell a mere 1 percent in 2001 and soared 30 percent in 2002.

Despite that fast recovery, traders at the Mercantile Exchange were among the biggest recipients of Business Recovery Grants. Of the $54 million in grants paid to companies based at the exchange, $44 million went to companies with a sole employee -- that is, to individual traders and brokers who worked on the floor of the exchange.

The windfall was not limited to the Mercantile Exchange. Traders at the American Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, which were also up and running on Sept. 17, got $27 million. In all, investment dealers including traders, brokers and asset managers took in $144 million, 27 percent of the grant program's total. Their average grant of $71,325 was more than twice as large as the $32,800 average received by all other companies.

The chairman of Empire State Development, Charles A. Gargano, said that it was only natural for the investment companies to have received more because they were closest to ground zero.

The president of the Mercantile Exchange, J. Robert Collins Jr., agrees, saying the exchange traders only followed the program's rules. They simply computed their lost revenues and asked to be reimbursed.

He acknowledged that documentation of their losses or questions about the real long-term threat to their businesses were not part of the equation.

"If people want to moralize that making $100,000 a year is too much money to receive any government assistance, that is their right," he said. "I don't know how you divine what the appropriate amount is. But I don't think we as an entity have a responsibility for how the program was set up."
 
Zones of Compensation


In drawing up the program's details, Empire State made another decision that left many small-business owners complaining: its definition of the area hardest hit economically.

Overall, businesses from 14th Street to the Battery could receive compensation for economic losses attributed to the attack, but the highest payment scale applied to businesses that had been in the trade center or close by.

The agency defined proximity as the area bordered by Chambers Street, five blocks north of ground zero; Rector Street, three blocks south; the Hudson River, on the other side of Battery Park City to the west; and Broadway, one block east of the trade center site. Grants in that zone initially covered 10 days' losses, and were later increased to 25 days' losses.

"Considering the resources we had available to us," said Mr. Corbett, the agency official, "we believe that this was an appropriate structure to try to do proportional compensation."

Many business owners in the blocks just east of Broadway said they had been close enough to the cataclysm to have suffered physical damage and economic losses as great as those on Broadway, yet they were being treated differently.

Empire State officials said their major consideration in defining the prime compensation zone was how long business owners had been denied access to their premises. They said that in choosing Broadway, just one block from ground zero, as the eastern cutoff, they had followed the City Office of Emergency Management's guidelines, which said that businesses on Broadway and to the west had generally gone the longest without access.

How this played out is seen at places like Evelyn's Chocolates, at 4 John Street, where Evelyn Robb has been selling candy and nuts for 40 years, and at the Shah Lobby Stand, in an office building at 160 Broadway, where Sam Shah has been providing newspapers, candy and soda for two decades.

The $7,987 that Ms. Robb was eligible for covered only 8 percent of her $105,000 in uninsured losses. Had her shop been on Broadway, just 50 feet away, she would have received $28,526, or 27 percent.

Mr. Shah received $6,245, not much less than Ms. Robb, though his $16,200 loss was about one-sixth of her loss.

At her shop recently, Ms. Robb said: "I was so annoyed because if I had an address on Broadway, I would have gotten more."

Her shop was closed for two months after the attack, and Ms. Robb said she had struggled ever since to stay afloat in the face of sharply reduced patronage, which she put at about half its pre-9/11 level.

Under the program's formula, her award was based not on her losses, but was 2.8 percent of her previous year's gross revenue of $285,256, with 2.8 percent reflecting seven days' losses -- the most covered east of Broadway -- in a 250-business-day year.

Ms. Robb also received a $25,000 grant from Seedco, a nonprofit group, but still had to take out nearly $50,000 in loans.

In his small lobby nook at 160 Broadway, Mr. Shah said he knew he was "a little better off," under the program, for having a Broadway address.

His newsstand was shut down for six weeks and did "little business" over the next six months, he said, explaining the $16,200 loss on his grant application. The $6,245 he received was 10 percent of his previous year's gross of $62,453, reflecting 25 days' losses in the 250-business-day year.

Mr. Shah said the money had enabled him to buy a new refrigerator. He did not apply to other programs to cover more of his loss because "it's a lot of paperwork."

Around the corner at 6 Maiden Lane, Peter Muscat, owner of Maiden Lane Wine & Liquor, said his experience showed that the Broadway boundary, less than 100 feet from his shop, had been ill conceived. Yes, he was able to reopen just two weeks after the attack, he said, but that proved to be no advantage.

"We couldn't do business because for a month there were barricades at Nassau Street," which parallels Broadway a block to the east, and the entrance to his block was restricted, he said.

Mr. Muscat's seven days' compensation, based on his store's previous year's revenue, was nearly $24,000. Compensation for 25 days would have given him $60,000 more.

Not everybody who was narrowly excluded from the prime zone complained. Marvin Rafeld, the owner of 14 Wall Street Jewelers, whose location a half-block east of Broadway cost him nearly $200,000 in grant money, praised the program, having received $107,000 in response to his claim of $443,000 in losses.

"Without it, I can tell you without question, I would be out of business," he said. "Not only was it an economic lifeline, but it gave me the incentive to keep going."
 

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