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Birmingham is one of nine cities being considered by the Small Business Administration as a potential site to consolidate some of the agency's "backroom" operations, an SBA official in Washington, D.C., confirms.
Under an agency reorganization plan, backoffice functions such as loan processing and certifying companies for government contracting programs would be moved from SBA district offices and consolidated to an undetermined number of SBA centers.
The SBA operates 70 district offices nationwide plus nine specialty centers. It is those centers that a task force charged with helping the SBA implement the reorganization plan will look at for consolidating backroom operations. No decision has been made at this point regarding how many centers-or which centers would get the additional work.
A strong case for Birmingham
The centers include disaster home loan servicing centers in Birmingham, New York, El Paso, Texas, and Santa Ana Calif.; a disaster liquidation center in Santa Ana, Calif.; commercial loan servicing centers in Fresno, Calif., and Little Rock, Ark.; and loan processing centers in Hazard, Ky., and Sacramento.
Greg Walter, an analyst for the SBA's chief operating officer, is directing the task force, which was established last week. He's provided the panel with an analysis of the existing centers, including their staffing levels, workload, prior productivity and such demographic information as office space costs and salary levels in the cities where they are located.
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