Leon Guerrero-Tenorio Administration Launches Local Employers’ Assistance Program (LEAP)
Hagåtña, Guam – Governor Lou Leon Guerrero and Lt. Governor Josh Tenorio signed Executive Order 2021-25 today, establishing the Local Employers’ Assistance Program (LEAP) to provide additional assistance to businesses in support of maintaining and increasing employment rates. The program, which draws upon $25 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, also provides flexibility to businesses for other business-related costs. View Executive Order 2021-25 by clicking here.
A Program to Provide Continued Assistance to Guam Businesses, Their Employees and Families[/title][vc_btn title=”Click to View the Resolution to Support Tourism Attraction Rescue Plan”
The businesses impacted the most by COVID-19 were small local tourism-dependent enterprises. They consist of hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees whose livelihood depends on Guam’s ability to provide a world-class experience for visitors. These businesses experienced proportionately greater revenue loss, were forced to lay off more employees and suffered more permanent closures than any other type of business on Guam. Too many have fallen through the cracks in assistance programs offered by the local and federal government. We still need help!
For those tourism-dependent businesses that did receive financial assistance, while greatly helpful, those funds have been expended, and are no longer available. Yet the Covid-19 economic crisis still confronts us in similar ways to how Covid-19 continues to impact our community’s health. The new variant has pushed tourism’s recovery even further into the future. As COVID-19 continues as a health threat so too it remains an economic threat to hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees and their families. The economic crisis created by Covid 19 remains serious and small businesses in the tourism sector and those throughout the island that suffered the most are in urgent need of continued assistance. The Covid 19 economic crisis has already lasted over eighteen months and is still expected to last many more months.
We are tourism businesses but believe that any business, still surviving, that has lost 90%, 70% and 50% of their revenue stream over the last 18 months needs assistance as well. This ranges from transportation companies, to travel agencies, optional tours, hotels as well as local businesses that have suffered as much. What we are proposing is to use the forms of assistance generally prescribed by the SBA through the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant and the GEDA Small Business Pandemic Assistance Grant to help those in most need of help.
This help can only come from the Governor, Senators and Congressman working together to provide funding from revenue resources that they directly and indirectly control and influence. We understand this will require a collective effort, and no one elected representative is being asked to address our economic challenges by themselves. No one funding source is being proposed as the single source of the help for Guam’s private sector families. The economy will recover only if the small businesses on Guam are able to survive. Our tourism industry cannot recover unless the small businesses that define the unique Guam experience can once again thrive. We need your help to make sure we survive. Initial $75M in combination from local revenue appropriations and Federal Covid 19 recovery funding. For the first time, local revenues would be appropriated to combine with available federal Covid recovery funds so that no one funding source is fully burdened to fund the need and elected officials have multiple sources of funding to work with. The Governor and Legislature would be asked to work together to appropriate and fund the request from a combination of local appropriation and federal recovery plan resources. The Congressman would be asked to provide more federal funding from appropriations, grant programs or other economic incentives available from the federal government.[/vc_column_text]
THE PROGRAM
Only businesses that were open on Guam in January 2019 and who are still in business today shall be eligible. To help those businesses suffering the greatest revenue loss, assistance would be issued based on business revenue loss experienced when comparing pre-Covid to post Covid revenues, as shown below:
a) revenue loss of 90% or more shall be the first to qualify;
b) revenue loss of 70% or more shall qualify next;
c) revenue loss of over 50% shall qualify thereafter.
Once qualified, and subject to the availability of funds, a business could receive up to six months of average 2019 pre-Covid monthly revenue or $150,000, whichever is less.
To assist the government with funding cash flow, the assistance could be made available thru GEDA to eligible businesses over a six-month period.[/vc_column_text]
COOPERATION IS CRITICAL. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
Today, hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees are being adversely impacted. They have no other place to seek help from except from our island’s elected officials.
Now, more than ever, our local businesses and employees still need help to survive until better times return. As tourism begins its slow recovery, our visitors will need things to do and places to go in order to enjoy the beauty and bounty of our island.
This proposed program can provide a much needed lifeline to our people and can help continue to fund the recovery of our economy.As the economy recovers, local tax revenues generated in the future can replace/reduce the resources used now to help protect the livelihoods of thousands of employees and hundreds of businesses.
Equally important we believe is that this action will help restore the tax base generated by the private sector to support our government’s critical mission of providing for the health, education, and safety of our entire island.
PROTEHI I LINA’LATA
Expected Recovery to begin at end of 2020 with full recovery by 2022.
Current trend is that we would be fortunate to see any movement by April 2022
Represented 60% of Island’s Economy Prior to 2020.
Employed over 20,000 people.
84 Activities Sold in Japan Market.
- 6 Permanently Closed
22 Activities Sold to Korea Market.
Companies have lost up to 90% of their revenue in 2020 compared to 2019, and 100% of income in 2021.
Approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people have lost their jobs in this sector alone.
At this moment, local businesses with over 30 years of serving the tourism industry are in trouble,
The uncertainty of the pandemic both locally as well as in our source markets makes our recovery timeline more difficult to predict.
We need your help to enact the GRP to help avert further deterioration of our Tourism Infrastructure and allow Guam to be ready to fully re-open once our guests return.