Brown Kicks Off Small-Business Loan Program

Kathleen Brown put on two hats Friday, as the state’s treasurer and a Democratic candidate for governor, to kick off a new government program for small businesses that helps fulfill her campaign pledge to create 1 million new jobs.

The goal of the California Capital Access Program is partly to help fledgling companies get an early boost by making small-business loans easier to obtain.

Brown launched the program Friday at a booming 2-year-old manufacturing company that was having cash-flow problems and being courted by other states for relocation.

“I am on a mission to create 1 million new jobs,” Brown said in the warehouse of Timberline Gas Logs Co., maker of simulated logs for gas fireplaces.

“By providing access to affordable loans, Cal-CAP will help many small businesses like Timberline get the dollars needed to expand, invest in research and equipment and hire workers.”

Brown’s appearance was actually a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a program that she already broadcast in a news conference in January and was unveiled in legislation signed in October by her Republican rival, Gov. Pete Wilson.

The significance of Friday’s event was to recognize the award of the first Cal-CAP assisted loan to Timberline--for $500,000--and for Brown to underscore her pledge to create 1 million California jobs by 1998.

The promise of more jobs was part of a new focus that Brown’s campaign introduced at last weekend’s state Democratic convention, along with a new team of strategists and staff.

Since the announcement, however, the idea has been sharply criticized as a campaign gimmick by Wilson and the other Democratic candidates--state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles).

Brown’s opponents noted that economists have already predicted that the state’s economy should create 1 million jobs over the next four years no matter who is governor.

Brown responded to her critics Friday: “If you look back, the economic forecasts in 1990, 1991 said there would be 170,000 jobs created. California, in fact, lost double that number. So economists make forecasts just like weathermen, weather people, make forecasts.”