SBA Chief Kicks Off PR Campaign

Seeking to increase his agency’s profile, especially among minority groups, new Small Business Administration chief Hector Barreto joined President Bush on Wednesday in launching a $2-million job opportunity center in a heavily Latino district here.

As a thousand onlookers sweltered under an unrelenting sun, Barreto and Bush spotlighted their support for small-business development and for programs such as those planned for the new Barelas Job Opportunity Center.

At the same time, Barreto kicked off what will be a series of nationwide public appearances aimed at getting the agency, long criticized as irrelevant to many small companies, onto the radar screens of the nation’s growing community of minority entrepreneurs.

The Barelas center, launched mostly with public and private donations, will include an SBA business information center aimed at providing technical support and training for small-business owners and would-be entrepreneurs in an area where poverty and jobless rates surpass the citywide average.

“The SBA business information center will empower the people of the Barelas community to start, run and grow small businesses, cementing the relationship between job skills, small-business development and job creation,” said Barreto, a Los Angeles-area businessman and former head of the Latin Business Assn. “Small businesses create good jobs, jobs that bring security and hope,” he said, “jobs that enable people to invest for the future, to buy homes, to build up communities--and to achieve the American dream.”

Calling small business “the backbone of our economic system,” Bush praised efforts like those at the new center designed to help entrepreneurs prosper.

“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from, that experience ought to be available to everyone,” Bush said after touring the center and meeting participants.

Lauding his own tax cut, Bush said his administration was creating a business environment that would make it easier for “the entrepreneurial spirit to flourish in all neighborhoods all across America.”

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