news-record.com

The rock slide that buried Interstate 40 in Haywood County near the Tennessee state line has the federal government digging out some area businesses.

How it’s decided which businesses to help, though, isn’t easy to understand.

The Small Business Association isn’t granting bailouts, but it is offering loans on favorable terms — 4 percent interest with up to 30 years to repay. It’s approved $1.4 million in lending so far.

An Asheville video game arcade called Fun Depot was OK’d for $187,800, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported Sunday, even though it’s 45 miles from the rock slide. The owner says business is down about 10 percent since the highway was closed last fall.

Was the rock slide responsible? The SBA seems to believe it, even though Asheville still gets plenty of traffic from the east on I-40 and from I-26 and smaller highways. Probably every hotel, restaurant and entertainment venue in Asheville could blame the rock slide for any dip in business over the last few months — even though business likely drops over the winter, anyway. And this has been a cold, snowy winter in the mountains.

Other businesses approved for loans include a bar in Waynesville and an insurance agency in Tennessee, the Citizen-Times reported. But a motel in Canton, west of Asheville, was denied even though the I-40 impasse has drastically reduced traffic in that direction. The owner, who said he’d just gone a week without a single customer, told the newspaper that the SBA decided he didn’t need a loan to stay in business.

Loans have been hard to come by for small businesses during this long economic downturn, so any SBA lending should be welcomed. It’s reasonable to question, however, whether the federal agency is fair — to businesses and taxpayers — or even sensible in its evaluations of some applications. The rock slide experience suggests it isn’t.