DeKalb County officials say a company that gives small business loans spends too much money on overhead costs and hasn’t collected on nearly $1 million worth of loans.
The county recently announced it will no longer do business with the nonprofit company, DeKalb Enterprise Business Corporation (DEBCO).
But DEBCO says that it has done a good job by creating 300 jobs through its loans over the last 15 years, and that the write-offs and operating expenses were part of the cost of doing business.
Among the loans handled by the company was $35,000 given to Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May in 2005, the year before he was elected to the county commission. May used the money to toward opening an eight-screen Cinefe theater, but he later went into bankruptcy. He paid $8,500 of the loan before defaulting.
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