Fund Fight Looms for Women's Business Centers With more than half of the Women’s Business Centers facing drastic cuts in federal funding, a bipartisan group of 13 senators asked the Small Business Administration to hold off awarding grants to new women’s centers until Aug. 1, to give Congress time to change the funding formula. The Senate and SBA have been at odds over funding for the centers. The Senate passed legislation in April that would direct more money to existing centers. The Bush administration wants to cut off so-called sustainability grants for centers that have been in operation more than five years and use the money to open new ones. The centers provide training and technical assistance to women entrepreneurs. Under the current formula, 60% of the existing centers – 53 of 88 – are eligible for sustainability grants, but they would divide just 30% of the $12.5 million federal appropriation. The Senate-passed bill, S. 2267, would raise their share to 48%. The House has not acted on a companion bill. If the formula is not changed, the 53 centers would face “enormous financial stress and some will have to close,” said Ann Marie Almeida, spokeswoman for the Association of Women’s Business Centers in Camden, ME. The centers must match their federal funding with dollars from other sources. “As the Small Business Administration makes plans to award grants to women’s business centers, it is our concern that the agency’s most experienced women’s business centers will be insufficiently funded,” the senators wrote. The letter to SBA Administrator Hector Barreto was signed by the chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, Olympia Snowe (R-ME), and the committee’s ranking Democrat, John Kerry (MA), along with Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), John Edwards (D-NC), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM).