Ann Arbor official who got $245K in federal aid for business faces criticism

ANN ARBOR, MI — Ali Ramlawi joined his Ann Arbor City Council colleagues this week in approving a spending plan for $24 million in federal stimulus funds, but he felt conflicted.

“This $24 million — it’s not our money,” he said of the city’s share of pandemic-recovery funds under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act signed last year by President Joe Biden.

“We have robbed future generations,” Ramlawi said. “This country is sitting on $30 trillion in debt. The future of America is going to be held back because of the spending of these last 20 or 30 years. So, these bills are going to come due.”

Council Member Jen Eyer, D-4th Ward, is now taking aim at Ramlawi, saying his rhetoric doesn’t square with the fact that he received over $245,000 in pandemic relief aid for his downtown business, the Jerusalem Garden restaurant on Liberty Street.

Ramlawi’s business received a $245,100 loan a few months into the pandemic in June 2020 through the Paycheck Protection Program under the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the loan plus interest — a total of $248,081 — was forgiven, Eyer pointed out, calling Ramlawi’s lament about relief funds adding to the national debt perplexing.

Ramlawi, D-5th Ward, defended his decision to accept federal aid for his business, saying it’s consistent with his vote in support of the city accepting and allocating the $24 million, and he still stands by his concerns about adding to the national debt.

Ramlawi said he used the $245,100 he received under the Paycheck Protection Program to pay his restaurant workers who were on the frontlines at the height of the pandemic, before there were vaccines, and he considered it a successful program.

“The PPP money was used to pay payroll in this low-income industry, folks that were coming in during the pandemic while many people got to work at home,” he said.

The way the federal program worked, if the money was used as prescribed, then the loan could be forgiven, Ramlawi said.

“Hundreds of thousands of businesses across the country took advantage of and fulfilled the obligations under the rules of the program,” he said. “It’s really just disconcerting that members of council would take issue with this.”

Eyer said it’s fine Ramlawi’s business received funding, saying it’s what the program was for and hopefully it helped his employees, but she still argued it doesn’t square with his rhetoric about saddling future generations with debt. Eyer added she’s glad the federal government has stepped up to provide needed relief to communities, businesses and individuals.

Ramlawi said “of course” the money his restaurant received added to the national debt.

“But the money that I got was very strictly controlled and it only can be used for payroll, utilities and mortgages and rents,” he said. “And a lot of that money, due to the nature of how it was prescribed, is going to be recaptured by the federal government through taxes. Much of that quarter-million dollars is going to be taxed and it’s going to come back to the Treasury.”

Ramlawi said he didn’t receive any of the other federal aid that became available for businesses, such as the Restaurant Revitalization Fund through the Small Business Administration. That program was poorly managed, giving millions to wealthy business owners while denying funding requests from many small businesses, he said, calling it corrupt.

“If anybody should be scrutinized, it’s the folks who took that money,” he said, adding he thinks the federal government’s response to the pandemic has been terrible. “We’ve just added a lot of money to the national debt and we made millionaires into billionaires and we multiplied billionaires.”

Ramlawi is up for reelection this year, facing Democratic challenger Jenn Cornell in the August primary.