SBA Office of Advocacy to Hold Meeting to Address Concerns Over Small Business Contracting Data

PETALUMA, CA--(Marketwire - December 10, 2007) - The following is a statement by the American Small Business League:

On Thursday, December 13 from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will hold their next meeting of the Small Business Communicators Roundtable to discuss the availability of small business statistics. The event will be held in the Eisenhower conference room (2nd floor) at SBA headquarters, located at 409 3rd Street, SW in Washington, DC 20416.

The meeting will feature speakers from the Census, Business.gov, the Office of Advocacy and 411SmallBusinessFacts.com.

This session of the Small Business Communicators Roundtable comes in the wake of a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Small Business League for the specific names of firms that were coded as small businesses for FY 2005 and FY 2006 and just two weeks after the release of the Small Business Administration's "Top 100 Small Business Government Contractors" report. The report was released with the intention of increasing transparency in federal small business contracting.

However, upon review of the SBA's statistics the American Small Business League raised questions about the validity of the report, asking the SBA to publish their methodology for producing their top 100 small business contractors. Instead, SBA spokesmen went on the defensive.

On Monday, December 3, the SBA's Director for Government Contracting, Arthur Collins, made statements regarding the nature of the SBA's list, which ran in a Federal Times story titled "Critics question SBA's list of top 100 small-business contractors," by Elise Castelli.

"We looked at firms considered small and receiving large chunks of money under federal contracts. It's a different research question from what the private companies have assessed in the past," Collins said.

"Collins' statements are contradictory to the intended purpose of publishing the Top 100 small business contractors, which is to create greater transparency in federal small business contracting," National Director for the ASBL, Adam Melenkivitz, said, adding that the list can be refuted by examining the recently released "Top 50" recipients of federal small business contracts by FEDMINE.US. The list includes billions of dollars in small business contracts awarded to such large firms as: UT Battelle, Bechtel, Hewlett-Packard, Booz Allen Hamilton, Blackwater, and BAE.

Since 2003, there have been more than a dozen federal investigations that have found fraud, abuse, loopholes and a lack of oversight in federal small business contracting.

In Report 5-15, the SBA Office of Inspector General stated, "One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire Federal Government today is that large businesses are receiving small business procurement awards and agencies are receiving credit for these awards."

"The SBA Communicators Small Business Roundtable will provide an excellent opportunity to meet and discuss the lack of availability and obvious discrepancies in the data that really matter to members of the small business community," ASBL Communications Director, Chris Gunn, said. "It is important that statistics regarding the true recipients of federal small business contracts are available to the public as a means of truly creating accountability and transparency in federal small business contracting."

Contact Information: Contact: Christopher Gunn Communications Director American Small Business League (707) 789-9575