Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Small business advocate wins $475,000 in legal fees after 4-year fight with federal government

By

After four years and expenses of more than $700,000, a California-based small business advocate on Thursday won an agreement from the Justice and Defense departments to pay his legal fees for litigation forcing the government to release confidential contracting data.

Lloyd Chapman, the outspoken founder of the Petaluma-based American Small Business League, declared victory in what he called an “historic” move by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to require the government to pay Chapman $475,000.

Neither Justice nor the Pentagon would comment on the case to Government Executive, but Chapman’s award was confirmed by his Washington attorney, Jon Cuneo of Cuneo, Gilbert & Laduca.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/contracting/2018/08/small-business-advocate-wins-475k-legal-fees-after-4-year-fight-government/150280/

Small business activist wins interim victory against Pentagon, Sikorsky

By

For four years, the small but vocal American Small Business League has argued that large federal contractors mislead agencies and the public by overstating their use of small businesses as subcontractors to meet statutory goals.

In U.S. District Court in San Francisco last Friday, attorneys for the advocacy group led by Lloyd Chapman and based in Petaluma, Calif., successfully pried out the previously non-public names of suppliers and other subcontractors used by Sikorsky Aircraft Corp.

The helicopter maker had joined with the Defense and Justice departments in seeking to withhold such information as proprietary when submitted to the Pentagon under its 27-year-old Comprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program, designed to measure corporate potential for increasing small business opportunities in subcontracting.

Small business booster Chapman has long challenged the Pentagon’s program as nonproductive and oriented mostly toward obfuscating the degree to which large contractors win defense business intended for smaller ones.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/11/small-business-activist-wins-interim-victory-against-pentagon-sikorsky/142611 

Accuracy of federal small business contracting data challenged

By

Published on Forbes.com on June 5th, an article entitled, “Trump Administration Fails At Creating Jobs By Missing Small Business Contract Targets,” contends that the Small Business Administration (SBA) significantly inflates government small business data by including billions in federal contracts to Fortune 500 firms in the volume of contracts the SBA claimed were awarded to small businesses.

The author of the article, Professor Charles Tiefer, is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading experts on government contracting, federal contracting law and legislation. He is a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.  Professor Tiefer has written several legal opinions that challenge the accuracy of small business contracting data released by the SBA.

The SBA released their report for fiscal year 2016 claiming small businesses received $99.96 billion in federal contracts and 24.34 percent of all federal contracts in 2016.

In his article, Professor Tiefer states, “Of the $99.96 billion the SBA claimed went to small businesses, it appears no more than 50% of that number went to firms that currently legally qualify as small businesses. In reality, legitimate small businesses may well have received no more than $50 billion in federal contracts and subcontracts in FY 2016. That would come out to just mid-single digit percentages of the full level of federal acquisitions for FY 2016, a far cry from the 24.34 percent claimed by the SBA.”

Tiefer also accuses the SBA of excluding the majority of federal acquisitions from their calculations in claiming small businesses received 24.34 percent of all federal contracts. He states, “First, the SBA is counting federal acquisitions for FY 2016 at around $410 billion. That is an artificial and unconvincing low figure. I have written in the past that the actual figure is more than double that.”

Professor Tiefer served as solicitor and deputy general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives for 11 years. He also served as Commissioner on the Congressionally chartered, federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2008-2011.

Source: http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/388077084/professor-charles-tiefer-challenges-accuracy-of-government-small-business-data

Small business group renews suit challenging SBA’s goal claims

By

ASBLThe small but vocal American Small Business League this week continued its long-standing challenge to the Small Business Administration’s claims that agencies are meeting their statutory goals in awarding contracts to qualified small businesses.

In an appeal filed in the Ninth Circuit Court in San Francisco, the group’s attorney’s challenged a May ruling in the case naming SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet and seeking “injunctive and other appropriate relief” to prevent the SBA from “continuing to misrepresent the attainment of small business contracting goals to Congress and the American public.”

The league has long charged that definitions used by the SBA have allowed many large Fortune 500 companies through subsidiaries to win contracts intended as set-asides for qualified small firms.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2016/11/small-business-group-renews-suit-challenging-sbas-goal-claims/133290/

SBA fights back on contracting goals lawsuit

By

SBA logo smallThe Small Business Administration (SBA) is asking a judge to throw out a lawsuit claiming it uses “creative accounting” for federal contracting benchmarks.

SBA filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in May by the American Small Business League, related to the agency’s annual goaling report.

ASBL“SBA’s requirement to publish agency remediation plans stems directly from the Small Business Act,” SBA counsel stated in court documents. “Though the implementation of this requirement is tied to the outcomes published in the goaling reports, it is the statute — not the reports — which binds SBA to act. Moreover, the alleged legal consequences for [ASBL] are speculative and result not from SBA’s actions but from individual contracting decisions across multiple federal agencies.”

ASBL in a statement called the motion a dodging of fraudulent policies.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/contractsawards/2016/08/sba-fights-back-contracting-goals-lawsuit/

Read ASBL’s response to SBA’s motion at: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sba-denies-responsibility-for-fraudulent-policies-in-federal-injunction-case-asbl-reports-300308268.html 

Group sues SBA, says government ‘defrauded small businesses’

By

ASBL Injunction Against SBA - May 2016Just a week after the Small Business Administration celebrated record-breaking contract awards to small business owners eligible for government set-asides, a longtime critic filed suit in federal court for an injunction to force SBA to halt some of the practices used in measuring its success.

The Petaluma, Calif.-based American Small Business League, in an injunction addressed to Administrator Marie Contreras-Sweet filed in Federal District Court in San Francisco, argued that the SBA’s “illegal policies” have “defrauded small businesses and small businesses owned by women, minorities and disabled veterans out of hundreds of billions of dollars in government contracts.”

ASBLIt quotes the Small Business Act’s language noting that “the governmentwide goal for participation by small business concerns shall be established at not less than 23 percent of the total value of all prime contract awards for each fiscal year.” And within that category, the goal states 5 percent for women-owned small businesses, 5 percent for minority-owned firms, and 3 percent for disabled veterans.

But the SBA, the group’s argument goes, “has created a policy they call the ‘exclusionary rule’ and ‘small business eligible dollars’ that uses a significantly lower federal acquisition budget number to calculate the percentage of contracts awarded to all categories of small businesses.”

SBA logo smallKeep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/05/group-sues-sba-says-government-defrauded-small-businesses/128084

See copy of complaint for injunctive relief here: http://www.asbl.com/documents/Filed_Complaint_For_Injunctive_Relief.pdf

Fortune 500 firms continue to receive billions in federal small business contracts

By

ASBLThe American Small Business League (ASBL) has released their annual analysis of federal contracting data for fiscal year 2015, and it shows that Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses received billions of dollars of federal contracts meant for small businesses.

Specifically, ASBL found that 151 Fortune 500 firms landed government small business contracts in 2015.  ASBL’s research is based on publicly-available data pulled from from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS).

This year marks the sixteenth consecutive year of documentation that federal small business contracts have been diverted to corporate giants.

In the past year, Verizon received over $108 million in small business contracts through their subsidiary Terremark. Some of the other firms that received small business contracts last year include: Apple, Microsoft, General Electric, Home Depot, AT&T, UPS, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Pepsi, Boeing, Oracle, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Anthem and John Deere.

GAO-GovernmentAccountabilityOffice-SealThe Government Accountability Office (GAO) released their first investigation into corruption and fraud in federal small business contracting programs in 2003. The GAO uncovered over 5,300 large businesses had been the actual recipients of billions in US Government small business contracts.

SBA sealAs far back as 2005, the SBA’s Office of Inspector General described the diversion of small business contracts going to corporate giants as, “One of the most important challenges  facing the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the entire federal government today” (OIG Report 5-15).

In 2014, Public Citizen released their investigation into fraud in government small business programs titled “Slighted.” They accused the federal government of using accounting tricks to “create false impression that small businesses are getting their share of federal procurement money.”

The House Small Business Committee recently unanimously passed H.R. 4329 titled, “Transparency in Small Business Goaling Act of 2016.” That bill was supposed to modernize the Small Business Act, but it contained no provision to halt the flow of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses.

The ASBL’s research indicates middle-class small businesses are being shortchanged out of up to $200 billion a year. This is a result of the SBA’s exclusions of the majority of federal contracts from their calculations and the inclusion of billions in contracts to large businesses.

Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fortune-500-firms-receiving-billions-in-federal-small-business-contracts-300217843.html

 

Contracting News

Read More

Contracting Tips

Read More

GTPAC News

Read More

Georgia Tech News

Read More