Unlike many of President Barack Obama's controversial cabinet picks, the new leader of the U.S. Small Business Administration last week enjoyed unanimous Senate approval, with nary a peep of protest from a single legislator.

Karen Mills -- 55, a venture capitalist, Tootsie Roll heiress and registered Democrat -- has been welcomed by legislators on both sides of the aisle. Also pleased is the National Small Business Association, the oldest small-business advocacy organization in the United States.

But not everyone is cheering.

Perhaps chief among the chagrined is Lloyd Chapman, president of a watchdog group called the American Small Business League, which was an indefatigable critic of the federal agency during the George W. Bush years. Most notably, the league has assailed the SBA for allowing contracts meant for small businesses to be awarded to Fortune 500 companies. League associates say they have successfully sued the SBA three times under the Freedom of Information Act since 2003.

Chapman, who campaigned vigorously for President Obama, told HispanicBusiness.com that he is deeply disappointed in his pick for the SBA's top post.

"I know all you need to know about her," said Chapman, a featured blogger for the Huffington Post. "She sits on the board of directors of a handful of Fortune 1,000 companies. She is about the furthest thing from a small-business person you're going to be able to find."

What's more, he added, Mill's parents -- Melvin and Ellen Gordon, who have run Tootsie Roll Industries since the 1960s -- stated publicly in 2005 that they intend to keep the business in the family.

"Sometime any minute now, she's going to inherit a multi-billion dollar international candy company," he said.

A spokesman for the SBA declined to comment on the speculation that she may eventually take the reins at Tootsie. But the spokesman, Jonathan Swain, said Mills -- who was officially sworn in Monday as the department's administrator -- has plenty of experience working with small businesses.

As an example, Swain cited how Mills once helped secure a $15 million grant from the Department of Labor to provide workforce training and development for the boat-building industry in Maine, where she lives.

"Over the last several weeks, I've gotten to know her," he said. "She's talked very compellingly about being a kid sitting at the dining-room table, hearing her grandfather talk about his own small manufacturing company in New England."

In her professional life, he added, she has worked as an investor and operational manager of small businesses all over the country.

For her part, Mills, speaking at last week's confirmation hearing, said her top priority will be to "unstick" the frozen credit markets.

"The SBA must continue executing the plans in the Recovery Act and get capital flowing again through the core SBA loan programs," she said. She also said many struggling small businesses will soon receive a $35,000 "lifeline" loan with a 100 percent guarantee to banks lending the cash.

On Monday, a spokeswoman from the National Small Business Association rejected the criticism that Mills is a big-business player in a small-business arena.

"It's nice to have someone who really knows what it means to run a small business, but running the Small Business Administration isn't running a small business -- there are thousands of employees," said Molly Brogan, the NSBA's VP of public affairs. "That's not to say a small business owner isn't capable of doing it."

Brogan added that Mills does have experience working with small businesses.

Mills, a resident of Maine, founded MMP Group, a venture capital firm, in 1993, before co-founding Solera Capital, a woman-owned investment company, in 1999.

Her husband, Barry Mills, is president of Bowdoin College.

Mills will take the helm of a compromised SBA department that was hobbled by deep budget cuts under the Bush administration. Meanwhile, recent Congressional investigations by the have shown that the department has failed to detect fraud and abuse.

"The sum of my experience is this: I am a believer in American small business," she said in a statement Friday. "I am a believer in America's ability to manufacture goods and services that are world class, and I am a believer in America's spirit of entrepreneurship. This spirit is one of our country's greatest assets and we need to cultivate it today, more than ever."

Mills received a warm reception from both sides of the aisle, but the most effusive praise came from U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the top Republican on the Senate Small Business Committee, who recommended Mills.

"She is truly ready to assume the reins of the agency responsible for small businesses, America's preeminent job generators that will lead us out of our economic morass," Snowe said in a statement.

Also supportive was committee chairwoman Mary Landrieu, D-La.

"Ms. Mills' background as an entrepreneur and community leader coupled with her vast experience and education put her in the right position to assume the reigns of the SBA," she said in a statement.

However, the welcome from U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY, came with a hint of frost.

"After seeing SBA underfunded and mismanaged for the last eight years, it is fair to say she will certainly have her work cut out for her," she said in a short statement. "Small businesses need an effective SBA now more than ever, and that starts with new leadership. It is my hope that Ms. Mills will bring the necessary fresh thinking and vigor to renew and strengthen this agency, so that it better serves entrepreneurs' needs."

During the years of the Bush administration, the budget of the SBA was slashed in half, from about $1 billion to $500 million, Chapman said. Since then, President Obama has increased the budget to about $700 million, he said.

Most troubling to Chapman is how, during the confirmation hearing, Mills stated that she favors legislation that would allow some small business contracts to be awarded to small businesses owned by venture capitalists.

"Right now, if you look at the Small Business Act, it says small businesses must be independently owned," he said. "If some multi-millionaire venture capitalist owns a large portion of a small business, it's not independently owned anymore."

Source:  http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/news/newsbyid.asp?idx=150624&page=2&cat=&more=

The American Small Business League has been wrestling with the Small Business Administration over small business contracting for a while. In the latest chapter of the struggle, a San Francisco District judge ruled that the names of federal contract recipients should be accessible to the public from the SBA.

Lloyd Chapman, president of the ASBL, calls the ruling a victory. He routinely accuses the SBA of hiding data, figures he believes confirm that contracts awarded to small businesses each year fall far short of the federally-mandated 23 percent benchmark.

"What's noteworthy is that the government fought it at all in the first place," he says, "You'd think it would be pretty benign information."

Eric Benderson, associate general counsel for the SBA, says it's more complicated than that. At the time of the initial request, he explained, the SBA did not have the data that the ASBL requested--specific names of those companies awarded contracts--because that data was housed at the US General Services Administration. Though the SBA did not provide the names of awardees, Benderson says, they directed the ASBL to contact GSA.

Benderson explained that the ASBL pursued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit anyway, against the SBA. When the judge ruled in favor of the ASBL, the SBA decided to pursue an appeal. Benderson says that they felt the decision could set an undesirable precedent: one that would require government agencies to obtain information that is not in their immediate possession or control from other government agencies to provide to those who request it.

The proper allocation of federal business contracts is a problem, says Benderson, but one that the SBA has recognized and is seeking to ameliorate, not hide. "We are the ones who pointed it out, and we are working on it," he says.

The ASBL acknowledged that they did receive a list of recipients of federal small business contracts from the GSA before filing suit, but that they had pursued the lawsuit as a matter of principle because the SBA itself did not provide the information.

Source:  http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2009/04/data.html

If you just came back from a year’s vacation in the Crab Nebula, perhaps you haven't heard of Twitter. It’s a social-messaging service that lets you stay hyperconnected by incessantly sending and receiving micro-updates to and from friends, family -- and complete strangers. So if you just had a "yum-e latte!" you can write a text to that effect on your phone and tell everyone on your Twitter list. This vital information will also be posted on your Twitter webpage, where people can read it and bask in the radiant glow of your happy and successful life. Or hate you. Their choice.

But is Twitter useful for anything?  Till now we thought not, because...well, we really don’t care if someone we don't know (or do know) just enjoyed a latte. We have better things to do. Like "watchin TV" or "bleachin d shower curtain" or "goin 2 d pub. LOL!" Turns out, though, that there are some serious enterprise uses for Twitter and a growing number of entrepreneurs are using it to promote themselves. Check out the Little Biz blog at Search Engine Watch, which has helpful details on the Twitter tools you can use to tell the world about your business. Or your yum-e latte. Wotev.

Facebook for small biz. It’s not hip like Twitter but the SBA just launched its own social-networking service for small businesses. It goes by the clunky name of Business.gov Community. It’s a place where people share information and experiences related to starting and running a business. The technology is more Steelcase than Aeron Chair but there’s plenty to learn if you spend a little time to connect and converse with others in your field.

A not-so-social networker. SBA press office director Mike Stamler is building a reputation as a less-than-social fellow. Rather than befriend members of the press and encourage them to write good things about the SBA, Stamler monitors the news and berates anyone with negative things to say about the SBA. We’ve been on the receiving end a couple times ourselves. (It's not what you’d call constructive criticism.) Now Stamler is going to court with his arch-enemy Lloyd Chapman, president of the American Small Business League and longtime critic of the SBA’s small-business contracting program. Chapman is suing the SBA for withholding records related to its contracting program and for libel, claiming Stamler has mounted a campaign to smear the ASBL in the media. Exhibit A: Stamler’s expletive-laced e-mail to the Long Island Business Journal, which dared to quote the ASBL in a story. The LIBJ wondered if maybe Stamler had too many lattes that morning. But Stamler says he doesn’t drink coffee. Hmmm. He just doesn’t seem like a chai tea kind of guy.

Source:  http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/company-structures/12271264-1.html