She also has to deal with uncertainty about how much the SBA will be able to help those companies. A small-business aid bill stalled this summer in the Senate, and a final vote won't come until Congress reconvenes in two weeks.

"We have many problems to solve," says Mills, 56.

Reporter Laura Petrecca spoke with Mills about small-business lending, her plans to reinvigorate the SBA and what it's like to be the daughter of the folks who control the Tootsie Roll candy-making empire. Following are excerpts, edited for clarity and length.

Q: Why is small-business expansion such a big deal?

A: Small businesses are really the

engine in the economy. (They produce about) 65% of net job growth. Half of the people who work in this country own or work for a small business. Right now, the government's role is to give them more support, more momentum, because government isn't going to create the jobs; small business is going to create the jobs.

Q: What are the most pressing issues facing small-business owners?

A: They worry about making sure that they are going to have a stable access to capital. They are saying, "I need capital to take that next order." They look at their business plans, and they want to make sure that they are prepared to move forward.

Q: What are the agency's top priorities?

A: We call it the three C's — capital is one of them. The second one is counseling. Small businesses, you can give them capital, but what they often need as much is mentoring, advice and help with their business plan. We actually have (about) 900 Small Business Development Centers around the country. They're getting the small-business owner to rethink their business plan to meet these economic times. They're getting them to a community bank and access to capital that might help them. The third C is contracting. At the SBA, we're responsible for making sure that 23% of all government contracts go to small business. Our job is to provide access and opportunity.

Q: After months of debate, Congress still hasn't voted on the latest small-business aid bill, which is designed to spur lending and reduce loan fees. How is this affecting small businesses?

A: We had a very, very successful Recovery Act loan program. We were able to step in and provide a lot of access to capital when credit markets froze in 2008. (But) we ran out of money, and the supplement to that program is in this small-business jobs package.

The Recovery Act provisions ran out (at the end of May). We were still offering our regular loan packages, but our (lending) volume dropped 60% in (June).

Q: The SBA has taken a lot of heat for giving big business too many of the contracts designated for smaller firms. Has that been a challenge for you?

A: We came in and really took that on as a key objective. We are not going to be the agency where large businesses can masquerade as a small business and get a contract. We are closing down on fraud, waste and abuse. We have a three-pronged effort. Upfront, we're making sure that those who are supposed to be certified in the program are small businesses — that they are who they are supposed to be. In the middle, we are checking on them. We do thousands of site visits and audits. The third thing is that we're going after the bad actors, and we're seeing results.

Q: In 2007,your agency was at the bottom in the list of 30 federal agencies reviewed in American University's Best Places to Work study, but moved up to 26 in 2009. What have you done to improve morale?

A: This is a big priority for us. We are investing in our people and our information technology. I travel all around the country, and every place I go, I go see our district offices and our people we have out there. We have a full team that is working on what we call becoming a high-performance agency, breaking down silos, having strong communications and training. We are looking at training people to help them grow and have the tools they need to do their job. We're a small agency with a big mission, and the mission is more and more important. We need to invest in our people.

Q: Your previous job was president of private-equity investor and adviser firm MMP Group. What are the main differences in working there and this government job?

A: Some of the things are the same and some of the things are different. What is the same is that most of my work life — at least the last 30 years — I've been involved in growing small businesses. I've owned and invested in small businesses (from companies that make plastic injection molding to wood flooring), so that's my base. What's different is instead of doing it one by one, we have the opportunity to help tens of thousands of small businesses. That is extraordinarily exciting and rewarding.

Q: As someone who invested in businesses, you had to evaluate a company's potential for success. What makes a business owner stand out?

A: With the successful ones, you can almost feel it when you're in a room with them. These are people who both have a vision and are thoughtful about their plan. They know where to reach out for help. They are visionary, inspired, passionate and pragmatic. The successful ones tend to build on their success. They'll get counseling help; they'll reach out for exporting help. They'll be looking ahead to the next piece of the process, but they'll have a plan. It's not enough to just have the vision. You have to have tools and the support.

Q: You come from a business-focused family. Your grandfather's candy shop evolved into confections giant Tootsie Roll, where your mother and father are still top executives. Did that have any influence on you?

A: My family was in two businesses — they were in the textile business, and they were in the candy business. The conversations around the dinner table were all about the factory floor and how many machines were running and what was happening in the business. I grew up very engaged in manufacturing and as part of a family business. That certainly is part of the passion that I have for (business). My grandfather came to this country and started that business, and he was very important in telling me how to build a business. As he said, "This is what our family does — we build businesses." It's very much part of my DNA.

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/2010-08-30-smallbizqa30_ST_N.htm?POE=click-refer

Small businesses won a record $96.8 billion in federal prime contracts in fiscal 2009, according to the Small Business Administration, but the total still falls short of the statutory 23 percent target.

Governmentwide, small businesses won 21.89 percent of contracts, an increase over the 21.5 percent reported for fiscal 2008, according to SBA's fourth annual procurement scorecard released Friday.

"This represents real progress, but not enough," SBA Administrator Karen Mills said in a news release. "We must reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that the 23 percent goal is met and exceeded."

The scorecard also shows that, as a group, federal agencies advanced slightly toward goals in subcategories such as contracts awarded to small businesses owned by women and service-disabled veterans.

Under a new grading system, SBA awarded the overall federal government a B. The rankings of 24 individual agencies varied widely.

For example, the Energy, Agriculture and Veterans Affairs department and SBA all received an "A." The General Services Administration's performance rated it only a "C," while the Office of Personnel Management, Agency for International Development and the National Science Foundation were marked "F."

In comments accompanying the scorecard, poorly ranked agencies offered various explanations. GSA officials noted that its goal was 35.7 percent, considerably higher than the benchmark for the entire federal government. Twenty-seven percent of GSA contracts went to small businesses. USAID acknowledged that only 8.7 percent of its contract dollars went to small businesses, but attributed the outcome mostly to drug purchases required under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

The SBA figures were also challenged by the American Small Business League, a California-based organization that has previously accused the government of misrepresentation. After sampling the top 100 recipients of federal small business contracts in fiscal 2009, the league concluded that some 65 percent of the money went to large companies that in some cases were members of the Fortune 500, according to an analysis released in June. Based on that sample, the proportion of contract dollars going to small business is closer to 5 percent, the league said in a Monday news release.

"It's time to stop the diversion of federal small business contracts to large corporations," spokesman Christopher Gunn said in a phone interview.

Source: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100830/ACQUISITION03/8300304/

U.S. small businesses received a record $96.8 billion in federal prime contracts in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2009, or 21.89 percent of federal contracts — falling short of the government’s goal to award 23 percent of its contracts to small business, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The $3.6 billion increase for small business in 2009 “represents real progress, but not enough — we must reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that the 23 percent goal is met and exceeded,” said Karen Mills, SBA administrator. The percentage was up slightly from 21.5 percent in fiscal 2008.

The SBA also released its annual scorecard of how well individual federal agencies did toward meeting their small-business contracting goals. The federal government got a grade of B overall; on an individual basis, several agencies outdid others: Department of Defense, B; Energy, A; NASA, C; Interior, A; Justice, D; and the General Services Administration, C. The grade of A was awarded to Transportation, Agriculture, EPA, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security, SBA and Veterans Affairs. The following agencies got a B: Treasury, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, State, and the Social Security Administration.

“The good news is that the percentage and the dollars went up,” said Jim Kocsi, SBA district director for New Jersey. He said  publicizing the scores of agencies “has shined a light a little more on individual agencies and gives them a bit more of a stimulus to do better — and Congress is watching this, too.”

Kocsi said total contract spending by federal agencies was $442.2 billion in fiscal 2009. Figures were not broken out by state.

Dolcey Chaplin, who heads the Procurement Technical Assistance Center at New Jersey Institute of Technology, in Newark, said there is a trend for the federal government to do more work in-house, which she said reduces the contract opportunities for small business to provide. In the 2009 fiscal year, she said the PTAC, which helps businesses statewide land government contracts, advised about 1,000 New Jersey businesses that received about $200 million in contracts.

From her dealings with the federal government, Chaplin said, “they really want to make their small-business contract goals, and they work very hard at it.” She said the government’s 21.89 percent of small-business contracting “is very good in this environment.”

Lidija Erazo, small-business specialist for the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurt, said the base “buys anything and everything: construction, engineering, design, uniforms, products — everything we need to do our jobs.” She said the base is required to purchase from small businesses, and she encouraged small businesses to get into the online procurement system, at www.fbo.gov, to find opportunities to sell to the government.

The American Small Business League said its analysis shows the federal government continues to incorrectly identify large businesses as small-business contractors, thus inflating the small-business numbers.

“Every year, billions of dollars in federal contracts are diverted to Fortune 500 corporations and other large businesses,” said ASBL President Lloyd Chapman,

The government has said the miscoding of contracts is a significant problem that it is addressing.

E-mail Beth Fitzgerald at bfitzgerald@njbiz.com

Source:  http://www.njbiz.com/other-news/83402-sba-says-federal-agencies-fell-short-of-small-business-lending-goal