Petaluma, Calif.- The Small Business Administration has yet to release its latest statistics on the specific volume of federal contracts awarded to small businesses in 2006. The SBA has had the information for several months. Federal law requires a minimum of 23 percent of the total value of all federal contracts and subcontracts be awarded to small businesses.

 

SBA critics believe the SBA is stalling the release of the current statistics until the dust settles from a series of embarrassing investigative stories by ABC, CBS and CNN on the actual recipients of Federal small business contracts. All three investigations found the SBA had significantly inflated the statistics by including billions of dollars in contracts to corporate giants like Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, Rolls Royce, Wal-Mart and L3 Communications.

 

SBA Administrator Steven Preston is attempting to implement a policy that will allow the SBA to continue to report federal contracts to Fortune 500 firms as small business contracts until the year 2012. Some small business advocates believe the SBA may also be withholding the release of the latest statistics to avoid more controversy and attention on the issue until the policy goes into effect on June 30th.

 

In March Eagle Eye Publishers, a Virginia firm that analyzes federal contracting data, released its latest report on 2006 federal contracting data. They found the federal government had missed the congressionally mandated 23 percent small business goal for the seventh consecutive year. A 2005 report by Eagle Eye Publishers, found the top recipient of federal small business contracts for that year was L3 Communications, a Fortune 500 defense contractor that received over $650,000 million in federal small business contracts.

 

 Last year, Preston refused requests from small business groups and the media to release the specific names of firms the SBA had included in their 2005 small business contracting statistics.

 

 Small business supporters predict that when the SBA finally releases the latest federal small business contracting statistics it will again be dramatically inflated by including billions of dollars to Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries.

 

 Investigations into the actual firms that have received federal small business contracts by the American Small Business League found that approximately $65 billion a year in federal government small business contracts actually wind up in the hands of the top two percent of large firms in the United States.

 

To date, no legislation has been passed by congress to stem the flow of government small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms.

 

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