Even as Hector V. Barreto prepares to step down as the chief of the Small Business Administration, his most persistent critic continues to take shots at him.

Mr. Barreto "is a liar," said Lloyd Chapman, who runs the American Small Business League of Petaluma, Calif., criticizing the S.B.A.'s announcement that small businesses were awarded $79.6 billion in federal contracts in fiscal 2005.

Instead, billions of contracting dollars that Congress set aside for small businesses went to giant corporations such as Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Titan, Mr. Chapman said, arguing that the absence of a list of companies proved his point.

In response, the S.B.A. conceded that some money may have gone to corporations in cases where they bought small businesses with existing government contracts. The problem, which the Government Accountability Office examined in 2003, is that federal regulations allow a company to be considered a small business for the life of a contract – and that can be as long as 20 years.

So does Mr. Chapman expect that things will be better under Mr. Barreto's successor, Steven C. Preston, who hails from the very large ServiceMaster company?