Asmall-business group will go to trial in December against the Defense Dept. totry to reveal more information about the workings of the DOD's longstandingComprehensive Subcontracting Plan Test Program. The American Small BusinessLeague, headed by Lloyd Chapman, has been criticizing the program for severalyears because Chapman contends it has not performed well and has reducedopportunities for small businesses. Chapman said he has been unable to reviewcrucial documents from the program because of various Freedom of InformationAct exemptions that have been applied by DOD officials. He hopes that thetestimony and documents to be revealed in court will provide sufficientevidence to prove that the program is negatively affecting small businesses,and that problems with the program have been ignored or covered up over theyears. "I'm confident that we will uncover evidence that would force thePentagon and Congress to dismantle the Pentagon's Comprehensive SubcontractingPlan Test Program," Chapman told Set-Aside Alert in an emailedstatement. Congress set up the DOD subcontracting program in 1989. While thevalue of the program has been challenged by Chapman and others, Congress lastyear renewed it for another 10 years. The program allows large DOD contractorsto develop small business subcontracting plans on a corporate, division orplant-wide basis, rather than developing a subcontracting plan for eachcontract. The goal was to determine whether the comprehensive test plan wouldprovide greater opportunity for small businesses. Chapman said the DOD's use ofFOIA exemptions to withhold information on the program has made it verydifficult to evaluate if the program is meeting small business goals. Chapmansued Sikorsky Aircraft and the DOD to gain release of Sikorsky's small businesssubcontracting plan. He won the case in court in 2014 but Sikorsky and DODsuccessfully appealed, and the case was sent back to the lower court. In thelatest development, a California judge approved an agreement between the leagueand DOD to go to trial to examine whether or not a specific FOIA exemptionapplies to information that Sikorsky and DOD withheld on Sikorsky's smallbusiness subcontracting plan. U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California ordered thatthe trial would include as many as 10 depositions from DOD on the program. Aspokesman for Sikorsky told GovExec that at this timeSikorsky is no longer a party to the litigation. A DOD spokesman declined to comment,citing a policy of avoiding commenting on pending litigation.

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