WASHINGTON - Minority-owned businesses say they're paying the price for the decision by Congress and the Bush administration to waive certain rules for Hurricane Katrina recovery contracts.

About 1.5 percent of the $1.6 billion awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency has gone to minority businesses, less than a third of the 5 percent normally required.

On Tuesday, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, and Rep. Donald A. Manzullo, R-Ill., asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether small and minority-owned businesses have been given a fair opportunity to compete for Katrina contracts.

Andrew Jenkins doesn't think so.

Once Katrina's destructive waters receded, he began making calls in hopes of winning a government contract for his Mississippi construction company.

Jenkins, who is black, says he watched in frustration as the contracts went to others, many of them larger, white-owned companies with political ties to Washington.

''That just doesn't smell right,'' said Jenkins, president of AJA Management and Technical Services of Jackson, Miss., noting the region has a higher percentage of blacks and minority-owned businesses than other areas of the country.

To speed aid, many requirements normally attached to government contracting were waived by Congress and the administration. The result has been far more no-bid contracts going to businesses that have an existing relationship with the government.

There also was an easing of affirmative action rules for contractors and a suspension of a ''prevailing wage'' law .

''It sends a bad message,'' said Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. 'What they're basically saying to the minority in New Orleans is, `We'll make it harder for you to find a job. And if you do, we'll make sure you get paid less.' ''

The Department of Homeland Security, whose FEMA division handles most of the contracts, said it is committed to hiring smaller, disadvantaged firms. But many of the no-bid awards were given out to known players who could quickly provide help in an emergency situation, spokesman Larry Orluskie said.

''It was about saving lives, protecting property and going to who you go to, to get what you need,'' he said.

At a recent meeting in Mississippi for minority business people with federal contracting officials, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said many of the 100 owners walked out in anger when told their best chance of getting work was to seek smaller subcontracts from the larger companies.

The larger companies include Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., which Vice President Dick Cheney headed from 1995 to 2000; and AshBritt, a Pompano Beach company with ties to Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.