WASHINGTON - The Government Accountability Office is looking into whether small and minority-owned businesses have been given a fair opportunity to compete for the contracts.

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 one-point-five percent of the one-point-six (b) billion awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency has gone to minority businesses, less than a third of the five percent normally required.

Once Katrina's destructive waters receded, Andrew Jenkins 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.