The federal government awarded a record high $79.6 billion in product and service contracts to small businesses in the 2005 fiscal year, according to a report from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Those contracts represented 25.4 percent of federal prime contract spending for goods and services, which totaled $314 billion that year.

The American Small Business League in Petaluma criticized the report for significantly inflating the statistics. League President Lloyd Chapman has filed a series of lawsuits and freedom of information requests alleging that large companies are being categorized as small businesses and therefore improperly win federal contracts.

The league said General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman are among large corporations that show up on lists of small businesses.

While acknowledging some errors in coding, the SBA says that some companies outgrow the federal definition of a small business or are acquired by a large company after receiving contracts and are allowed to finish the contract period.