The U.S. Small Business Administration is being sued for refusing to disclose the names of companies given federal contracts.

The American Small Business League, which brought the action Wednesday U.S. District Court in San Francisco, contends the SBA has violated the Freedom of Information Act by not releasing the names of Fortune 1000 firms that have received “billions of dollars” in federal contracts that should have gone to small businesses in 2005 and 2006.

"In this instance, we have no commeny," a spokesman for the SBA says in an e-mail to CVBT.

Lloyd Chapman, president of Petaluma-based ASBL, says that since 2003 more than a dozen federal investigations revealed that some of the largest corporations in the United States and Europe were the actual recipients of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts.

(Mr. Chapman elaborates on his arguments in a CVBT Audio Interview. Please click on the link below to listen or to download the MP3 audio file to your computer or iPod.)

Under the Freedom of Information Act, ASBL requested the specific names of all firms that were coded by the federal government as small businesses for FY 2005 and FY 2006, but to no avail, Mr. Chapman says.

He says SBA Administrator Steven Preston has not lived up to a promise of support for transparency in federal government.

Within the next 60 days, the ASBL plans to file similar lawsuits against the Pentagon and the General Services Administration, Mr. Chapman says.

Source:  http://www.centralvalleybusinesstimes.com/stories/001/?ID=7778#drilldown

Podcast:  Small Business Administration sued over data nondisclosure