The Business Journal
Kent Hoover Washington Bureau Chief
February 11, 2008
The Small Business Administration should scrap its regulations establishing federal contracting set-asides for women-owned businesses and start over, according to a Senate committee that oversees the agency.
Seven years after Congress told the SBA to set up the program, the agency finally issued proposed regulations for it. The proposal limits the program to only four industries. It also requires agencies to determine whether they have discriminated against women-owned businesses in these industries before they set aside contracts for them.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, said the proposed rule "is beyond inadequate."
"It is an affront to anyone who believes that women ought to have an equal opportunity to sell their goods and services to the federal government," he said.
He called on SBA Administrator Steven Preston "to go back to the drawing board and put forward a realistic, workable rule this Congress can get behind."
The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, said the SBA had an opportunity to "hit a home run" with the women's procurement program, but instead issued "a rule that would have little, if any, measurable benefit."
Kerry accused the SBA of using "the narrowest possible" methodology to determine where women have been underrepresented in federal contracting.
[To read the entire article, go to: http://www.bizjournals.com/extraedge/washingtonbureau/archive/2008/02/11/bureau3.html?market=triad]
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