SBA holds forum on size standards
By Daniel R. Brown
Of the St. Louis American
Turnout was low last Thursday at a hearing held by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) at St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley to get input from small business owners on how to improve the agency’s size standards regulations, which are used to define the size of small businesses. The hearing is one of 11 being conducted throughout the nation.
“I am very disappointed that we didn’t have more minority business owners show up for this hearing,” said Maureen Brinkley, the assistant district director for government contracts and business diversity at the SBA.
“This was a real opportunity to go on record on the federal register. We need better representation at events like this in order for our voices to be heard.”
The hearings come after several studies found that many small business contracts are being performed by large businesses. This is often the result of small businesses merging with larger organizations.
Under the SBA’s current policy, when a small business believes that a large business is getting a contract intended for a small business, it must file a protest with the contracting officer. Historically, however, not many cases of fraud have been pursued because of the difficulty in proving that the fraud was intentional. With new size standards, the SBA hopes to rectify problems of this sort in the future.
Despite the poor turnout, several local African-American business owners and advocates did testify before the SBA committee.
One such business owner, Ivan James of United Technology Systems, testified that that the SBA should adopt a system that allows like-sized small businesses to compete against each other.
“Recognizing the importance of this issue, I thought that it would be wise to get over here and give my views,” James said.
“I have an envelope manufacturing company with 200 employees. However, I am competing against companies that have 500 employees. The SBA needs to have different size categories so small businesses have the ability to carve out opportunities.”
Ericca Willis, a minority business advocate and the director of minority business development for the City of St. Louis, also testified that the SBA should adopt a tiered system that allows for fairer competition.
“I am here to suggest a tiered system where, for example, if the size standards are raised to $1 million, then the $5 million companies are not competing with the companies that have revenues of $300,000 to $500,000,” Willis said.
“In a tiered system, you could bid up but no one could bid down. It would help to level the playing field when it comes to federal procurement opportunities for minority-owned businesses.”
Willis argued that the size standards in question affect minority business owners in particular.
“Whatever decision they make is going to drastically impact the minority business community, first and foremost, before it reaches any other community,” Willis said.
“Typically, all decisions affect minority business owners because minority business owners often start their businesses in the red. Additionally, because they are often undercapitalized and underserved, anything else that happens tends to throw them further under the rug instead of leveling the playing field.”
