A federal judge has just ordered the Small Business Administration to disclose the names of companies that have received small business contracts in 2005 and 2006. This is in response to the lawsuit that was filed by the American Small Business League (ASBL). The SBA has two weeks to comply with her order. The ASBL is the only national organization that is fighting to eliminate the opportunity for large and international companies to obtain federal contracting that is allotted to small businesses in America.
The lawsuit calls for the names of companies who have received federal contracts as well as the dollar amounts of those contracts. They should total $75.1 billion for 2005 and $77.7 billion for 2006 in awarded contacts.
The ASBL is claiming victory, while the SBA seems fairly unfazed. The SBA claims that they have already given this information to the ASBL and they don’t understand why they were sued for the information.
It has already been proven that big businesses have received small business contracts. It will be interesting to see what companies received which contracts. Only time will tell where the money actually went and if the money went to who it was intended to go to. It will be interesting to see if these contracting issues are “simple data entry errors” that the SBA suggests might be the problem.
