Sat, May 06, 2006
Escape Velocity Isn't Fast Enough To Avoid Lawyers...
Lloyd Chapman, President of the
American Small Business League, has filed suit in Federal court
against the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in order to obtain the names of
firms to which NASA has awarded small business contracts. Efforts
by Chapman to obtain the information through the FOIA process were
largely ignored by NASA personnel - no written response was ever
received - however, NASA did acknowledge receipt of the requests by
telephone.
"I believe that NASA is falsifying their small business reports
to Congress and I believe that they are allowing their contractors
to falsify their small business reports. I've also seen evidence
that NASA is protecting large companies that are intentionally
misrepresenting themselves as small in order to illegally receive
small business contracts," stated Chapman.
A 2003 Government Accountability Office investigation found that
NASA contracting officers were reporting contracts to large
businesses as small business awards. Chapman is convinced that this
problem is ongoing: "We are requesting information to determine the
magnitude of this problem and NASA has refused to respond to our
FOIA request, or to our appeal, or to our final notification
letter. My experience has been that anytime an agency has refused
to provide information that is readily available, it's usually
because they are trying to cover something up.
"It's ridiculous that we have to go through Federal court for
simple information like this. NASA has these statistics in a
database and could e-mail them to us in five minutes, yet we've
spent months going back and forth with them. Clearly, there is a
problem with NASA's reporting, and the fact that we have to go to
court is proof of that."
The American Small Business League was formed to promote and
advocate policies that provide the greatest opportunity for small
businesses - the 98 percent of U.S. companies with less than 100
employees. Representing small businesses in all fields and
industries throughout the United States, the ASBL monitors existing
policies and proposed policy changes by the Small Business
Administration and other federal agencies that affect its
members.
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