Small government contractors lost an important ally last week–and many of us lost a great friend.
Becky Peterson, the longtime Interim Executive Director of the Association of Procurement Technical Centers, passed away on Thursday. Her legacy lives on in the amazing network of PTACs across the country.
Greetings from Omaha, where I’ve just wrapped up a great half-day training session sponsored by the Nebraska PTAC. If you haven’t been to Omaha, you’re missing out: I’m enjoying exploring the Old Market District, and keep wondering when I’ll run into Warren Buffett.
Of course, I’m not about to let a little road trip get in the way of our weekly roundup of government contracts news. In this edition of the SmallGovCon Week In Review, we have an update on an SDVOSB fraud case that we have been following for awhile, a push to close loopholes in the Buy American Act, some promising changes for the SBA Surety Bond Guarantee program, and more.
Editor’s note: For more information, check out our updated post on SBA’s Mentor-Protégé Program.
In late 2016, the SBA rolled out a fantastic tool to help small business grow in the marketplace.
Here are five things you should know about the SBA All Small Mentor-Protégé Program:
Although a lease may be a “contract” in common parlance, does a lease qualify as a contract under the Contract Disputes Act?
The answer is important, because the Contract Disputes Act provides jurisdiction for the Court of Federal Claims and Board of Contract Appeals to decide challenges to contracting officers’ final decisions. If a lease isn’t a contract under the Contract Disputes Act, government lessors could be in a bind.
The United States Court of Federal Claims recently decided the issue–and came down on the side of lessors, at least under the facts at hand.
Provisions in a company’s Shareholders Agreement, requiring the service-disabled veteran to sell his shares back to the company in the event of the veteran’s death or incapacity, were contrary to the SBA’s SDVOSB regulations.
According to a recent SBA Office of Hearings and Appeals decision, these provisions prevented the veteran from having unconditional ownership over the company, because he could not dispose of his shares as he chose. In reaching its conclusion, SBA OHA wrote that Court of Federal Claims decisions allowing such provisions under the VA’s SDVOSB program didn’t apply to SBA–meaning that SDVOSBs verified by the VA might be ineligible for non-VA SDVOSB contracts.
What a mess.
An agency isn’t required to cancel a small business set-aside solicitation if the agency learns that one of the small businesses upon whom the set-aside decision rested is no longer small.
In a recent bid protest decision, the GAO confirmed that an agency need not redo its “rule of two” determination when a potential small business competitor outgrows its size standard–even if it could effectively convert a particular solicitation into a “rule of one.”
As we get closer to the end of the fiscal year, things can get a little crazy in the world of government contracts. This week is no exception, with plenty of news and commentary in our SmallGovCon Week In Review.
In this mid-September edition, court documents reveal a bribery scheme centered on a former VA OSDBU official, the GSA has relaxed certain contracting rules to speed efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Harvey, the OFPP is planning a third in its series of highly-regarded “mythbusters” memos, and much more.