Education

Everyone wants to say they support small businesses, from the largest government agencies, which often stifle small businesses with bureaucracy, to large corporations, which often stifle small businesses with monopoly power. In fact, one of the nation’s largest defense contractors testified in an affidavit that small businesses are the “backbone of the American economy.”

But while big governments and corporations love to chat, do they step up when it comes to helping small businesses? Sadly, the answer is usually no.

A good place to start is the US Small Business Administration (SBA). The agency has the sole purpose of supporting small businesses and ensuring government compliance with the Small Business Act. That’s over 23% of the government contracted dollars.

Each year, SBA issues a press release announcing that it has achieved its goal of complying with small business contract and subcontracting obligations. But when asked what criteria it uses to determine whether a business is truly “small,” the company stubbornly refused to answer the question. Even when the American Small Business Federation (ASBL) was sued in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the SBA dug its heels and said it wouldn’t reveal the criteria by which it determines whether a company gets a government contract. The dollar was considered “small” for annual scorecard purposes.

The SBA’s recent battle against small businesses is nothing new to the SBA.

The SBA was the federal agency tasked with managing the hundreds of billions of dollars the government rushed out of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that passed after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020. Other small businesses were his PPP signatures, but it was soon discovered that many large corporations, from restaurant chains to large law firms to the Los Angeles Lakers, were getting his PPP funding. became clear to

For example, San Jose-based AKON, Inc. supplies products to major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Raytheon, DRS Systems, Naval Research Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Indian Air Force and Turkish Navy. We supply. Received two of his PPP loans totaling $679,539. The SBA’s mishandling of PPP funds was so egregious that even the SBA Inspector General found the loan-level PPP data released by the SBA to be “inaccurate and incomplete” and that the SBA was unable to issue a PPP. , blamed the SBA for how it handled PPP. Ample guidance for PPP lenders to prioritize underserved markets in their initial funding rounds.

In fact, the SBA’s image first, substance second bureaucracy is consistently in hot water in the courts.

More than a decade ago, after refusing to provide the American Small Business Federation (ASBL) with a list of small businesses to be included in its annual “scorecard,” Northern California Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said the SBA would: It claims it didn’t have the exact records necessary to fulfill its mission. Then, at first, he refused to disclose the names of the companies that received the PPP loans and the loan amounts, and finally after a District of Columbia judge ruled against the company in his FOIA lawsuit in 2020. threw a towel at The news outlet reported that under the leadership of a former Pentagon lobbyist who has since left the Pentagon, ASBL attempted to charge an exorbitant “search and review” fee of over $10,000, which was settled in ASBL’s favour. filed a federal lawsuit.

“We need to change the name of the Small Business Administration to the Large Business Administration,” said ASBL President Lloyd Chapman.

Do political affiliations, or parties in power, play a role in all of this? Apparently not.

The government’s rush to inject hundreds of billions of dollars in PPP funding in 2020 was approved by the Democratic House of Representatives, the Republican Senate, and Republican President Donald Trump. But the SBA’s actions haven’t changed while a united democracy rules Washington. President Joe Biden has appointed a new SBA administrator who may have hoped to take the side of the small business underdog, but from that behavior during the Biden administration, the SBA has the same old bureaucratic limp. It is an institution, offering words but not deeds. To support small and medium enterprises. It doesn’t have to be, and it shouldn’t be.

Karl Olson is a San Francisco attorney who specializes in obtaining access to government records through the California Public Records Act and the Federal Freedom of Information Act. He is representing the American Small Business League and in another lawsuit he is representing San José Spotlight.