SBA Spokesman Continues to Mislead the Media

Petaluma, Calif. – The following is a statement by the American Small Business League:

For the past decade, Small Business Administration (SBA) spokesman Mike Stamler has led a coordinated campaign to mislead the public and media about the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.

On June 24, the SBA released its fiscal year (FY) 2010 small business scorecard and goaling report, claiming that small businesses received just under $98 billion in federal contracts, or 22.7 percent of total spending. An analysis of the FY 2010 contracting data by the American Small Business League (ASBL) found that 61 of the top 100 small business contract recipients were actually large companies that received more than $8.8 billion in contracts counted towards the congressionally mandated 23 percent goal. (http://www.asbl.com/documents/asbl_2010_dataanalysis.pdf)

In response to the analysis by the ASBL, Mr. Stamler defended the SBA’s numbers claiming that, “Every federal agency certified that the data is correct.” (http://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=1857)

For years, the SBA and Mr. Stamler have used the excuse of “miscoding” to explain why some of the largest firms in the U.S. and Europe receive billions of dollars a month in contracts intended for small businesses. Last year, Mr. Stamler claimed that large companies receive small business contracts, “because of simple human error,” and “miscoding.” In a May 2007 press release, the SBA even claimed the rampant abuses were simply a “myth.”
(http://www.asbl.com/documents/sbamythvfact.pdf)

In 2008, after quoting ASBL President Lloyd Chapman in a story, the Long Island Business Journal (LIBJ) received a series of aggressive correspondence from Stamler, which was so profane in nature that editors of the paper responded by publishing a blog entitled, “Expletives the SBA's Forte.”
(http://libizblog.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/expletives-the-sbas-forte/)

Mr. Stamler’s remarks stand in stark contrast to a series of federal investigations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the SBA Office of Advocacy, and the SBA’s Inspector General (SBA IG) that have found widespread fraud and abuse in virtually every program managed by the SBA. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html)

In Report 5-15, the SBA IG referred to the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants as, “One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today.” For the last six consecutive years, the SBA IG has reported these rampant abuses as the top management challenge facing the SBA. (http://www.asbl.com/documents/05-15.pdf)

An SBA IG investigation from March 2010 found that the SBA itself awarded federal small business contracts to large businesses during fiscal years 2008 and 2009. (http://www.sba.gov/idc/groups/public/documents/sba_homepage/oig_report_10-08.pdf)

“There is no way Stamler and the SBA can explain over a trillion dollars in small business contracts going to large firms over the past decade as an accident or simply a miscoding error,” Lloyd Chapman said. “That is statistically impossible.”