BY GREG WILES — Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye wants his fellow Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka to hold hearings on Small Business Administration rules that give Native American groups in Alaska and Hawaii contracting preferences.
Inouye formally made the request in a letter to Akaka, who took over as chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs last week. Hawaii’s senior U.S. senator wants the committee to review the importance of contracts given the Alaska Native Corporations, Native Hawaiian Organizations and tribal entities after a series of negative articles about the Alaska contracts in the Washington Post.
“The purposed of the hearing is to allow the SBA, ANCS, NHOs, Indian tribes, shareholders and other stakeholders the opportunity to demonstrate the importance and legitimacy of the program to Native communities in fulfilling self-determination and self-sufficiency,” said the letter written by Inouye and Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and obtained by the Artic Sounder, an Anchorage newspaper.
Alaska Native Corporations have come under media and Congressional scrutiny, including a series of critical articles published by the Washington Post. They said the exemptions allowed the corporations to obtain $29 billion in federal contracts over the past decade but that native shareholders had gotten relatively little of the contracting windfall despite the program being set up to improve lives of struggling indigenous people.
More recently the Hawaii Reporter published a piece noting a handful of Native Hawaiian-owned companies used federal contracting preferences authored by Inouye to land some $500 million in non-bid or reduced competition government work since 2005.
Missouri U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill has been critical of the Alaska Native Corp. contracts and last month submitted S226, a bill that would eliminate some of the special preferences and rules for the Alaska groups. Native Hawaiian contractors are concerned that legislative changes could endanger the benefits now enjoyed by Native-Hawaiian owned firms.
As noted by the Hawaii Reporter previously, minority-owned small businesses qualify for special federal contracting “set-asides” under what is called the “8(a)” program operated by the U.S Small Business Administration. But the extra benefits written into procurement laws and regulations for native-owned businesses have earned them the designation “Super 8as.”
The Super 8a program allows for-profit subsidiaries of non-profit NHO’s to receive non-bid federal contracts and requires that profits be forwarded to the non-profit parents.
The contracting preferences are meant to bring economic growth and employment opportunities to impoverished Hawaiian, Native Alaskan and Native American communities. But measuring the effectiveness of the system is difficult, admit some government officials in charge of oversight.
Inouye’s and Begich’s letter contends critics have been wrong.
“The perception created by the Washington Post series is misleading and deceptive,” the letter said.
The senators said such a hearing would allow the SBA to discuss actions taken to increase transparency and oversight of the Alaska Native Corporations and whether any other changes are needed to ensure Native communities and shareholders benefit from the program.
Greg Wiles is a state house news reporter for Hawaii Reporter
Hello,
I am interested in finding out the contact information for some of the Native American/Alaskan Indian tribes in Hawaii. I am responsible for an observance for Native American Indian Heritage Month this year. Thank you so much for your assistance.
Sergeant First Class Johnson, Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
Hop over to Hawaii Reporter for their resources.