Page 24 - Desert Oracle Nov 2018

WASHINGTON UPDATE

October 18, 2018 Volume 24, Number 10
current highway bill, the FAST Act. This bill would allow SDVOSBs to receive contracting
priorities for transportation funding under the FAST Act.

In 1999, Congress passed the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development
Act. This bill established a government-wide contracting goal for businesses owned by veterans
with service-connected disabilities. Under the FAST Act, federal dollars are distributed to the
states in order to fund roads and bridges but many of these states do not have the same
contracting goals as the federal government. Congress set a goal that 10 percent of dollars
allocated for infrastructure projects should be extended to certain small businesses known as
Disadvantaged Business Enterprises, or DBEs. While this program has been in existence for
decades, it does not take into account the needs of small businesses run by service-connected
disabled veterans in awarding infrastructure contracts.

Because of this, many SDVOSBs do not receive the contracting preference they would receive
under federal contracting rules. H.R. 6603 would amend the FAST Act to include SDVOSBs in
an already existing 10% contracting carve out that includes women and socially or economically
disadvantaged small businesses.
Meanwhile, Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) and Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) are also preparing to
introduce similar legislation to address this issue that will take a slightly different approach.
Their bill would create a new contracting target goal for SDVOSBs under the FAST Act. Their
bill would grant service-connected disabled veterans access to contracting goals for
infrastructure projects by creating a 5 percent goal for SDVOSBs, in addition to the 10 percent
DBE contracting goal program.