Release Date: May 12, 2005
Contact: Tiffani Clements (202) 401-0035
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration today announced a schedule of 11 public hearings that will take place across the country to get input from small business owners on how to improve the agency’s size standards regulations, which are used to define the size of small businesses.
The forums will allow small business owners to provide valuable input to SBA officials that will help the SBA simplify and restructure its size standards and make other changes that will make the size standards easier to understand and use. The SBA also will be seeking testimony on the participation of research and development companies that are majority-owned by venture capital companies in the SBA’s Small Business Innovation Research program.
Size standards are important to businesses that seek assistance from SBA’s small business programs, including federal contracting. The SBA would like to hear directly from the public before deciding which improvements to pursue. The SBA will consider a new size standards proposal once a thorough review of comments received from the public is completed. The SBA is currently evaluating more than 6,000 comments that were submitted in response to the advance notice.
The dates and location of the hearings are as follows:
Seattle, WA June 2, 2005
St. Louis, MO June 2, 2005
Portland, ME June 7, 2005
Atlanta, GA June 9, 2005
Denver, CO June 14, 2005
New York, NY June 16, 2005
Washington, DC June 17, 2005
Chicago, IL June 20, 2005
Dallas, TX June 22, 2005
San Francisco, CA June 28, 2005
Los Angeles, CA June 29, 2005
A notice published today in the Federal Register provides information on the purpose, format, scheduling, and registration for the size standards public hearings. A copy of the notice is currently available on SBA’s Web page at www.sba.gov/size.
The SBA is specifically requesting comments on a variety of size standards issues, including:
· approaches by which to simplify size standards;
· calculating business employment size;
· use of receipts to measure business size;
· designating size standards on federal procurements;
· establishing a separate set of size standards for federal procurement;
· establishing tiered size standards for small business sub-categories;
· simplification of the affiliation and joint venture provisions;
· grandfathering existing small businesses from revised size standards;
· identifying the use of size standards on non-SBA federal programs and regulations
and the impact of size standards changes;
· the participation of small businesses that are majority-owned by venture capital firms in the SBIR program; and
· the relationship between franchisors and franchisees in the Temporary Staffing industry.
