Tribal Consultations to Be Held in Alaska this Summer
The SBA announced today in the Federal Register that Tribal Consultations will be held in Anchorage Alaska this summer on Friday June 13, 2025, for three hours—from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.—or until testimony is finished—”The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announces that it is holding a tribal consultation meeting in Anchorage, Alaska requesting comments and input on a variety of topics relating to the 8(a) program and the mentor-protégé program. SBA is requesting general comments and input on how the 8(a) program is working and is inviting suggestions on potential avenues for making the program more efficient or reducing the regulatory burden on participants in the program. Additionally, SBA requests comments and input on best practices for how entity owned firms market their capabilities to procuring agencies. SBA is also requesting comments and input on how to ensure the mentor-protégé program is operating as intended.” SBA later gives examples of the mentor potentially controlling protege firms.
The consultation is ambiguous and seems to want to hear concerns as to whether or not the 8(a) Mentor Protege Joint Venture Program is working with special attention paid to Tribes, Alaska Native Corporations, and Native Hawaiian Organizations. The stated purpose is to gather information to guide SBA’s review process and potentially develop to make these program(s) to make them more attractive to procuring agencies and small business. In an unusual statement, which seems to go against the grain of tribal consultations and that these programs were visited and rejected as more regulations without notice last year in the rush to get regulations through prior to the present Administration taking office, SBA stated the following: “SBA requests that commenters do not raise issues pertaining to other SBA small business programs.”
This potentially limiting statement is despite the fact that SBA may be revisiting the benefits reporting forms and program applied only to indigenously group owned firms, the bundling and consolidation that is happening now—the bane of small business, and how SBA is is working with small businesses to ensure that the FAR rewrite and its potential impact is limited on small businesses—as small businesses are the backbone of the American economy. This limiting statement seems to go against the intent—if not the text—of the Executive Order it cites for authority as well as SBA’s procedures where the intent of both is to conduct tribal consultations in order for tribes to be able to help shape policy that directly affects them and the subject may be at the request of those to be consulted.
Registration details are found in the FR Notice linked below. The SBA Tribal Consultation Policy is also linked below.
The Federal Register Notice can be found here: https://outlooklaw.com/s/Federal-Register-Summer-2025.pdf
The SBA Tribal Consultation Policy can be found here: https://outlooklaw.com/s/SBA-Tribal-Consultation-Policy-2022-signed.pdf