WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT WHO PLEDGED A QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS TO THE PHONY NA`I AUPUNI CONSTITUTION RATIFICATION?
Hereʻs What The Hawai`i Reporter Said About The
Super 8Aʻs In 2010
A handful of Native Hawaiian-owned companies used federal contracting preferences authored by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-HI, to land some $500 million in non-bid or reduced competition government work since 2005, according to federal purchasing records.
Officials, employees and partners of many of the same companies donated nearly $100,000 during the same period to the Inouye election campaign and $100,000 more to other members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, files of the Federal Election Commission show....
The contracting preferences are given to companies called Native Hawaiian Organizations (NHO’s) and are similar to federal procurement allowances used by Alaskan Native Corporations (ANC’s) to obtain nearly $30 billion in non-bid or reduced competition government work since 2000....
Other minority-owned small businesses qualify for special federal contracting “set-asides” under what is called the “8a” 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.
The SBA Hawaii office oversees 14 NHOs and 18 subsidiary companies. An SBA official here, Michael Youth, said his office does not precisely know the value of NHO-related contracts and has no publicly available information on the economic benefits that the contracting preferences have generated for their target population.
In the past three years, NHOs have received $220.7 million in federal contract work, according to SBA data.
As for the economic benefits the contracts have brought to Native Hawaiians, Youth said, “You should speak to the companies themselves. We don’t have that information for you....”
