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May 6, 2010 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) maintains yearly goals for how many contracts are awarded to small, veteran-owned businesses. They have exceeded their goals every year for the last 3 years and in fiscal 2009 they doubled their stated goal.
A 2006 law mandates the VA must give veterans and service-disabled veterans priority when awarding contracts. According to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the VA must also pay more attention to their contracts to ensure the work is only being given to eligible veteran-owned businesses. The VA is also responsible for keeping a database of veteran-owned businesses who can be awarded the contracts. The GAO found issues with the accuracy of the information in the database.
The VA has struggled with authenticating the status of every business in their database. In fact, they have only been able to verify approximately 14%, or about 2,900 businesses. Part of the reason for this is because in order to verify a business, the VA must send a representative to visit the business in person. As expected, the visits are backlogged despite having uncovered a litany of businesses defrauding the VA.
If a business is discovered misrepresenting itself, that business faces debarment. Once these businesses are discovered, however, there are no clear VA policies on how to report them for their violation.
In the same report, the GAO criticized the VA's verification program. The GAO found the VA was missing required files necessary to explain how the businesses in the database were determined to be veteran-owned. The GAO has yet to make any recommendations so the VA hired an outside contractor to determine how to fix their verification program.
Programs like this are vital to veteran-owned and service-disabled veteran small businesses. That the VA has constantly exceeded their goal in awarding contracts to veteran-owned businesses shows their dedication to the cause. That there are businesses out there pretending to be veteran-owned and are taking money away from veterans is despicable.
Soldiers can return home with a number of conditions, injuries, and aggravated preexisting conditions. If you believe you have a service-connected physical or psychological injury you may be entitled to Veterans’ Disability Compensation.
At LaVan and Neidenberg, we are determined to secure veterans their rightful disability compensation and disability rating. We wrote this book for you! In it you will find valuable tips on how to navigate the claims process and avoid common pitfalls. Request your FREE copy today!
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