SBA formally reopens size standards comment period after portal lag
Gettyimages.com/Chip Somodevilla / Staff
By
Nick Wakeman
Both proposed rules now accept comments through Nov. 20, as the Small Business Administration's Advocacy office projects a fraction of the 115,000 new small businesses the agency originally estimated.
While there was a brief lag, both proposed rules dealing with the revision of the small business size standards have reopened for comments.
The Small Business Administration announced its intention on Monday to extend the comment period to Nov. 20.
The comment feature on Regulations.gov shut down on Monday as originally scheduled. Even though SBA said the extension was effective that day, it took three days for both dockets to reopen.
SBA granted the extra 60 days less than a week after its Office of Advocacy released an analysis estimating that only 4,000 to 6,000 more contractors would qualify as small businesses.
That revision is vastly different from original estimate of 114,500 new small businesses that SBA released with the proposed rules on Aug. 20.
By the time the first comment period closed on Sept. 21, nearly 70,000 comments had been submitted and many critical of the proposal.
In its memo granting another 60 days for comments, SBA said it was responding to requests for additional time to comment and to what it called a “clarification of the impacts” of the proposed rules.
Click here to go to the proposed rule for the size standards and here for the proposed methodology.