Logistics Applications Inc., a small disadvantage business in Alexandria, VA, won an A-76 competition for a facilities management contract at the Energy Department.

The contract, worth nearly $27 million over five years, involves electricians, maintenance mechanics and technicians. The work is currently performed by about 90 employees in Washington. It is the largest Energy competition to be won by a private contractor, Government Executive magazine reported.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents the federal employees, said it may appeal.

Transtecs Corp., a small business in Wichita, KS, won a competition to provide clerical services to the Office of Personnel Management.

OPM said it is the first time a contractor has won a job competition at the agency. The 52-month award, with options, is worth about $17 million. Transtecs employees will replace 163 federal workers.

OMB’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy plans to review regulations governing suspension and debarment of contractors.

“We will take a hard look at how the regulations work and the processes,” the new OFPP administrator, David Safavian, told Government Computer News. “My initial sense is they penalize small businesses, and they don’t necessarily act as a deterrent for large ones.”

Safavian said he is also focusing on the government’s acquisition workforce, because large numbers of those workers are becoming eligible for retirement over the next several years.

House Small Business Committee Chairman Don Manzullo (R-IL) says tax relief, health care affordability, liability reform, and regulatory relief top the list of priorities America’s small businesses want Congress to address in 2005.

At a March 8 hearing, Manzullo said small employers need Congress’s help in these areas to continue to expand and provide jobs for needy Americans.

“Our small businesses provide work for the majority of Americans and create 70 percent of all new jobs each year,” Manzullo said. “They need freedom from excessive taxation, surging health care costs, burdensome regulations and abusive lawsuits to continue to provide opportunities for working Americans.”

Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL) has introduced legislation that expresses the sense of the House that American small firms are entitled to a Small Business Bill of Rights. H. Res. 22 states that those rights include:

The right to join together to purchase affordable health insurance for small business employees;

The right to tax laws that allow family-owned small businesses to survive over several generations and offer them incentives to grow;

The right to be free from frivolous lawsuits that harm law-abiding small businesses and prevent them from creating new jobs;

The right to be free of unnecessary, restrictive regulations and paperwork that waste the time and energy of small businesses while hurting production and preventing job creation.