Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Bush administration is developing legislative proposals to carry out his plan to transform the department’s operations.

Among the specifics he cited were changes “to eliminate some of the onerous regulations that make it impossible or unattractive for many small enterprises to do business with the Department of Defense; to expand authority for competitive outsourcing, so we can get military personnel out of non-military tasks and back into the field.

“There’s really no reason, for example, that that the Department of Defense should be in the business of making eyeglasses — the private sector, I suspect, makes them better and faster, and possibly even cheaper.”

Speaking at a town hall meeting of Pentagon employees March 6, Rumsfeld said the legislative proposals will also be designed to give the department greater flexibility in managing its civilian employees and greater freedom to transfer money between accounts.

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The Small Business Administration says it has received complaints that representatives of a private entity identifying itself as “SBA,” or “SBA Online,” or “Small Business Advantage” have been making calls to businesses asking them to pay membership fees or asking for personal, financial or employee information.

“The U.S. Small Business Administration neither solicits membership fees nor contacts businesses to obtain sensitive information about small businesses or individuals unless it is part of a particular matter pending before the agency (such as a loan application),” the agency said in a statement.

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Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), chair of the Senate Small Business Committee, and 14 other senators have called on the Senate’s top appropriators to help reverse budget cuts in the Small Business Innovation Research Program.

About $3.5 million targeted for SBIR’s Federal and State Technical Partnership (FAST) Program as well as SBIR’s Rural Outreach Program were cut from the final 2003 Appropriations Act signed by the president on February 20.

The bipartisan group of senators released a letter calling on Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) and ranking minority member Robert Byrd (D-WV) to help identify new sources of funding “to alleviate the severe impact” of the cuts.

“At this crucial time, when small businesses are struggling in a slow economy, it makes little sense to sacrifice funding for these efficient and cost-effective programs, which clearly help sustain small firms,” Snowe said.

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Cabinet members and other senior Bush administration officials will brief members of local Hispanic Chambers of Commerce in a series of conference calls. HUD Secretary Mel Martinez will conduct the first of the town hall meetings April 29, said George Herrera, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber. Future briefings will occur every other month.

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says it will target companies with severe or repeated safety violations for extra inspections and possible court action.

“This policy will focus on the high-gravity violators and will put more tenacity and teeth into our enforcement practices,” said OSHA Administrator John Henshaw.

The agency will conduct follow-up investigations of any employer who has received a “high gravity” citation, reserved for the most severe violations, or who has had repeated serious violations or a fatality.

OSHA will also track all worksites operated by the same company or its corporate partners. The Labor Department said the change in emphasis grew out of a series of stories in the New York Times about McWane Inc., an Alabama manufacturer that accumulated more than 400 violations and nine deaths at its plants around the country since 1995.

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Computer Sciences Corp. has completed its acquisition of DynCorp. DynCorp becomes part of CSC’s Federal Sector business unit, based in Falls Church, Va. CSC said the combined organization will have about $6 billion in annual revenue from federal contracts.

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Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush has created an advisory council to help save the state’s 21 military installations from the next round of base closings scheduled for 2005.

He said the military is the state’s third largest economic sector, and, “We will do everything within our power to prevent them from being closed or downsized.”

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South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said he has created a Military Base Advisory Committee, made up of five retired generals, to work on how to deal with the next round of base closings.

The governor said military installations in the state are a $4 billion business. He said he would consider spending state money to retain the bases, but will defer to the judgment of the committee.