Acting Leaders Appointed for GSA, SBA President Bush named acting administrators of the General Services Administration and the Small Business Administration after the Senate left for its August recess without confirming his nominees. James Williams will be acting head of GSA. Williams’ nomination for the permanent job was blocked by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-IA, who questioned Williams’ conduct in contract negotiations with Sun Microsystems. The agency’s inspector general found that Sun had overcharged the government on its GSA schedule contract, but said Williams pressed for renewal of the contract anyway. Williams denied any wrongdoing. Grassley said Williams’ appointment as acting administrator is “unfortunate, because I have a lot of outstanding questions that have yet to be answered.” Williams, a career government official, could remain in an acting role until the Bush administration leaves office in January. The president named Santanu “Sandy” Baruah acting SBA chief. Baruah was nominated for the post in June, but the Senate Small Business Committee has not scheduled a confirmation hearing. He angered committee leaders when he refused to promise to revisit the controversial rule implementing the women’s set-aside program, the New York Times reported. The proposed rule would limit set-asides to women-owned businesses in just four industries. According to the newspaper, the committee’s ranking Republican, Olympia Snowe of Maine, asked Baruah for a pledge to withdraw the rule or delay it until a new administration takes office, but he declined to make any commitment. In a statement, Snowe congratulated him on his appointment as acting administrator, but again urged him to “rectify the administration’s recent failure to implement a meaningful women’s contracting rule.” Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-MA, said, “This nominee and the administration know that I am vehemently opposed to them moving forward with the unconstitutional women’s procurement rule that makes it harder for women to access federal contracts,” He accused President Bush of circumventing the confirmation process. Baruah, who had served as head of the Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration, was a management consultant before joining the Bush administration.