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You may not consider the U.S. Small BusinessAdministration's Office of Advocacy a hotbed of controversy,but below the surface runs a stream of wildly disparate accounts ofthe office's validity.
Established in the mid-1970s to give small businessrepresentation, research and policy analysis, the Office ofAdvocacy in its heyday had a staff of 75 and a research budget of$5 million. Today, staff has been reduced to 48 and the researchbudget zeroed out, with a stipulation allowing the SBAAdministrator to redirect monies of up to $700,000 tosmall-business research.
"The problem is the government knows a lot about virtuallyeverything except small business," says chief counsel of theOffice of Advocacy Jere Glover. "We know more about broccolithan we do about small business."
The office's strongest foe seems to be Rep. Michael Forbes(R-NY). Forbes, a member of the House Appropriations Committee,previously recommended zeroing out the entire budget, and he may doit again this year. Contending that the Office of Advocacy is"an unwieldy, inefficient and costly endeavor that yieldslittle to nothing to the taxpayer," Forbes proposes channelingthe office's research functions to the Census Bureau and itsadvocacy roles to the SBA Administrator.
Glover responds that this year, the office has filed more than100 letters with agencies, raising concerns about small-businessregulation--almost twice the typical amount. The office has beenclosely involved with the White House Conference on Small Business,state and local conferences, and Congressional hearings.
In fact, Glover says, the recent pension reform occurred afteran Office of Advocacy study found most small businesses didn'thave pension plans due to paperwork and regulatory costs. Theoffice worked with the White House and Congress to develop a newpension proposal, brought officials together with small-businessgroups and fashioned a compromise. "As a direct result of[our] research," says Glover, "there is a much simplerpension plan."
Disabling the office could pose "a significantproblem," says James Morrison, a senior policy advisor withthe National Association for the Self-Employed. "The Office isthe eyes and ears of small business [to] federal regulators. If theOffice of Advocacy is unprepared to play on a level playing fieldwhen onerous regulations are proposed, many people are going tofind themselves with a lot more regulation."
Now, perhaps no one needs an advocate more than the Office ofAdvocacy. Asked whether they'd be willing to show support, Sen.Christoper Bond (R-MO), chair of the Senate Small BusinessCommittee, had no comment; Rep. James Talent (R-MO), chair of theHouse Small Business Committee, stated, "Although I am willingto listen to Mr. Glover's concerns, I am not convinced economicresearch is the best way to use agency funding. I think smallbusiness is better served by using any additional [SBA] funding toensure government compliance with the Small Business RegulatoryEnforcement Fairness Act and the Regulatory Flexibility Act, and toimprove the 7(a) program."
We at Entrepreneur know firsthand how the SBA Office ofAdvocacy works behind the scenes to promote small-businessinterests. Glover has been diligent in providing us withstatistical information for our studies and has taken theinitiative to inform us immediately of legislative or politicalthreats to small business.
It's hard to understand why an office with so manyresponsibilities and so few resources must once again fight for itsvery existence. Should the SBA Office of Advocacy die a quietdeath, many small-business owners would most likely not feel it oreven hear of it at first. But the effects would eventually reachtheir businesses. We only hope entrepreneurs realize this beforeit's too late.
