PSC Responds to Rules Expanding Executive Compensation Cap Coverage

PSC, through the Council of Defense and Space Industry Associations (CODSIA), on August 26, responded to interim and proposed FAR rules to implement the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act provision requiring the cap on executive compensation to apply to all employees performing under defense contracts.

The two sets of comments, available here and here raised concerns that the interim and proposed rules improperly applied the expansion to contracts that were forged before the law expanding coverage went into effect on December 31, 2011. Such retroactive applications would cause the government to breach all contracts established before the effective date, CODSIA said. In addition, CODSIA said that, contrary to the rules’ Regulatory Flexibility Act statements, the rules did impose a burden on contractors, particularly small businesses, to maintain more than one billing rate structure for 2012, 2013, and possibly several years into the future. Many systems are not designed or configured to process different rates for the same work, the comments said.

SmartContracting Daily Intel for August 31, 2012

Before you head out for the long weekend, take a look at the latest news you can use about government contracting. In today's news...

Washington Technology: 7 tools for sequestration survival 

http://bit.ly/PG5KGR

Federal News Radio: Sequestration could spell $39B in cuts to civilian agency budgets 

http://bit.ly/O1b1hN

DevEx: In USAID procurement, a game of stop-and-go

http://bit.ly/R2kgZt

Federal News Radio: Integrated health record tests DoD's agile acquisition aspirations

http://bit.ly/R2khNg

AOLGovernment: Are We Missing The Big Picture With Big Data?

http://aol.it/S5wqYO

AOLGovernment: 'Put A Match To It' And Scrap DoD's Buying Rules: Top Pentagon Advisor 

http://aol.it/T2AaYB

Daily News Round Up for Tuesday, March 13, 2012

SmartContracting Blog's daily harvest of news and opinion articles on topics of interest to our industry. 

(Note: Opinion pieces do not necessarily represent the opinions of PSC, but are interesting nonetheless.)

Washington Post: Ignoring sequestration won’t make it vanish

Federal News Radio: What contractors need to know about new DFAR rules on business systems

Federal News Radio: OMB's pause of financial systems had little effect on cost, schedule

Washington Business Journal: How contractors should view the fiscal 2013 budget proposal

Federal Times: McCain vows to block Pentagon reprogramming requests

How Green is Thy Company?

After May 31, government contractors may have to show their green before they get a contract. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about money. The green on display is environmental in nature.

Under an interim rule published May 31, and made effective that day, 95 percent of government purchases must be “energy-efficient (Energy Star or Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP)-designated), water-efficient, biobased, environmentally preferable (e.g., Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT)-registered), non-ozone depleting, contain recycled content, or are non-toxic or less toxic alternatives, where such products and services meet agency performance requirements.” National security, law enforcement and intelligence purchases exempted, of course.

Do New Small Business Parity Rules Create Disparity?

The long-awaited interim rule  that is supposed to create parity among the Small Business Administration’s myriad preference programs was finally published March 16. Now contracting officers know that HUBZone, 8(a), service-disabled veteran-owned, and women-owned small business programs are equal when considering whether to set aside a competition for any of these four programs. But what happens if a contracting officer wants to set aside a competition for all small businesses?

Prior to the publication of the parity rule, the Federal Acquisition Regulation was silent on whether socioeconomic programs should be considered before creating a set-aside competition for all small businesses. The new rule erases that doubt by adding the following language to the FAR:

“There is no order of precedence among the 8(a) Program (subpart 19.8), HUBZone Program (subpart 19.13), Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) Procurement Program (subpart 19.14), or the Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Program (subpart 19.15). … The contracting officer shall first consider an acquisition for the 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, or WOSB programs before using a small business set-aside.”

Did Congress intend for parity to apply across all small business set-aside opportunities, regardless of whether they’re tied to a socioeconomic program, when it amended the HUBZone statute last year as part of the Small Business Jobs Act? By crafting a rule that specially excludes other small businesses, the FAR Council may have inadvertently created a new form of disparity.