- Details
- By Brian Edwards
- Native Contracting
The Poarch Band of Creek Indians says Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) misinterpreted procurement data and never contacted the tribe before publicly suggesting one of its federal contracting firms may have violated Small Business Administration rules.
The tribe said Ernst’s Dec. 8 letters to federal agencies inaccurately claimed that PCI Government Services LLC — a federal contracting unit of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, the only federally recognized tribe in Alabama — subcontracted more than half the work on an 8(a) award, a metric that, if true, would violate SBA’s limitation-on-subcontracting rule.
The contract at issue provides program management, analytics and operational support to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s CHIPS Program Management Office.
In a letter shared with Tribal Business News, a tribal executive said the allegation relies on contract obligation data rather than the amounts paid — a distinction that is required under Federal Acquisition Regulation 52.219-14.
“The regulation is unambiguous: compliance is measured by actual amounts paid by the Government and the prime contractor. Obligations are a ceiling; payments reflect actual performance. Applying the incorrect metric leads to an inaccurate conclusion,” Robbie McGhee, vice chair/chief government and public affairs officer for the tribe, wrote to Ernst and members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
The tribe also said the committee misinterpreted data from an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity, or IDIQ, contract, noting that the dataset Ernst relied on often misreports obligations at the task-order level.
McGhee wrote that PCI-GS was “named publicly in an official congressional letter — suggesting potential misconduct — without any outreach to the Tribe or an opportunity to correct the record.” He added that doing so has “real-world consequences” for a tribally owned business, its employees and the Poarch Band’s 2,700 citizens who rely on enterprise revenues.
The errors create risk not only for PCI-GS, but for other tribal small businesses that follow federal contracting rules and rely on long-standing SBA policy, the letter said. The tribe asked Ernst to correct the record with federal agencies.
The concerns raised by the Poarch Band echo those voiced by other Native-owned federal contractors, who say Ernst’s letters are built on incomplete data or misunderstandings of SBA rules governing 8(a) participants. Tribal enterprises contacted by Tribal Business News — including Cherokee Federal, Calista Corporation, Command Holdings and Hawaiian Native Corporation — each disputed specific claims made in the letters.
Quinton Carroll, executive director of the Native American Contractors Association, said the pattern described by Poarch Creek and other firms reflects a broader concern. “It would have been helpful and informative if there was outreach to the named companies in these letters where legal and compliant explanations could have been provided,” he said, adding that the accusations could cause “material damages” for Native-owned businesses that follow federal contracting rules.
The stakes are significant for tribal and Alaska Native enterprises: Native-owned firms received $16.1 billion in 8(a) contract awards last year, according to data from market intelligence firm HigherGov, making the program one of the most important economic engines in Indian Country.
PCI-GS remains in full compliance with all SBA and FAR requirements and will continue cooperating with federal partners “to make sure the facts are clear,” the letter notes.
A spokesperson for Sen. Ernst said the senator “will always fight for transparency in Washington to ensure the American people know how every tax dollar is spent,” adding that “8(a) contractors who did nothing wrong should welcome the full audit and review of the program that Ernst has called for.”
Chez Oxendine contributed reporting.
