How many hats can an OSDBU director wear?

Two House subcommittee chairmen have taken the Department of Veterans Affairs to task for not complying with small-business statutes.

VA has what Reps. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) and Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) consider an inappropriately dual-hatted official: Tom Leney is executive director of the department's Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU), a job that also involves overseeing the VA organization that verifies companies' ability to compete for contracts.

However, in a letter to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, Hanna and Coffman wrote that the Small Business Act requires the OSDBU director to carry out that job exclusively and not hold any other title or position.

They noted that the department is required to verify the status of small businesses owned by veterans, including those owned by service-disabled veterans, and that VA has assigned those functions to the Center for Veterans Enterprise, which falls within Leney's purview.

Although the act allows for adding duties if they are necessary, Hanna and Coffman wrote that Leney's dual responsibility "belies the inherent conflict between the advocacy role assigned to the OSDBU and the auditing function now associated with CVE."

Hanna is chairman of the Small Business Committee's Contracting and Workforce Subcommittee, and Coffman is chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. At a joint hearing on March 19 to examine disparities between the VA's and the Small Business Administration's contracting programs for service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, Leney said he could perform both sets of duties because he is ultimately an advocate for veterans.

"I can do both because the act of verifying [companies] enabled 5,400 veteran-owned small businesses to participate in a program that has distributed more than $3.8 billion" in contracts, he told the subcommittees. "This is real money to real vets, and it is a program that benefits veterans.... So I personally do not have any issue with a conflict of interest because we are helping vets."

In the letter, Hanna and Coffman asked Shinseki to document how the department intends to achieve compliance with the Small Business Act. VA officials had no comment on the letter but plan to formally respond to the subcommittees.