Alaska Native Contracting Hits the Front Pages

In the first part of a series of stories, Robert O'Harrow of the Washington Post has some excellent reporting from Alaska today on how Alaska Native Corporations seem, in many cases, to be enriching the lives of people who run their subsidiaries in the lower 48 states more than the natives they're supposed to help.

I feel duty-bound to note, though, that the outcry about ANCs goes back many years. We've published dozens of stories on problems with the program, including two major features in the magazine:

• The Alaskan Edge (July 2005)
• Out in the Cold (March 2009)

In that latter story, our analysis of federal contracting data determined that in fiscal 2008, companies owned by Alaskan regional and tribal corporations earned $5 billion in federal contracts, nearly 10 times the $506 million they earned in fiscal 2000. Robert Brodsky also noted that with the fall from grace of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the longtime advocate for federal contracting preferences for ANCs, "a door to reforming the ANC program finally might have crept open."

That was more than a year ago, and the door hasn't fully opened yet, although last month the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council announced it would hold outreach events on implementing a congressional mandate requiring procurement officers to justify in writing their use of sole-source contracts such as those ANCs receive if the contracts are worth more than $20 million.