Earlier this month, Shee Atika Languages services received a five year, $250M contract from the Special Operations Command for language translation services. The Government’s official announcement states:

In accordance with FAR 19.805-1(b)(2) (8(a) Alaska Native Corporation program), Shee Atika Languages, LLC, 94 River Street, Suite 300, Rumford, Maine, is being awarded a requirements contract with an estimated ceiling of $250,000,000 million.

And you thought uncompeted federal contracts were only in the realm of Halliburton? Welcome to the world of Tribal and Alaska Native Corporations (ANC).

Shee Atika Languages is one of an increasing number of federal sector companies bought or incorporated by Indian Tribes or Alaska Native Corporations. Back in 1986, before Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was cooking up the bridge to nowhere, he led the effort to give Native American corporations permanent small disadvantage status (a typical minority or women owned firm only gets eight years of such status). Federal contracting officers can issue contracts to such firms, known as 8(a)s without competition. Senator Stevens instituted one more perk – for a tribal or Alaskan Native owned corporation there is no dollar limit to the award that can be made without competition. A typical set-aside must be competed among 8(a) contractors if the total value is above $5.5 million. One can get a lot of campaign contributions from a quarter of a billion dollar contract.

Shee Atika has done pretty good for a company that has only been in business for less than two years.

Now I don’t have a lot of time to do research on this but some of you enterprising folks with blogs of your own might just want to see what kind of relationship exists between Ted Stevens campaign coffers and Alaska Native Corporations.

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While googling info for my post I ran across this related story: What Ted Stevens, Bolivian cocaine and Halliburton have in common,