Coast Guard awards Anchorage firm $1.7 million amid 8(a) freeze

An Anchorage firm owned by an Alaska Native corporation has won two U.S. Coast Guard contracts worth a combined $1.7 million for administrative and logistics staffing, both signed Thursday.

Old Harbor Solutions will provide administrative, technical and financial support for a Coast Guard office in Washington, D.C., and on-site logistics help for the service's small boat program in Norfolk, Virginia. Both contracts were openly competed, drawing eight bidders for the larger one and four for the smaller.

The company is an 8(a) small disadvantaged business, part of a federal contracting program that Native corporations and tribes have been able to use since a 1986 change to federal law. It's been a major line of business for Old Harbor, which holds more than 20 federal awards, including a large Justice Department contract in July.

The award comes as that program faces new uncertainty. The Small Business Administration has stopped approving new 8(a) applications from Native corporation subsidiaries. Whether that pause touches contracts already in place is unclear — Old Harbor's own 8(a) contracting authority runs to 2031.

Federal contracting is "what our ANCs do almost better than any other contracting firm out there," Nicole Borromeo, general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives, told a Commonwealth North forum in Anchorage in May.