Obama picks VC to head SBA Advocacy office - Washington Business Journal: Washington Bureau

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Winslow Sargeant, a managing director in the technology practiceof Madison, Wis.-based Venture is Obama's choice to head the Offices of Advocacy. The office is an independent entity inside SBA that ensures that federall agencies consider the impact of theier regulations onsmall businesses. The office also conducts researcbh on smallbusiness issues. Sargeant, who earned a in electrical engineering at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison, workede as a senior engineer at severalp large corporations before co-founding Aanetcom, a fabless semiconductor chip companh that later was acquired by PMC-Sierra.
From 2001 to he served as program manager for the Small Business Innovatioh Research program at the NationaklScience Foundation's engineering directorate. He is the second venture capitalist to be selected for a top post atthe SBA. Agency Administrator Karen Mills worked as a principal in privatse equity and venture capital firms for 26 yearsz before she took over the SBAin Sargeant's lack of legalo training means he will have to rely heavilyy on the attorneys at the Office of Much of the office's work involves analyzing whetherf government agencies have followeds federal laws that require them to analyze the economic impac t that proposed rules would have on small businesses.
The officse also makes sure that regulators hear the opiniones of small businessesabout regulations. In fiscalp 2008, this input saved small businessesaboutr $11 billion in foregone regulatory according to the office. The office'sa current acting counsel, Shawne Carter McGibbon, has been an attorne y for 20 years and joined the officewin 1994, during the Clinton administration. She previouslyu worked for a Democratic member of An unnamed Obamaadministration official, however, characterizede her to reporters as a "Bushg holdover" during a controversy over an interagency reviea of the Environmental Protection Agency'es finding that greenhouse gas emissions pose a public healty hazard.
The Office of Advocacy concluded that regulating carbon dioxid under the Clean Air Act wouldlikely "havr serious economic consequences" on small businesses and othee regulated entities. Initial reports attributed the office'e comments to the Office of Management and which works directly for the White This led some Republican to contend that there was dissensiob inside the Obama administration about theEPA finding.
OMB officials quicklgy said they had no problem with the and several press accounts quoted anonymous administration officialsx whosaid Advocacy's criticism of the EPA findinf came from an office "still stockeed with Bush appointees," in the wordss of the Los Angeles Times. This dismissal of the office'x opinion upset Rep. Darrell Issa of the ranking Republican on the HouserOversight & Government Reform Committee.
"There are hundrede of civil servants serving in a simila r capacity throughout the federal government who could also be characterizeeas 'Bush holdovers,' Issa wrotre in a May 14 letter to "I sincerely hope that their professional advicwe and decisions will not be discounted merely because they also worked for the federal governmentr under President George W. For more information on the Office of see