WASHINGTON – The IT Alliance for the Public Sector (ITAPS), a division of ITI, released the following letter yesterday sent to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan from Senior Vice President for the Public Sector Trey Hodgkins, urging lawmakers to support Congresswoman Virginia Foxx’s (R-NC) House Joint Resolution 37 disapproving the “Blacklisting EO” because it creates an unnecessary and redundant burden on government contractors.

Click here for the letter of the text, which is pasted below:

January 31,, 2017

The Speaker of the House of Representatives

RE: Resolution 37

Dear Mr. Speaker:

On behalf of the members of the IT Alliance for Public Sector (ITAPS), I write to voice our strong support for H. J. Res. 37, introduced by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, that disapproves of Executive Order (EO) 13673, the Blacklisting EO. We encourage your support when the bill comes to the House floor for a vote this Thursday, February 2nd.

The Blacklisting EO was a misguided effort to identify companies with “willful and repeated” violations of a specified list of federal and state statutes and regulations that would prohibit them from being eligible for contract award in the federal market. Unfortunately, the regulatory compliance construct that has been implemented is redundant to existing enforcement authority the Department of Labor already possesses and creates a tremendous and unmanageable compliance for all government contractors without delivering enhanced enforcement or value for the taxpayer.

Due to these and other concerns, on October 24, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas granted a preliminary injunction that stops the implementation of this order. While we applaud efforts to root out bad actors in all contracting efforts and to afford an equitable competitive environment in the federal market, this proposal did not deliver on that objective.

We applaud Congresswoman Foxx’s effort to roll back this EO and urge your support on Thursday when it comes before the full House. Should you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Jonathan Clifford, Director of National Security, at jclifford@itic.org or (202) 524-5542. We appreciate your attention to this important issue.

Respectfully,

A.R. “Trey” Hodgkins, III, CAE

Senior Vice President, Public Sector

cc: The House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy

The House Majority Whip, Steve Scalise

The House Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi

The House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer

Chairwoman, the Committee on Education and the Workforce, Virginia Foxx

Chairman, the Small Business Committee, Steve Chabot