Federal Register / Vol. 87, No. 119 / Wednesday, June 22, 2022 / Notices 37371 

12 15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(3)(A). 

13 17 CFR 240.19b–4(f). 14 17 CFR 200.30–3(a)(12). 

Exchange does not believe its proposed 

fee change imposes any burden on 

competition that is not necessary or 

appropriate in furtherance of the 

purposes of the Act. 

C. Self-Regulatory Organization’s 

Statement on Comments on the 

Proposed Rule Change Received From 

Members, Participants, or Others 

The Exchange neither solicited nor 

received comments on the proposed 

rule change. 

III. Date of Effectiveness of the 

Proposed Rule Change and Timing for 

Commission Action 

The foregoing rule change has become 

effective pursuant to Section 19(b)(3)(A) 

of the Act 12 and paragraph (f) of Rule 

19b–4 13 thereunder. At any time within 

60 days of the filing of the proposed rule 

change, the Commission summarily may 

temporarily suspend such rule change if 

it appears to the Commission that such 

action is necessary or appropriate in the 

public interest, for the protection of 

investors, or otherwise in furtherance of 

the purposes of the Act. If the 

Commission takes such action, the 

Commission will institute proceedings 

to determine whether the proposed rule 

change should be approved or 

disapproved. 

IV. Solicitation of Comments 

Interested persons are invited to 

submit written data, views and 

arguments concerning the foregoing, 

including whether the proposed rule 

change is consistent with the Act. 

Comments may be submitted by any of 

the following methods: 

Electronic Comments 

• Use the Commission’s internet 

comment form (http://www.sec.gov/ 

rules/sro.shtml); or 

• Send an email to rule-comments@

sec.gov. Please include File Number SR– 

C2–2022–012 on the subject line. 

Paper Comments 

• Send paper comments in triplicate 

to Secretary, Securities and Exchange 

Commission, 100 F Street NE, 

Washington, DC 20549–1090. 

All submissions should refer to File 

Number SR–C2–2022–012. This file 

number should be included on the 

subject line if email is used. To help the 

Commission process and review your 

comments more efficiently, please use 

only one method. The Commission will 

post all comments on the Commission’s 

internet website (http://www.sec.gov/ 

rules/sro.shtml). Copies of the 

submission, all subsequent 

amendments, all written statements 

with respect to the proposed rule 

change that are filed with the 

Commission, and all written 

communications relating to the 

proposed rule change between the 

Commission and any person, other than 

those that may be withheld from the 

public in accordance with the 

provisions of 5 U.S.C. 552, will be 

available for website viewing and 

printing in the Commission’s Public 

Reference Room, 100 F Street NE, 

Washington, DC 20549, on official 

business days between the hours of 

10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Copies of the 

filing also will be available for 

inspection and copying at the principal 

office of the Exchange. All comments 

received will be posted without change. 

Persons submitting comments are 

cautioned that we do not redact or edit 

personal identifying information from 

comment submissions. You should 

submit only information that you wish 

to make available publicly. All 

submissions should refer to File 

Number SR–C2–2022–012 and should 

be submitted on or before July 13, 2022. 

For the Commission, by the Division of 

Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated 

authority.14

J. Matthew DeLesDernier, 

Assistant Secretary. 

[FR Doc. 2022–13274 Filed 6–21–22; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 8011–01–P 

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION 

Procurement Scorecard Program; 

Treatment of Deobligations 

AGENCY: U.S. Small Business 

Administration. 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: The U.S. Small Business 

Administration (SBA) publishes an 

annual procurement scorecard 

(Scorecard) that scores agencies on their 

performance in contracting with small 

businesses. This notice sets forth SBA’s 

method for reflecting negative-dollar 

transactions (or ‘‘deobligations’’) in the 

SBA scorecard starting with the Fiscal 

Year 2022 (FY22) scorecard. For 

purposes of calculating prime 

contracting achievements, SBA will 

exclude deobligations associated with 

certain older awards. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Mihaela Ciorneiu, Goaling Manager, 

Office of Government Contracting and 

Business Development, 

Mihaela.Ciorneiu@sba.gov, (202) 205– 

7716. The phone number above may 

also be reached by individuals who are 

deaf or hard of hearing, or who have 

speech disabilities, through the Federal 

Communications Commission’s TTYBased Telecommunications Relay 

Service teletype service at 711. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background 

SBA issues an annual Scorecard to 

score Federal agencies on creating the 

maximum practicable opportunities for 

the award of prime contracts and 

subcontracts to small business concerns, 

small disadvantaged businesses (SDBs), 

women-owned small businesses 

(WOSBs), HUBZone small business 

concerns, and service-disabled veteranowned small business concerns (SDVO 

SBCs). Sec. 868, Public Law 114–92, 129 

Stat. 933 (November 25, 2015). SBA 

bases an agency’s score on several 

weighted factors, the most significant of 

which is the percentage of prime 

contracting dollars awarded to small 

businesses. 

SBA receives the prime contracting 

data for the annual Scorecard from the 

Federal Procurement Data System 

(FPDS), through a special data extract 

prepared by the Integrated Acquisition 

Environment (IAE), part of the U.S. 

General Services Administration (GSA). 

In recent years, it has become apparent 

to SBA that FPDS’s method for 

recording deobligations skews certain 

agencies’ prime contracting figures, and, 

by extension, the annual Scorecard 

inaccurately reports those agencies’ 

small businesses dollars awarded in that 

fiscal year. 

A deobligation is an accounting 

transaction to reconcile an agency’s 

obligations with its disbursements. 

When an agency awards a contract, the 

agency records an obligation in FPDS at 

the date of the award. FPDS does not 

reflect disbursements, however, so, in 

cases where the obligation exceeds the 

agency’s disbursements, agencies will 

record a deobligation so that the total of 

obligations matches the total of 

disbursements. Deobligations appear in 

FPDS as a negative-dollar transaction in 

the fiscal year that the agency records its 

deobligation. 

Even though the deobligation appears 

as a negative-dollar transaction, the 

agency did not award a negative-dollar 

contract. The deobligation is for 

accounting purposes and is used to 

show that the agency disbursed less on 

the contract than had been originally 

obligated. However, as noted above, the 

deobligation is recorded in the year that 

deobligation occurred, which can be in 


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37372 Federal Register / Vol. 87, No. 119 / Wednesday, June 22, 2022 / Notices 

1A redacted copy of the agreement is attached to 

the verified notice. An unredacted copy has been 

filed under seal along with a motion for protective 

order pursuant to 49 CFR 1104.14. That motion is 

being addressed in a separate decision. 

a different year from when the 

obligation was recorded. 

For the purposes of SBA’s Scorecard, 

a problem arises when the agency 

records the deobligation in a fiscal year 

different from the year in which the 

agency recorded the obligation, 

particularly when the obligation was for 

a small-business award. The 

deobligation on a small-business award 

(or WOSB, HUBZone, SDVO SBC, or 

SDB contract) is recorded in FPDS as a 

current-day negative-value transaction, 

even though the deobligation is an 

accounting transaction to offset the 

earlier contract award. This transaction 

decreases the agency’s contracting 

dollars in FPDS for the current fiscal 

year, thus creating discrepancy on the 

agency’s performance on that year’s 

SBA Scorecard. 

SBA was alerted to this problem on 

September 10, 2020, via letter from the 

Chair of the Federal Office of Small and 

Disadvantaged Business Utilization 

Directors Interagency Council (OSDBU 

Council). SBA then received a letter 

from the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. 

Department of Housing and Urban 

Development (HUD) on September 30, 

2020. Both sources expressed concern 

that deobligations make agencies’ smallbusiness achievements unpredictable 

and uncertain. 

II. Data Analysis and Agency 

Collaboration 

After receiving the OSDBU Council 

and HUD letters, SBA analyzed the 

FPDS data to examine the effect of 

deobligations on agencies’ prime 

contracting achievements on SBA 

Scorecard. SBA rejected the idea of 

excluding all deobligations from the 

Scorecard because it is quite common 

for an agency to obligate and deobligate 

funds on an award in the same fiscal 

year. SBA also considered but rejected 

the idea of excluding all deobligations 

associated with contracts awarded in 

prior fiscal years because doing so 

would present an opportunity to 

agencies to raise their Scorecard scores 

by obligating small-business dollars at 

the end of one fiscal year and then 

immediately deobligating in the next 

fiscal year. 

Furthermore, deobligations occur on 

all types of awards, including those held 

by other-than-small contractors. SBA 

found it incongruous to apply a 

treatment simply to deobligations of 

small-business awards. 

SBA thus analyzed what effect it 

would have to exclude deobligations 

that are associated with awards for 

which the last positive obligation 

occurred more than one fiscal year 

prior. The exclusion changed the 

governmentwide small-business primecontracting percentage by less than a 

tenth of a percentage point. For certain 

agencies, however, the exclusion 

significantly impacted the agency’s 

prime-contracting achievements. 

SBA shared these results with the 

Small Business Procurement Advisory 

Council (SBPAC) at the group’s January 

2022 meeting and solicited feedback 

from the SBPAC members. At the 

February 2022 meeting of the OSDBU 

Council, SBA further discussed the 

results and the proposal adopted below. 

SBA later updated the SBPAC at that 

body’s February 2022 meeting. 

III. Exclusion for Deobligations 

Starting in the Scorecard for FY 2022, 

SBA will interpret ‘‘awards’’ for the 

purposes of the Scorecard program to 

exclude certain deobligations that, when 

included in the Scorecard, present a 

distorted view of the opportunities for 

small businesses to participate in 

Government contracts with Federal 

agencies. Specifically, SBA will exclude 

deobligations that are associated with 

prime awards for which the most recent 

positive-dollar obligation was from a 

year earlier than the most recent prior 

fiscal year. 

SBA will identify the deobligations to 

be excluded by determining whether the 

deobligation is on an award (defined by 

the combination of Procurement 

Instrument Identifier (PIID) Indefinite 

Delivery Vehicle PIID (IDV PIID)) that 

does not have a positive obligation in 

the current fiscal year or prior fiscal 

year. The deobligations identified for 

exclusion will be removed from the 

current-year Scorecard calculations 

regardless of whether the transaction 

was associated with a small business or 

an other-than-small business. 

The following examples illustrate this 

deobligations exclusions method: 

Example 1: Agency A awards Contract 

X for $1 million, obligating $1 million 

in FY22 to a small business. Agency A 

deobligates $1 million on Contract X in 

FY22. The deobligation is not excluded, 

and the total obligation for Contract X 

is $0 for FY22. 

Example 2: Agency B awards Contract 

Y for $1 million, obligating $1 million 

in FY17 to an other-than-small business. 

Agency B then obligates $1 million in 

each of FY18, FY19, FY20, and FY21 on 

Contract Y. Agency B then deobligates 

$1 million on Contract Y in FY22. The 

deobligation is not excluded as it has 

the same contract identifier as a contract 

that had a positive obligation not more 

than one fiscal year prior. The total 

obligation for Contract Y for FY22 is 

negative $1 million. 

Example 3: Agency C awards Contract 

Z for $1 million, obligating $1 million 

in FY11. Agency C then obligates $1 

million in each of FY12, FY13, FY14, 

and FY15. Agency C then deobligates $1 

million on Contract Z in FY22. The 

deobligation is excluded from the FY22 

Scorecard calculations because the most 

recent positive obligation was from 

more than one fiscal year prior. The 

total obligation for Contract Z for FY22 

is $0. This exclusion applies regardless 

of whether Contract Z was awarded to 

a small business or an other-than-small 

business. 

SBA will track excluded obligations 

for FY22 and beyond and will continue 

monitor and refine this methodology as 

necessary. 

Antonio Doss, 

Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of 

Government Contracting and Business 

Development. 

[FR Doc. 2022–13287 Filed 6–21–22; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 8026–09–P 

SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD 

[Docket No. FD 36613] 

Commonwealth Railway, 

Incorporated—Trackage Rights 

Exemption—Norfolk Southern Railway 

Company 

Commonwealth Railway, 

Incorporated (CWRY), a Class III rail 

carrier, has filed a verified notice of 

exemption under 49 CFR 1180.2(d)(7) 

for the acquisition of local trackage 

rights over approximately 2.3 miles of 

rail line owned by Norfolk Southern 

Railway (NSR) in and near Fairview, W. 

Va., between approximately States Run 

Road at milepost LR 77.3 and the end 

of the track at approximately milepost 

LR 79.6 (the Line). 

Pursuant to a written trackage rights 

agreement, NSR is granting CWRY 

trackage rights on the Line to provide 

local switching service to and from the 

American Consolidated Natural 

Resources, Inc., facility at Fairview.1

The transaction may be consummated 

on July 6, 2022, the effective date of the 

exemption (30 days after the verified 

notice was filed). 

As a condition to this exemption, any 

employees affected by the acquisition of 

the trackage rights will be protected by 

the conditions imposed in Norfolk & 

Western Railway—Trackage Rights— 

Burlington Northern, Inc., 354 I.C.C. 605 


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