President Barack Obama has selected a venture capitalist to be chief counsel of the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, a post usually held by an attorney.

Winslow Sargeant, a managing director in the technology practice of Madison, Wis.-based Venture Investors, is Obama's choice to head the Office of Advocacy. The office is an independent entity inside SBA that ensures that federal agencies consider the impact of their regulations on small businesses. The office also conducts research on small business issues.

Sargeant, who earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, worked as a senior engineer at several large corporations before co-founding Aanetcom, a fabless semiconductor chip company.

Sargeant's lack of legal training means he will have to rely heavily on the attorneys at the Office of Advocacy. Much of the office's work involves analyzing whether government agencies have followed federal laws that require them to analyze the economic impact that proposed rules would have on small businesses. The office also makes sure that regulators hear the opinions of small businesses about regulations.

The office's current acting counsel, Shawne Carter McGibbon, has been an attorney for 20 years and joined the office in 1994, during the Clinton administration. She previously worked for a Democratic member of Congress.

For more information on the Office of Advocacy, see www.sba.gov/advo

Pre-emption memo could lead to lawsuits

Business groups criticized President Barack Obama for encouraging regulatory agencies to refrain from pre-empting state laws when issuing new regulations.

A May 20 memo from Obama also directed agencies to review regulations issued during the past 10 years to see if they contained pre-emptions that are not justified. If they do, agencies should consider amending the regulations, the memo stated.

"Pre-emption of state law by executive departments and agencies should be undertaken only with full consideration of the legitimate prerogatives of the states and with a sufficient legal basis for pre-emption," the memo states.

During the Bush administration, regulatory agencies sometimes included pre-emption language in the preambles of regulations.

For more information, see www.whitehouse.gov