TEXAS — Texas’ Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) program has undergone some major changes. Since the ’90s, the program was designed to create equal opportunities for women, minorities and service-disabled, veteran-owned businesses. The state comptroller’s office is updating who’s eligible.
The HUB program is now the Veteran Heroes United in Business (VetHUB) program.
Thousands of Texas small businesses that were part of the HUB program no longer qualify. Julie Irvin Hartman’s business, B2G Victory, was among those that were notified its certification would not be renewed.
“B2G Victory helps companies grow and win government contracts,” Hartman said. “Over the last couple of decades, I’ve helped businesses secure contracts that total $4.5 billion.”
Despite her years of experience, she says 2025 has been the most difficult year for her as an entrepreneur.
“With just all of the economic uncertainty as well as all of the changes that have recently happened, specifically in Texas in the procurement space with the freeze and then the recent emergency changes regarding the State of Texas HUB certification,” Hartman said.
The program gave opportunities to qualifying businesses to compete for contracts on capital projects like building schools, hospitals and parks.
“Once these HUB businesses were in the directory and were notified, you still had to bid, you still had to say, ‘I can do this work. I have the capacity. I’ve done similar types of work and here’s my pricing to do this type of work for this specific project,’” Hartman said.
This month, after the program froze in October, Hartman received an email notifying her that her HUB certification would not get renewed.
“We lost a sizable contract within a couple of days of the order, but we’re resilient,” Hartman said.
Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock announced the HUB program is now the VetHUB program, restructuring it under emergency rules.
“We revised that to make it non-race-based so that there’s no discrimination in this program now, and we’re rewarding our veterans,” Hancock said.
Now, only service-disabled, veteran-owned businesses can get the certification, eliminating about 14,000 Texas small businesses from the program.
While Hartman is supportive of service-disabled veterans being able to get the now VetHUB certification, she says the HUB program has been misrepresented.
“A lot of misconceptions around this program are that, number one, contracts were automatically given to people who had their certifications,” Hartman said. “That is not true. That just because you are a woman or a minority or a service-disabled veteran, that you get the certification. That is not true.”