It is still unclear how the loss of major federal contracts by USIS will affect jobs in and near Butler County.

On Tuesday, the federal Office of Personnel Management announced that it will not renew its contracts with the company. USIS, which has offices in Boyers and Grove City, did background checks for prospective federal employees under the contracts, which expire Sept. 30.

The USIS offices in Boyers and Grove City employ 1,500 of the company’s 6,000 workers. The threat of potential job losses concerns U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, of Butler.

“Anytime there is a loss of jobs ... it is of great concern to me,” Kelly said, noting that the contract with OPM was one of the largest contracts USIS had.

In August, USIS discovered an external cyber attack on its corporate network and reported it to federal authorities. Kelly said that one advantage USIS has is that it discovered the hack and self-reported it.

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging that the company at the Grove City and Boyers offices did at least 665,000 incomplete background checks for OPM between 2008 and 2012.

Kelly said he is not sure how much the federal complaint affected the decision.

He said he wants to make sure the issue is handled fairly and quickly.

Stan Kosciuszko, president of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce, said, in his experience, companies that lose big contracts experience job loss.

“Ultimately, there probably will be job losses,” Kosciuszko said.

If these losses do happen, he said they would affect not only Butler County, but Lawrence and Mercer counties too. However, he said that the unemployment rate in Butler County is low, and he is optimistic that anyone who would lose a USIS job would end up at another company in the county.

In a statement, USIS said that it is disappointed with OPM’s decision. The company also said that it is a responsible government contractor.

It said that there was no wrongdoing by the company in the cyber attack, and that it should not preclude it from bidding for government contracts. The statement noted that most of the country’s prominent defense contractors have been victims of similar attacks, and they were not refused contracts.

The company was involved in the background checks for National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and Aaron Alexis, a defense contractor who killed 12 people last year at the Washington Navy Yard. In its statement, USIS said those background checks were not botched and that they were not an issue in the federal complaint.

USIS also said that no current employee had any connection to the complaint and that a new executive team was installed since the company learned of the allegations.

A subsidiary of USIS recently was awarded a contract by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for field office support services. USIS said that this contract does not involve background checks. The former incumbent on the contract, FCi Federal, protested the award. USIS said that the federal complaint is unrelated to this contract.