Stringer: Lackluster MWBE Figures an Income Inequality Issue

Women and minority business owners in New York have been gaining ground on their white, male counterparts lately, with a quarter of state government contracts now going to their companies and Gov. Andrew Cuomo setting a new goal this month of awarding 30 percent of all state contracts to minority- or women-owned business enterprises, or MWBEs.

New York City, meanwhile, has been languishing in the single digits, with just 3.9 percent of city contracts going to MWBEs in the latest fiscal year.

“I’m a city elected official—you never want to follow the state,” New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said at City & State’s On Diversity conference Tuesday. “But if they’re at 30, and we’re at 3.9—you know what I’m saying?”

The stark disparity between the MWBE contracting rates at the city and state levels came up repeatedly during the annual gathering, which was sponsored by BTEA, Verizon, Bradford Construction, the MTA, WDF Inc. and Gonzalez, Saggio & Harlan.

Stringer released a report card this month giving the city an overall “D” grade on MWBE contracting, noting that his own office only earned a “C.” But he touted additional steps he has taken to boost MWBEs, including creating the role of chief diversity officer. And while he declined to assign blame for the city’s lackluster figures to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor, Stringer made a point of portraying his own efforts through the lens of income inequality—a top de Blasio priority.

“The more we spend with MWBEs, the more these firms will hire locally, they will be in other, different communities, and we’ll begin to equalize the disparity in income,” Stringer said. “It starts with growing small businesses that will end up hiring locally—that is what’s at stake.”

“So if we’re going to end income inequality, talk is cheap,” he concluded.

Maria Torres-Springer, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Small Business Services, which oversees the city’s MWBE program, defended de Blasio's MWBE record, emphasizing that the mayor has only been in office for less than a year.

During another panel discussion, she cited de Blasio’s focus on combating inequality and touted the city’s MWBE team, headed by the mayor’s counsel, Maya Wiley—who also spoke at Tuesday's conference—while noting that the city’s largest-ever MWBE contract was awarded within the last fiscal year. The administration is including an MWBE component in its affordable housing and post-Sandy rebuilding efforts as well, Torres-Springer said.

“If we look at the record of the de Blasio administration over the past several months, it’s fair to say that we are quite proud of the gains made in this administration, and we also believe there is a profound opportunity to do even more,” she said. “There is no question that this is at the top of the agenda.”

While only time will tell how effective the city’s efforts will be, the de Blasio administration has yet to publicly make MWBE contracting a priority the same way it is on the state level.

Then-Gov. David Paterson laid the groundwork in 2010 with the passage of key legislation, including a law that raised the cap on awards to such firms and another that created a chief diversity officer and mandated an in-depth study of contractor hiring to provide the basis for state MWBE targets.

Just a month after Cuomo took office in 2011, he issued an executive order calling for greater participation of MWBEs and announced a target of 20 percent of state contracts going to companies owned by women or minorities, roughly double the current share at the time for state agencies.  

In early 2013, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Local Law 1, New York City’s own legislation aimed at increading the percentage of contracts each city agency awards to MWBE firms. However, the share of city contracts going to MWBEs is now just under 4 percent, a slight increase from the previous year but still short of the 5 percent mark the city hit in 2012, according to the city comptroller’s office.

Although some experts stress the importance of having a chief diversity officer who is dedicated to expanding MWBE opportunities, Bloomberg never named one and neither has de Blasio. 

Rev. Jacques De Graff, a longtime MWBE advocate, closed out the conference with a fiery exhortation to public officials to do more, especially at the city level. He said he heard no mention of MWBEs from de Blasio in the mayor's inaugural address, in his State of the City or in the speech he gave to mark his first 100 days in office.

“We’re now six quarters into Local Law 1, and billions of dollars were going out the door that we were not involved in,” said De Graff, speaking of the MWBE community. “I know that people try real hard, I know their efforts are sincere, I know that there are impediments—but that’s what they said about Giuliani, that’s what they said about Bloomberg, and I expect better for the communities that gave 80 or 90 percent of our vote.”