City fails minority- and women-owned businesses

The city has fallen short when it comes to working with minority- and women-owned businesses, according to the city’s fiscal watchdog.
Comptroller John C. Liu launched an online report card on Thursday, December 16 that for the first time sheds light on how much each city agency spends from its budget on contracts with minority- and women-owned business enterprises (MWBE). The “MWBE Report Card NYC” shows the data through a user-friendly and interactive web site.
“We are being completely transparent about how the city is spending taxpayers’ money,” Liu said.
So far, the city has spent more than $17 billion in 2010 that was eligible to go toward MWBEs. But only 2.3 percent of all city contracts were actually spent with registered minority- and women-owned businesses. According to Liu, the data from the report card does not calculate subcontractors who work with the city, since there is no system in place to track the billions of dollars spent on subcontractors.
“In the upcoming months, I wish the city will work to provide subcontractors information,” Liu said.
When Liu was a councilmember, he and others advocated for Local Law 129, which was enacted in late 2005 to “enhance the ability of minority and women owned business enterprises to compete for city contracts.” Five years later, those councilmembers complained that the city has not kept its promise.
“As the father of Local Law 129, I am deeply disappointed at its abject failure,” said Councilmember James Sanders Jr., who represents Rosedale, Laurelton, Springfield Gardens and Far Rockaway. “It is a sad thing when minority businesses have a better chance to make it in Selma, Alabama, with its sordid racial history, than in ‘liberal’ New York City.”
The Comptroller’s Audit Bureau also recently uncovered that city agencies failed to comply with Local Law 129’s MWBE hiring mandates. One of those agencies was the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which according to a Comptroller’s October report, made no effort to verify or account for MWBE spending. Other audits from the Comptroller into MWBE spending will be released in the coming weeks.
“This is not going to solve MWBE issues, but it is going to layout where we are with MWBE spending,” Liu said.
Shirley Rodriguez-Remeneski, president of 100 Hispanic Women, Inc., a non-profit women’s organization, said the city needs to do more to educate MWBEs about how they can get a city contract because many don’t know how to do business with the city.
“There is so much that needs to be done,” Rodriguez-Remeneski said. “It’s just that the city has been run like this for so long.”
The Comptroller’s MWBE Report Card will be updated daily using data about all city expenditures on prime contracts from the city’s financial management system. The data is based on actual spending to date, not expected expenditures of long-term contracts. The MWBE Report Card is available at www.mymoneynyc.com.
“This web site will revolutionize how the city will do MWBE contracts,” said State Senator Jose Peralta, who represents Corona, East Elmhurst, Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Woodside. “I hope that we can do this on the state level.”