Advocates fear delays with de Blasio’s 10-year MWBE plan

Shortly after he took office, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to award $16 billion in contracts to minority- and women-owned business enterprises over the next decade. But by tying that ambitious goal to a 10-year timeframe, advocates like City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo say the administration may not hold contractors and city personnel overseeing them accountable, therefore perpetuating the decades-old problem of a lack of diversity in who receives city money.

“Ten years out, we’ll all be out of office,” Cumbo said. “We’ll have a brand new administration. People will have gone. Everyone will have left. … The next generation … is going to be here talking about, ‘They did us wrong in the past. We’re here to make it right.’ We’re just going to continue the cycle.”

Cumbo, the chairwoman of the City Council Committee on Women’s Issues, raised advocates' concerns at a City Council hearing on Monday examining the administration’s efforts in contracting with so-called MWBEs. During the hearing, City Council members also reviewed several measures meant to prod the administration toward a more proactive approach.

Maya Wiley, counsel to the mayor and director of the MWBE program, said a number of city initiatives, such as creating affordable housing, expanding broadband access and ramping up business with MWBE firms, were all on a 10-year deadline. She said this would help institutionalize goals beyond any particular administration and solidify shifts in city government.

In fiscal year 2015, the city awarded $1.6 billion in contracts to MWBE firms or about 5.3 percent of its total procurement. No agency met citywide MWBE goals, and only the Housing Preservation and Development and Parks and Recreation departments met a majority of their internal agency goals. This performance prompted questions at the hearing about the administration’s tactics and timeframe.

Council members inquired about what can be done to ensure prime contractors meet MWBE subcontracting goals and promptly pay vendors, how agencies are held accountable and how to improve things without turning to Albany for aid. Under many circumstances, state law forbids the city from considering a firm’s MWBE designation and requires the municipality to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder.

Wiley emphasized that she and Lisette Camilo, director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services and chief city procurement officer, were raised by minority entrepreneurs and shared the same goals as those questioning them. Wiley described de Blasio as earnest about improving the city’s MWBE track record, noting he had doubled the budget for MWBE support at the Department of Small Business Services over the past year, used project labor agreements to enhance efforts and put $20 million into bonding and pre-development loan funds for small companies looking to compete for city contracts.

“It has been simply unprecedented the amount of time, attention and commitment that Mayor de Blasio has placed on MWBE procurement,” Wiley said. “We’re not done. We are not satisfied, and we are in partnership with you.”

Administration officials expressed support for two of the seven City Council measures taken up Monday. They backed a resolution calling for adjusting a rule so agencies are allowed to award contracts of up to $35,000 at their full discretion. The officials also supported bills requiring training for agency chief contracting and MWBE officers, mandating that agencies publish MWBE utilization plans online and adding more detail and prep time to MWBE compliance reports.

However, de Blasio’s administration opposed legislation that would compel companies with contracts of more than $10 million to hire an independent consultant to spearhead MWBE procurement. The administration argued this would drive up the cost of the “vast majority” of contracts by millions of dollars. The administration embraced part of another bill stipulating that an advisory council be convened, but took issue with a second prong of the measure mandating that the mayor appoint an MWBE director whose sole responsibility was monitoring minority and women business affairs.

Cumbo, who sponsored the legislation, said it was “more than a coincidence” that de Blasio announced he would sign an executive order creating the MWBE advisory council the night before the hearing. She said it was a “fantastic” step, but that legislation was needed to ensure the group outlives the current administration. Cumbo also contended Wiley’s oversight would not suffice.

“You need an army of people whose sole function is MWBE and to simply ask that there be one person whose sole function is that is being turned down,” Cumbo said, noting that the administration wrote in submitted testimony that “requiring the MWBE director’s sole function be limited to MWBE oversight raises curtailment issues” and “limits the mayor’s ability to determine how best to organize his office and administration.”

“Having that person be part-time doesn’t raise curtailment issues," Cumbo added. "At what point or percentage of someone’s time does it raise those curtailment issues? And we just passed, in the City Council, the Mayor's Office for Veterans' Affairs. We passed, a decade ago, the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. When we in the city recognize that there is a serious issue, we create a dynamic where an exclusive body of people just works specifically on one particular thing.” 

Wiley responded that someone on her staff spent all of his time on MWBE affairs and two others spend majority of theirs on it, too. She pointed out other agencies also have staffers solely dedicated to MWBE matters. And as a senior cabinet member, Wiley said she knew the matter was at the forefront of de Blasio’s mind.

“[De Blasio] wanted it clear, throughout the administration, the centrality and importance of the commitment,” she said. “There is not any person in the senior cabinet that has one set of responsibilities. And the way that all of the work in the senior cabinet members of this administration is fulfilled is through multiple people.” 

This verbal tussle over appointing an MWBE director with no other responsibilities demonstrates flaws in de Blasio’s approach, said Bertha Lewis, head of the The Black Institute and once a close de Blasio ally. Minutes after embracing the mayor on the steps of City Hall, Lewis called his administration “incompetent” and “immoral” at a rally before the hearing. She thanked Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, a rumored mayoral challenger, for standing beside her, and she praised two others said to be weighing a mayoral run – City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Public Advocate Letitia James.

While testifying at the hearing, Lewis contended the 10-year goal did not jibe with an administration that “may not have four years." But she said the biggest insult was the $20 million set aside for bonding and loans, which Lewis estimated would benefit just 23 companies.

“They just stick out $20 million and hungry MWBEs and people of color is supposed to say, ‘Oh, thank you master,’” Lewis said.