While New York City has made progress with increasing its spending with minority- and women-owned businesses, it still received an overall grade of D-plus, City Comptroller Scott Stringer reported on Tuesday.
The comptroller’s fifth annual
The city received its fourth straight D-plus grade because it awarded $1 billion in contracts to MWBEs out of a $19.3 billion procurement budget in fiscal 2018, 5.5% of the total budget.
Stringer also renewed his call for creating a Chief Diversity Officer position in each city agency and in City Hall.
“New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and yet our own government fails to make fairness and equality a priority when it comes to spending city dollars,” Stringer said at a press conference in the Dinkins Building in Manhattan. “There needs to be someone in every city agency making sure minority and women-owned businesses are being given a fair shot to get a piece of a $19 billion budget — that’s why the City Charter has to be changed to include a Chief Diversity Officer.”
Stringer created the report in 2014 as a way to make the city improve its spending with diverse firms and hold agencies accountable when they failed to do so.
In fiscal 2018, the city got a C grade for spending with Asian-American firms and D grades for business with Hispanic-American firms and women-owned firms.
But with African-American owned firms, the city got its lowest overall grade of F, the report showed, with a breakdown of three agencies receiving A grades, two getting B grades, six receiving D grades and 21 getting F grades.
In contrast, in business with Asian-American firms, 16 agencies received A grades, one got a B grade, four received C grades, six got D grades and five got F grades.
“If we are going to build a five borough economy, we cannot perpetuate a system that fails to build wealth in communities that have historically been left behind,” Stringer said. “While progress is happening, this report shows just how far we have to go.”
Several city agencies made progress over the last fiscal year, the report showed. Almost 30% of city agencies increased their grades, as nine got higher ones, five received lower ones and 17 remained unchanged.
Three agencies received an A grade: the Department for the Aging, the Commission on Human Rights, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
However, 10 agencies that received a D or F grade accounted for 50% of the city’s total MWBE spending and depressed the city’s overall grade.
Stringer backed several proposals to level the playing field for MWBEs.
Aside from his call for a city charter change to mandate the hiring of CDOs, Stringer wants to amend the charter to alleviate the financial burden of contract delays for MWBE vendors by assigning deadlines to every agency in the contract review process.
He also wants to create competitive opportunities for MWBEs on citywide requirements contracts and require prime vendors to disclose details about their commitment to diversity, including their own supplier diversity plans.
