Cuyahoga County Executive Ed Fitzgerald has proposed reviving a minority- and women-owned business enterprise (MWBE) contracting program within the county.
Fitzgerald envisions that the new program would set aspirational goals regarding the hiring of MWBEs and set quotas for small business participation on county contracts. Additional contracting rules are expected in the proposed program’s final form, including requiring the county to conduct an impact study on the impact a project would have on the health of a community before breaking ground.
A program tailored to encouraging MWBE participation has not been active in Cuyahoga County since the Equal Economic Opportunity Program was repealed in 2000. However, with rising complaints of minority contractors regarding the existence of a "good old boys" system regarding county contracting coupled with the recent release of a county disparity study that revealed a statistically significant gap between available MWBEs and the participation of MWBEs on county contracts, FitzGerald believes such a program may be what is needed to remedy the lack of qualified MWBE contractors receiving work from the county.
The county last performed a disparity study in 2002, which prompted the creation of a still-existing program designed to promote county use of small business (SBE) enterprise contractors but did not resulted in the creation of a MWBE program. The latest study was considered long over-due as the federal government generally requires that government agencies conduct disparity studies every five years.
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