The Indianapolis City-County Council, in a 20-5 vote, has passed Proposal 231, meant to increase the utilization of minority, women, veteran and disabled-owned businesses in government contracting.
Among other things, the measure: provides for more education, training, and business assistance programs for small and diverse businesses; requires prime contractors to show proof that they made a good-faith effort to give small and diverse businesses a fair shot at subcontractor opportunities; makes provision for ensuring subcontractors are paid within 15 days of the prime being paid by the city; requires disparity studies to be conducted every five years; and allows for penalizing prime contractors up to 10 percent of future payments on a given contract if they are out of compliance.
Good-faith efforts as defined in the proposal include such actions as attendance of pre-bid conferences, advertisements at least 10 working days in advance of the bid date, outreach to small and diverse businesses, efforts to negotiate fairly with interested small and diverse businesses, documentation, and more.
The proposal comes after a 2019 disparity study which found significant disparities between the availability and the utilization of small and diverse businesses in city-county procurement.
"We want everyone to be intentional about our small and diverse businesses here in our city," said Camille Blunt, director of the Office of Minority and Women Business Development, in a statement.
View the proposal at https://www.indy.gov/api/v1/indy_proposal_document?content_type=application%2Fpdf&id=17073&name=PROP20-231&type=1.
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