Boston sets goal of 25% of contracts going to women and minorities

In the face of criticism and a federal civil rights complaint, Mayor Martin Walsh has set a goal of upping the rate of city contracts going to minority- and women-owned firms to 25%.

“We all agree that our city still has lots of work to do in equitable access to city contracting and growing business opportunities in the Black community, in the Latino community and in the Asian community,” Walsh told reporters on Thursday afternoon.

The mayor announced an executive order setting out the 25% goal, with 15% of the contracts going to women-owned firms and 10% to ones owned by minorities.

This comes after a report commissioned by the city found that just 1.2% of all contracts went to companies owned by women or people of color. The study found that based on the firms applying, just under 17% of the contracts should have gone to such companies.

“I have never run away from these numbers or this challenge,” Walsh said. “We embrace the findings from the study, because this study now gives us a roadmap on how we move forward.”

The executive order creates a “supplier diversity program” to advance these objectives, and will “require goal tracking and reporting as part of the annual budget process” starting in fiscal 2023. The order will be in effect for five years, at which point the city will conduct a new “disparity study.”

This comes a day after The Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Latino Network, Lawyers for Civil Rights and Amplify Latinx submitted a federal civil rights complaint against the city, calling for the feds to step in.

“The City of Boston’s contracting system has long discriminated against its most vulnerable residents,” the complaint filed with the Department of Justice concludes. “Federal intervention is necessary to stop this shameful inequity and to ensure that the City of Boston does not continue to funnel billions of dollars into a racist and exclusionary public contracting system.”

They cited the report from the city and said it’s the “old boys’ network” that’s perpetuated these trends.

BECMA, the lead complainant, declined to comment after calling reports of the executive order “weak” on Wednesday. At that point, the order was expected to advance the goals of the study, which called for 17% of contracts to go to women and minorities.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/37qhy1M