New Orleans City Council set goal of 35 percent participation by disadvantaged business enterprises
More than a year after New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu hired a point person to boost the share of public contracts that go to minority- and women-owned businesses, administration officials said they have quickened the pace of certifying disadvantaged business enterprises and are close to achieving the 35 percent DBE participation goal set out by the New Orleans City Council in 2010. Norman Roussell, who heads Landrieu's Office of Supplier Diversity, told a council committee Tuesday that DBEs represented a 32 percent share of all bids submitted for city work in the last 11 months of 2011.
Octave Francis III is chairman of the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce. When asked how that compares with DBE participation since Hurricane Katrina, Roussell said data was not available before he was hired in December 2010. Instead, he cited his first full month on the job in January 2011, when DBEs made up 16 percent of all submissions.
The records on certifications was more clear.
Roussell said his office certified 36 companies as DBEs last year, including several that were part of a three-year backlog of certification requests. That compares with 21 firms that were cleared as DBEs in 2010, he said, adding that the boost owed to outreach efforts to industry organizations.
Even after picking up the pace, only 450 companies are qualified as DBEs with the city. That figure that should be closer to 2,000, Roussell said.
A separate 2010 executive order expanded the pool of companies that can compete for city work to include companies enrolled with DBE programs run by the state, the Sewerage & Water Board and the Aviation Board.
Councilman Eric Granderson expressed concern that the same firms turn up "over and over again" as minority partners on bids and proposals, and suggested that the administration consider setting a time limit after which DBEs would "graduate" out of the preferred pool of vendors.
"I'm getting a sense of some cannibalism going on in the DBE community, and that's not a good thing," he said, referring to acquisitions by firms that nevertheless continue to qualify as disadvantaged.
The point of the DBE program, he said, is to help disadvantaged firms grow so they don't have to rely on public contracts. "We want you to make most of your money in the private sector, not us," Granderson said.
Office of Supplier Diversity02 14 2012.pdfMeanwhile, the administration has yet to make significant progress on a pair of other initiatives that Landrieu introduced by executive order in early June 2010: a "disparity study" to quantify the gap between the availability of DBEs and the city's use of them, and a pool of money to provide bonding assistance to disadvantaged firms.
Those efforts top the administration's agenda now that officials have hired sufficient staff, said Aimee Quirk, the mayor's economic development adviser.
"We spent the past year just trying to get the basics right," she said.
While lauding the administration's efforts, Councilman Jon Johnson said city officials must enforce the legal minimum of 35 percent DBE participation when dealing with potential city vendors.
"We have a DBE program in this city, and if you don't participate and you don't respect it, you're not going to be able to do business with the city," Johnson said. "We need to allow more chairs to be pulled to the table. There is a segment of this community that has been left out, and people feel isolated."
Octave Francis III, chief executive officer of Francis Financial Consultants who last month took over as chairman of the New Orleans Regional Black Chamber of Commerce, said Landrieu is making strides toward improving access to city contracts, and lauded in particular the establishment of a "contractors college" to help start-up vendors learn how to compete for city work.
"Thus far, yes, the mayor has lived up to his many commitments, though he has a long way yet to go in keeping them all," Francis said via email.
At the same time, he said, "it is equally incumbent upon all DBEs and prospective DBEs to forge ahead, advancing their enterprises: building a more credentialed staff, developing competitive advantages, effectively becoming more qualified."
"All the City of New Orleans can hope to accomplish is to improve the business environment for the community-at-large," Francis said. "Beyond that, individually our businesses need to carry the ball the additional yardage required to be competitive and successful."
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3312.