REMARKS
Council Member Brooks Powers' Opening Remarks For Hearing on Equitable Access to Infrastructure Project Contracts
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9 min
Council Member Brooks Powers initiates a New York City Council hearing focusing on equity in infrastructure projects, detailing the goals for examining the city's infrastructure projects with an equity lens. She highlights the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's oversight of the Department of Design and Construction and the city's efforts towards increasing M/WBE participation in city contracting. The hearing also covers legislation aiming to establish audit requirements for M/WBE procurement.
Speaker 1
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Good morning, and thank you for joining today's hearing of the committee on transportation and infrastructure and the committee on contracts.
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Today's hearing is about examining the city's infrastructure projects through the lens of equity.
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We hope to better understand how the city is insuring and WBEs have equitable access to contracting opportunities and how we are achieving diversity within diversity among contracts.
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As was the case last session, equity will be at the heart of this committee's work.
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Today's topic is a fitting way to begin this new legislation slate of term.
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I also want to note with the new session, the Committee on Transportation And Infrastructure now has oversight over the New York City's Department of Design And Construction.
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DDC is the city's primary capital construction manager and builds many of the civic cornerstones of our city, like our firehouses, libraries, and police precincts.
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DDC also designs and improves vital infrastructure throughout the city, delivering roadway, sewer, and water main construction projects in all borrowers.
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In doing this work, DDC collaborates with more than 20 city agencies.
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To fulfill capital projects.
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Ultimately, DDC's mission is to deliver the city's capital construction projects in the safe, cost effective manner while maintaining the highest degree of architectural engineering and construction quality.
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I am excited to hold discussions with the department today and in the future.
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Throughout this hearing, we will focus on minority and women owned business enterprises, otherwise known as MWA's, and how the city has engaged MWA's as part of its contracting process.
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US.
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New York City has among the nation's highest ratio of MWE's to minority population, but our MWE's have historically struggled with participation in city contracted.
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Although, this mayor and his predecessor have sought to expand MWE participation.
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We continue to see a trend of substantial underutilization of MWE's in City Contracting.
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The city council has worked hard to remedy the underutilization of MWA's in city contracting.
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Over the years, the council has passed a number of local laws, including local law 129 of 20 5, which reestablished the city's MWA program after a previous administration, ended it in local law 1 of 20 13, local law 174 and local law 176 both of 2019, which made a number of crucial improvements to the city's MWA program.
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In addition to these local laws, the council has provided extensive over site over how the city connects MWA's to city contracts for years.
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Both the current administration and the 1 Gatley Pryor have said that expanded MWB participation in city contracts is a priority.
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In 26 chief former mayor Bill De Blasio created the mayor's office of MWE's to coordinate work between city offices and to resolve an inequalities in the city's contract process.
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More recently, in February 2023, mayor Adams signed an executive order to address the disparity within disparity in city procurement dollars and appointed Michael Gardner as chief business diversity off officer of the mayor's office of MWA's.
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I am excited that he has joined the administration in the wake of his successful tenure at the MTA I'm interested to hear about what the administration is doing to meet the goals set by the council.
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While the city and the council has worked to address inequities in the MWBE program, we all know there's more work to be done.
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For fiscal year 23, the city had approximately 11,000 certified MWEs, yet only 2200 were awarded a city contract amounting to about 80% of all certified MWBEs with no acts says to City Dollars.
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I hope to learn what the recent data suggests about how we can bridge the gap between those who are awarded funding and those who are not.
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In this regard, I would like to acknowledge mayor Adams announcement that he plans to direct $60,000,000,000 of contractual work to MWA's by 2030, and that he seeks to significantly increase this amount in the coming years.
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I also want to hear the administration's position on the controller's annual evaluations of the city's efforts to reach the goals set by the council for MWE utilization at each Mayoro agency.
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The city has consistently performed poorly with regards to contracting with black and particularly black women owned businesses.
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And has only barely performed better with Hispanic owned businesses.
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I also want to explore whether we can pursue greater diversity within diversity, and better recognize the multitude of vibrant communities that exist in our in our city.
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The comptroller regularly releases an annual evaluation on MWE procurement and has previously down that MWE's are awarded to a disproportionately smaller share of the value of Citi contracts.
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Non certified firms are awarded contracts with values multiple times greater than MWA's on average.
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And even within contracts registered to MWA's, there are significant disparities among the designated minority groups in terms of contract value.
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Today, we will hear from representatives from BDC and Michael Garner with the mayor's office of MWDEs.
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In my questioning, I want to hone in on why there seems to be an underutilized of MWE's awarded contracts from the city, how we can bridge the gap to ensure MWE's receive a higher number of contracts.
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What steps are being taken to improve the city's engagement of MWA's and its contracting process and how to boost MWE utilization at city agencies that are lagging behind.
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In addition to the oversight portion of today's hearing.
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We are hearing 1 bill.
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Intro number 23, sponsored by myself, is a local law in relation to establish an audit requirements for MWE procurement.
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The bill would require that the controller conduct annual audits focused solely or an MWA procurement and share final audits and audit reports to the council.
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The mayor and the audit committee This bill would also allow the comptroller to appoint someone in the comptroller's office to oversee and execute such audits.
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Before we turn to testimony, I wanna say this.
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I have worked in this space for several years, including at the Port Authority prior to joining the council.
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I know how crucially important equity and contracting is to community city wide.
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Businesses across the city owned by women, by black and brown people.
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Businesses in my district in Southeast Queens work incredibly hard to build capital and credibility.
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They deserve the chance to obtain major contracts and too often they are denied that chance.
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Ensuring equitable access 4 diverse businesses strengthens communities and extends economic opportunity.
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But it also but it is also a fundamental issue of fairness, and the city has a responsibility to get it right.
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We now turn to testimony.
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I look forward to hearing from the city's administration advocates and members of the public regarding the oversight topic and legislation at this hearing.
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I wanna thank my staff and committee staff as well for their hard work, Mark Chen, senior counseled to the committee, Khan Emile, counseled to the committee, Kevin Kattowski, ski, senior policy analyst, John Bassil, senior policy analyst, Michael Sherman, senior policy and is Jack Siegenthaler, my policy and budget director, Renee Taylor, my chief of staff, and Kiara Powell, my communications director.
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I also wanna thank my cochair, councilwoman, Julie Wan, and the committee staff on the contracts committee.
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I will now turn it over to chair Juan for her opening remarks.