QUESTION
Council Member Won Assesses Progress on Comptroller's Recommendations for MWBE Program
3:18:22
·
5 min
Council members discuss the Comptroller's report progress on previous year's recommendations for improving the MWBE program. The conversation covers complete, in-progress, and stagnant areas, notably on prequalified lists, NCSP contracts, subcontracting reform, and ensuring timely contract registrations. The dialogue also addresses concerns over double-counting MWBEs in subcontracts, seeking solutions for better tracking and differentiation between prime and subcontractors.
Speaker 2
3:18:22
And for last year's controller report, you offered 5 recommendations.
3:18:27
One of them being ensuring that MWDs have access to higher value contracts through prequalified list and best value references, bolster agency use of NCSP contracts and other discretionary methods, reforming the subcontracting process, providing stronger tool, society agencies, improving the timeliness of contract registration.
3:18:46
We know that they're doing very poorly on timeliness on their schedule as you just discussed.
3:18:51
But how are city agencies doing on the other fronts according to our evaluation.
Speaker 17
3:18:58
Do we have a section of the report assessing progress from last year.
3:19:03
It starts on page 17.
3:19:06
We gave them one complete.
3:19:08
They did, you know, one of the last recommendations was to raise the competitive small procurement threshold up to 1,500,000.
3:19:15
We gave them 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 areas of in progress, and then me go into a discussion on each one.
3:19:24
You know?
3:19:24
So the first one was to establish more prequalified lists.
3:19:28
You asked them about the DBC prequalified list that was useful.
3:19:31
We saw some progress there, and that progress is discussed kind of in the subsequent section.
3:19:39
And then three areas where we didn't see any progress the subcontracting reform, this validating community codes to help agencies find the right.
3:19:51
MWDEs, and the timeliness improvements.
Speaker 2
3:19:56
Do you have any suggestions?
3:19:58
Would it be legislation, or how can we push them for subcontracting report because we're seeing, for example, dot go.
3:20:05
Dot go is now now being reported as an MWE because they are subcontracting believe, with a black woman owned business and partnership.
3:20:15
So we want to make sure that for all of the reports that we have from WWE is that we are differentiating between prime contractors and subcontractors and not diluting or over over counting MWA's through these loopholes.
Speaker 20
3:20:36
We share both that concern of the double counting, but also the need for better system to be able to differentiate, as you said, share between the prime and the sub.
3:20:51
You know, in a in a perfect world, if the pay information portal PIP was being used in the way it is actually, in some cases, required to be used or just, you know, backing up for a moment The city's PPP rules already require that all subcontractors be submitted by primes to agencies and approved or denied.
3:21:11
And then most of the city's contracts include a contractual provision that require the prime to enter the request for the prime time in Pipp and say, Yay or Nay.
3:21:24
And then unfortunately, much of the work is still paper based I think we went into this in last year's MWDU report as well.
3:21:33
There's also an opportunity for payments to subs to be entered into that system.
3:21:39
As you probably know, the city, you know, cuts its checks to its primes.
3:21:44
So the visibility into subcontractor utilization, but especially payments is really opaque.
3:21:50
So strengthening the enforcement of requirements that are already built into our procurement roles that are already contractual provisions of our contracts.
3:22:01
And then making sure that the tools that are part of that infrastructure to see who the subs are and and payments to them, I think, are are critical just for exam sample.
3:22:16
As as, you know, I I was here listening to the earlier part of the session.
3:22:20
You know, the administration alluded to the fact that at least some transportation, subcontracting might be happening through a city wide contract held by Decast with the vendor garner.
3:22:32
If you were to look into the city's information financial management systems PIP portal, you would see no subcontractors associated with that contract.
3:22:42
So, again, the subcontracting information that we do report on in here is what we can see.
3:22:47
But with only 13% of those contracts having that are subject to local L174, which isn't even the nonprofit, human services space, we really have no visibility to be able to help make recommendations or hold agencies accountable.
Speaker 17
3:23:01
Yeah.
3:23:02
Or the Garner contract either is in I think is an that was an emergency contract.
Speaker 20
3:23:06
But the existing Garner contract is not an emergency, but they're using it to leverage the city response to the emergency.
Speaker 2
3:23:15
Okay.
3:23:15
And then, yeah, we would love to continue to partner with you on this because we're just start.
3:23:20
We're seeing it all over the migrant contracts, and then we're seeing it for schools, construction authority, etcetera.
3:23:27
And then we're just looking at your report and being all struck at every single page, our jaw is dropping.