Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald submitted legislation to county council that would modify language in the county code pertaining Department of Minority, Women and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise contracting—some of which has not been changed since before there was a council or an executive—in what he said is an effort to improve the program’s operations.
One substantive change involves how the county reports its MWDBE contracting results. The legislation would require the county controller to issue quarterly reports to the executive and council on contracts issued, their dollar amounts and the dollar amounts of their MWDBE components.
The legislation further requires the controller to create and maintain a website on which these quarterly reports would be posted.
County Controller Chelsa Wagner said that provision pre-dates her tenure also, but has never been funded. She said it would probably take three months to implement—if funds were approved or reallocated and she could hire two more people—but questioned why she should since the MWDBE department already posts quarterly reports.
The remainder of the proposed legislation simply updates the language of the MBE sections in chapter 435 of the county code, which would be repealed, and the new chapter put in its place. The last update occurred in 2009, but there are still sections that refer to the County Board of Commissioners, which was replaced by the executive and council system in 2000.
The county will still use U.S. Department of Transportation certifications to determining MWDBE eligibility. And will still use the federal definition of “good faith efforts” in determining how diligent a contractor must be in trying to employ minority subcontractors. The county’s general participation goal remains 13 percent for MBE’s and 2 percent for WBEs.
Even with modified language, however, the legislation still states that the county may ignore a lack of MWDBE inclusion when awarding a contract if no reasonably priced bids are made:
“If no bidder with M/W/DBE participation has offered a reasonable price, Allegheny County can award the contract to any bidder that has demonstrated that it has made sufficient reasonable efforts to meet the M/W/DBE contract goals.”
County Councilman Bill Robinson did not respond by Courier deadline when asked how any of these changes to the county code would “improve and enhance the operations of the County’s MBE Program” as the introduction to the legislation claims. Fitzgerald also did not respond to request for clarification.
Wagner, however, said the changes would change nothing.
“As it stands, the legislation would not have an impact, unless counsel amends it to add a clear penalty for those contractors found to be out of compliance,” she said.
Council was scheduled to vote on the legislation during its regular Oct. 7 meeting. The result of the vote was not available as of New Pittsburgh Courier deadline.
(Send comments to cmorrow@newpittsburghcourier.com)
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