Kirkland’s press secretary Troy Thompson said DGS has already begun issuing RFPs for goods and services formerly contracted by sealed-bids that have increased minority spending and reduced overall costs.
“We issued one for legal services where we were paying, in some cases, more than $400 an hour—now we’re paying $100,” he said. “We would like to provide people with an epiphany.”
Because DGS issues the most contracts of any state department—spending $41 million on small businesses last year—it has leverage. Kirkland has created an interagency liaison program that will result in each state department reporting monthly on their spending. This will aide in the massive data collection that will ultimately reveal how many minority small businesses contracts went, for instance, to Black-owned firms.
“When we implement this electronic data and tracking system, we can maintain that data on each ethnic group and we’ll be able to determine the spend levels in each specific area,” he said. “The cover that ‘diversity’ gives for not hiring Black firms will disappear.”
But the real transformation, Kirkland said, will come in about two years when, thanks to Gov. Tom Wolf’s support, a state-wide disparity study will be completed.
A disparity study determines if a difference exists between the number of companies available to participate in contracts, and those that are actually utilized on those contracts in a particular market area. It is the only way governments can legally set racial contracting preferences.
Kirkland said the first draft of the study, and the new database on agency small business usage and payments should both be ready in about 12 months.
“This governor understands the economic engine of small businesses, and he is committed to increasing minority contracting,” said Kirkland. “People say we can’t afford to do this study. We say, we can’t afford not to.”
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