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M/WBE Utilization and Disparity in City of Cleveland Contracting Activity
VII. M/WBE Utilization and Disparity in City of Cleveland Contracting
Activity
A. Introduction
The Croson decision and its progeny have held that statistical evidence of race-based or genderbased
disparities in business enterprise activity is a requirement for any state or local entity that
desires to establish or maintain race-conscious or gender-conscious requirements for M/WBE
participation in contracting and procurement. Chapters V and VI documented the extent of
disparity facing minority- and women-owned firms in the private sector of the City of
Cleveland’s market area, where contracting and procurement activity is typically not subject to
such requirements. In this Chapter, we combined the evidence from Chapter IV, which estimates
M/WBE availability in the City of Cleveland’s Market Area, with the Master
Contract/Subcontract Database described in Chapter III in order to examine whether there is
statistical evidence of disparities in public sector construction and consulting contracting
activities supported by the City of Cleveland.
The statistical evidence reported in Chapter III has already established from which specific
industries the City of Cleveland procures construction and consulting services as well as from
which geographic areas it draws the majority of its prime contractors and subcontractors. In
addition, the statistical evidence reported in Chapter IV has established what percentage of all
firms in the City’s geographic and product markets are M/WBEs.
This Chapter will document:
• To what extent have M/WBEs been utilized in the contracting and subcontracting
activities of the City of Cleveland during the study period. Utilization is examined
overall and by procurement category, for locally-funded contracts versus federallyfunded
contracts subject to the USDOT DBE Program, and for large versus small
contracts.
• How M/WBE utilization has changed since June 2008 when the revisions to Chapter
187 of the Codified Ordinances of Cleveland, adopting the Cleveland Area Small
Business (CSB) program and ceasing to set race-conscious and gender-conscious
goals on contracts other than for vertical construction, went into effect.
• Whether M/WBEs have been utilized to the extent that they are available in the
relevant market area.
Below, we report the M/WBE utilization results using two measures—dollars awarded and
dollars paid. We report this information for Construction, AE-CRS, Services, and Commodities.
We also report results separately for federally-assisted contracts and for locally-funded contracts.
Further, we report results for major procurements (subject to Board of Control approval) and
non-major procurements. All results are reported by race and gender as well as for all M/WBEs
combined, and cover the entire 2006 to 2010 study period, as well as examining the periods both
before and after the current revisions to Chapter 187 of the Codified Ordinances of Cleveland
went into effect in June 2008.
NERA Economic Consulting 237