The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

I. Introduction
Introduction
The City of Cleveland commissioned this study to evaluate whether M/WBEs in the City’s
market area have full and fair opportunities to compete for its prime contracts and associated
subcontracts. The Study will assist the City in evaluating whether its M/WBE initiatives are still
necessary to remedy discrimination, and to narrowly tailor any existing or new measures.
Like many local governments, the City of Cleveland has a long record of commitment to
including M/WBEs in its contracting and procurement activities. As will be documented in this
Study, from fiscal years 2006 through 2010, the City has continued to be a strong source of
demand in the regional economy for the products and services provided by M/WBEs—demand
that, in general, is found to be lacking in the private sector of the regional economy.
As documented below in Chapter VII, the City’s prior efforts have produced positive results—
M/WBEs earned approximately 19 percent of the City’s contracting and purchasing dollars
between 2006 and 2010. The courts have made it clear, however, that in order to implement a
race- and gender-based program that is effective, enforceable and legally defensible, the City
must meet the judicial test of constitutional “strict scrutiny” to determine the legality of such
initiatives. Strict scrutiny requires current “strong evidence” of the persistence of discrimination,
and “narrowly tailored” measures to remedy that discrimination. These legal principles guide and
inform our work for the City.
A. Study Outline
To ensure compliance with constitutional mandates and M/WBE best practices, the City of
Cleveland commissioned NERA to examine the past and current status of M/WBEs in its
geographic and product markets for Construction, AE-CRS, Services, and Commodities. The
results of the this Study provide the evidentiary record necessary for the City’s consideration of
whether to implement renewed M/WBE policies that comply with the requirements of the courts
and to assess the extent to which previous efforts have assisted M/WBEs to participate on a fair
basis in Cleveland’s contracting activity and that of its subrecipients.
This Study finds both statistical and anecdotal evidence of business discrimination against
M/WBEs in the private sector of the Cleveland market area. As a check on our statistical
findings, we surveyed the contracting experiences and credit access experiences of M/WBEs and
non-M/WBEs in the market area and we also conducted a series of in-depth personal interviews
with local business enterprises, both M/WBE and non-M/WBE. Statistical analyses of
Cleveland’s public sector contracting behavior appear below in Chapters III, IV and VII.
The Study is presented in nine chapters, and is designed to answer the following questions:
Chapter I: Introduction
Chapter II: What are the current constitutional standards and case law governing strict
scrutiny review of race- and gender-conscious government efforts in
public contracting?
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